Winners Announced – CineD Best-of-Show Awards at IBC 2026

AwardsIBC 2026

by Nino LeitnerSeptember 14^th, 2026

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IBC 2026 is a wrap, and the winners of this year’s CineD Best-of-Show Awards have been decided. Across nine categories, we are recognizing eleven products and technologies that stood out in Amsterdam this year, spanning AI, audio, broadcast, cameras, camera control, camera support, lenses, lighting, and monitors.

As in previous years, manufacturers submitted their products ahead of the show so our editorial team had time to evaluate each entry properly rather than making snap decisions on the show floor. The submission process also levels the playing field between the biggest booths and the smaller exhibitors we might otherwise have missed, and manufacturers have no influence on our choices, and no prior knowledge of them, until the award is handed over at the booth. Winners were selected on the basis of innovation, practical impact, and relevance to the working filmmakers and cinematographers who read CineD. If you want to compare notes with our picks from earlier this year, our NAB 2026 winners and IBC 2025 winners are both still online. Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to every nominee who made this year’s selection a difficult one. Here are the winners, category by category.

AI innovation – Adobe After Effects AI Assistant

Our AI Innovation award goes to Adobe for the AI Assistant in After Effects, currently available as an opt-in panel in the After Effects beta (article coming soon). Rather than a generator bolted onto the side of the application, it is a conversational agent that operates on the project itself: it can restructure, rename, and color-code a composition it has never seen before, explain and debug existing expressions, or build a complete expression rig from a plain-language description. Spell-checking and translating text layers, producing multiple aspect-ratio versions of a comp, and image and video generation through Firefly all run from the same panel, and generation does not consume credits during the beta.

What convinced us is where Adobe chose to start. Expressions are the point where motion design meets scripting, and plenty of capable artists never cross that line; cleaning up an inherited project is the job nobody wants. Adobe aimed the Assistant at both of those before anything flashier, and it has been unusually open about what the beta cannot yet do, publishing its list of limitations at greater length than its list of capabilities and stating plainly that it does not train on user content. Adobe took this category at NAB 2026 with Premiere Color Mode, and taking it again with a tool that does the tedious work rather than the creative work is the direction we want to see AI go inside post-production software.

Audio equipment – Deity PR-4

The Audio Equipment award goes to the Deity PR-4, a four-input, six-track field recorder measuring 98 x 80 x 41mm (3.9 x 3.1 x 1.6in) and weighing 218g (7.7oz) without a battery. Two XLR combo inputs with 48V phantom power and AES3/AES42 support sit alongside a stereo 3.5mm TRS input for channels three and four, with 32-bit float recording and a two-channel mix bus making up the six tracks. It writes simultaneously to an SD card and a fixed internal 64GB SSD, and it can act as the wireless timecode master for a small crew, sending timecode over a 2.4GHz link to Deity’s transmitters, pocket recorders, timecode boxes, and slates.

That combination is why it wins. A two-person documentary crew has traditionally bought a recorder, a timecode generator, and a backup strategy as three separate line items, and the PR-4 folds all three into one box that sells for $449. Deity’s VoiceAware Automix is included rather than sold as an upgrade, the color touchscreen sits on the side of the unit so a camera-mounted recorder can still be read from behind the camera, and the internal SSD backup is a feature Deity says has not appeared in a recorder under $5,995 before. We took a detailed look at the PR-4 in this news article.

Broadcast – XLCS Designs Marshall CV500 Broadcast Deployment System

The Broadcast award goes to XLCS Designs for its Broadcast Deployment System for Marshall Electronics CV500-series miniature broadcast cameras (article coming soon). Marshall’s CV500 units are cube-shaped HD-SDI POV cameras roughly 36mm (1.4in) on a side, the kind of camera that ends up hidden in a set piece or clamped to a race car, and getting them mounted, powered, cabled, and protected quickly has traditionally meant a drawer full of improvised hardware.

XLCS Designs won our Camera Support award at NAB 2026 for the weather-sealed Killdozer cage, and the company built its reputation on single-piece CNC-machined cages for cameras such as the Blackmagic PYXIS 6K and the Nikon ZR. Applying that machining approach to a category that has mostly lived on ball heads and gaffer tape is what earned the award. Broadcast POV deployment is a rigging problem more than an imaging problem, and XLCS is one of the few accessory makers treating it that way.

Camera – DJI Osmo Pocket 4P

The Camera award goes to the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P, the first Pocket-series gimbal camera with two lenses: a 20mm-equivalent f/2.0 wide angle in front of a newly developed 1-inch CMOS sensor, and a 60mm-equivalent f/1.8 medium telephoto on a second sensor. It records 10-bit D-Log 2 and 4K at up to 240fps, and it sells for €599/£529 in Europe, the UK, Canada, and Australia; it is not sold in the US.

What pushed this into award territory was not the spec sheet but our lab. DJI claims 17 stops of dynamic range from the wide camera’s LOFIC sensor (lateral overflow integration capacitor), and when Gunther Machu put it on the Xyla chart in our Lab Test, it measured 16 stops at a signal-to-noise ratio of 2 and 17.2 stops at SNR 1, the highest result we have ever recorded, above the ARRI ALEXA 35. Exposure latitude came in at a solid 10 stops with some room toward 11 before the 10-bit codec runs out, and rolling shutter measured 11ms on the wide camera and 9.4ms on the telephoto. The telephoto camera managed 11.6 stops at SNR 2 and 8 stops of latitude, a result some full-frame consumer cameras do not reach. A sub-€600 gimbal camera that lands at the top of our dynamic range chart changes what small cameras can be expected to do (it gave Focus Check episode 127 its title), and Gunther closed his lab test wishing for this LOFIC sensor in a body with a lens mount.

Camera control and accessories – OWC Thunderbolt 5 Dock with Dual HDMI

Our Camera Control and Accessories award goes to OWC for the Thunderbolt 5 Dock with Dual HDMI (article coming soon). The name is the point: two HDMI 2.1 ports are built into the dock, so a pair of HDMI monitors plug straight in without adapters, at up to 4K 240Hz or 8K 60Hz each with DSC on a Thunderbolt 5 host, and a third display can hang off the downstream Thunderbolt or USB-C connection. That same single Thunderbolt 5 cable carries 140W of charging to the laptop, 2.5Gb Ethernet, UHS-II SD and microSD card readers, a front USB-C port with 30W of device charging, and a downstream Thunderbolt 5 port that OWC says runs external SSDs and RAID arrays at full rated speed.

For a DIT cart or an on-set edit station, that is the difference between one cable and a bag of dongles, and because the dock also works with Thunderbolt 4, USB4, USB-C, and Thunderbolt 3 Mac hosts, it does not force a laptop upgrade. It sits flat or stands upright, and OWC’s Dock Ejector unmounts every connected drive in one click. We spoke to OWC founder Larry O’Connor at NAB about the Express 4M2 Ultra RAID enclosure, and this dock is the other half of that Thunderbolt 5 story. It ships in November at $349.99.

Camera support – Manfrotto ONE Video tripod with 502X fluid head

The Camera Support award goes to Manfrotto for the ONE Video tripod system with the new 502X fluid video head (article and video coming soon). Manfrotto’s ONE platform started with the ONE Hybrid, which we first saw at BILD 2025 and which won a CineD Best-of-Show Award at IBC 2025, followed by the ONE Photo, and ONE Video is the dedicated video set of legs that completes the range. The aluminum legs use a non-round profile for torsional rigidity during pans, the patented XTEND mechanism deploys all three sections in one movement, and leveling is built into the tripod rather than the head. Rubber feet pull off to reveal spikes, Easy Link ports with anti-rotation pins take arms and accessories, and the XCHANGE quick-release base swaps between heads, sliders, and accessories.

The 502X is the head that turns it into a video system. It is rated for an 8kg (17.6lb) payload with continuously variable fluid drag on both pan and tilt and a counterbalance system optimized for 4.4kg (9.7lb) at a 55mm (2.2in) center of gravity, on a 504PLONG-type sliding plate with side-lock top loading and a 75mm flat base, so it moves between tripods, sliders, and dollies. Tilt range is -70 to +90°. The complete kit weighs 4.7kg (10.4lb), reaches 149cm (58.7in), folds to 79.7cm (31.4in), and ships with a padded bag; it is designed and built in Italy. US retail listings put the kit at $599.95 and the 502X head alone at $299.95. Johnnie walked through the ONE Hybrid and the 500X head with Manfrotto’s Sofia Braccio at NAB 2026 if you want to see how the platform works in practice, and watch our IBC 2026 interview video about the new Manfrotto ONE Video tripod below.

Lenses – DZOFILM Arles Zoom 25-75mm and 65-180mm T2.6

The Lens award goes to DZOFILM for the two Arles Zooms, a 25-75mm and a 65-180mm, both at a constant T2.6, both parfocal, and both covering full frame with a 43.5mm image circle. They share the 95mm front diameter and M86 filter threads of the rest of the Arles line, and they weigh 1,767g (3.9lb) and 1,782g (3.9lb) respectively, at 178mm (7.0in) and 190.8mm (7.5in) in PL. An EF mount kit is available separately and can be swapped by the user.

Two decisions won this award. The first is the deliberate overlap: the 25-75mm runs past the 65mm start of the long lens on purpose, so an operator can switch lenses mid-sequence and pick up at the same focal length, which is a documentary convenience rather than a spec-sheet number. The second is color. DZOFILM’s Susanne Wu told us at the booth that the zooms share their color science with the Arles Primes, so a shooter can cut between a prime and a zoom without correcting for it in post, and the matching front diameter means the matte box and filters carry across the whole set. At €2,500 each (US listings at $2,899), with shipping expected in late September, they sit above the company’s Catta Ace zooms and give the 11-lens Arles Prime set a matched pair of zooms. DZOFILM has now taken a lens award from us at IBC 2025 for the Vespid Prime II, at NAB 2026 for the Arcana Anamorphic, and again here.

Lighting equipment – Aputure STORM CS32 and NANLUX Matrix 2500C

This year we are giving two Lighting Equipment awards, to two fixtures that approach high output from opposite directions. The first goes to the Aputure STORM CS32, a 3,200W point source built on Aputure’s BLAIR CG light engine with extended red, which puts blue, lime, amber, indigo, red, cyan, and green emitters behind one lens. Aputure rates maximum light output at 2,600W and positions the fixture as a 4K HMI equivalent, quoting 35,500 lux at 5m (16.4ft) at 5,600K with the new 30° reflector. CCT runs from 1,800K to 20,000K, with SSI scores of 93 against tungsten and 91 against daylight, and the lamp head weighs 19.8kg (43.7lb) with the yoke, with a 10.8kg (23.8lb) control box.

What earned the CS32 this award is the engineering around the power supply. It runs on 100 to 240V from a single-phase outlet, and it protects the circuit rather than leaving that to the operator: in North America a second cable flips the fixture to a 15A or 20A preset that caps the draw at roughly 1,700W or 2,200W, and in Europe the power menu lets you cap the wattage so a 13A domestic plug is never overloaded. Both the AC and head cables use two-stage connectors that cut power before the pins separate, so pulling a live cable does not produce an arc. Vapor chamber cooling keeps it air-cooled and IP65-rated, silent mode measures 24.3dBA at 1m while capping the draw at around 550W, and every XT52 reflector and the Motorized CF16 Fresnel bolt straight on. Aputure’s Brandon Le walked us through all of it at the booth. The CS32 is $6,990 in the US and around €7,000 in Europe, with shipping from October.

Our second Lighting Equipment award goes to the NANLUX Matrix 2500C, a 2,500W full-color fixture built from four integrated heads in a single 40 x 40 x 23.5cm (15.75 x 15.75 x 9.25in) housing that weighs 18kg (39.7lb). It carries the same Nebula C8 eight-color light engine as the Evoke 5C that won this category at NAB 2026, with a 1,000K to 20,000K CCT range, plus or minus 200 points of green/magenta adjustment across that whole range, an average CRI and TLCI of 98, and CCT, HSI, HSIW, RGBW, XY, Gel, and Effect modes. NANLUX quotes 67,900 lux at 3m (9.8ft) at 5,600K with the FL-MT25 motorized Fresnel at 16°, and the housing is IP66-rated with power and control built in.

Where the CS32 is one very bright point source, the Matrix is designed to be one of many. The square four-head layout lets multiple units butt up against each other with almost no gap, so an array reads as a single continuous source rather than a grid of hot spots, and a front-to-rear airflow path is there specifically to stop stacked fixtures cooking each other under continuous load, with four fan modes to trade noise against output. That is the use case that earned the award: sun-replacement arrays and large soft sources have long meant either discharge fixtures or a scaffold of individual LED heads, and a repeatable, weather-protected building block for that job is a practical answer for rental houses and larger sets. Andy Lin walked us through the Matrix series at Cine Gear. The Matrix 2500C standard kit is $7,280, with the flight case kit at $7,580, and shipping was scheduled for the third quarter of the year.

Monitors and recording – Atomos Shinobi 7 II and Hollyland Pyro 7 Ultra

This year we are giving two Monitors and Recording awards, because two 7-inch monitors solved two very different problems. The first goes to the Atomos Shinobi 7 II, a 7-inch, 2,800-nit HDR touchscreen with HDMI 2.0 in and out at up to 4K60, USB-C camera control and touch-to-focus for most Canon, FUJIFILM, Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony mirrorless cameras, and a 10GbE Ethernet port on the back. According to Atomos CEO Peter Barber, speaking at the show, the Ethernet connection is what extends camera control to larger bodies the USB-C-only Shinobi II could not reach, including the Canon EOS C50, C80, and C100 and the Sony FX5 and FX6.

The Shinobi II launched in 2024 as a 5-inch, 1,500-nit monitor at $349, and the Shinobi 7 II keeps the same slim polycarbonate profile at 188 x 120 x 23mm (7.4 x 4.7 x 0.9in) and 401g (14.1oz) while nearly doubling the brightness. The full Atomos tool set is on board, including EL Zone false color, waveform, vectorscope, RGB parade, focus peaking, anamorphic de-squeeze, and 3D LUT support, and it calibrates on-device with a Calibrite probe over USB-C with no computer in the chain. It runs from NP-F batteries or 45W USB-C PD, and it is in stock now at $499/€499. Atomos won this category at NAB 2026 with the Sumo PRO-19, and the Shinobi 7 II brings camera control for cinema bodies down to a $499 on-camera monitor.

Our second award in this category goes to the Hollyland Pyro 7 Ultra, a 7.02-inch QD-LCD monitor that is also a transmitter and a receiver. The panel is 1920 x 1200 at 1,500 nits, covers 95% of DCI-P3, and every unit leaves the factory Calman-calibrated to a Delta E of 1.5 or below, with an optional Hollyland Color Calibrator that recalibrates over USB-C in about three minutes without a computer. The wireless side is a transplant from the Pyro Ultra we covered at NAB: Hollyland’s TWiFi dual-band link, 4K60 transmission, up to 1km (3,300ft) of range, a Focus Mode with latency as low as 20ms at 1080p25/30, and one transmitter feeding an unlimited number of receivers in broadcast mode.

Connectivity covers HDMI 2.0 and 3G-SDI with cross-conversion between them, a V-mount plate and DC input for power, on-board recording and playback with markers for remote review, and camera control through manufacturer SDKs that can be toggled between the camera-top transmitter and the receiver. The unit weighs up to 630g (1.4lb) and measures 180 x 116 x 46.2mm (7.1 x 4.6 x 1.8in) including the battery plate, and it was developed with Tilta for compatibility with the Nucleus-M II lens control system and dedicated cages. Reference-grade calibration in a transceiver monitor is a claim we have not seen from this category before, and it is why the Pyro 7 Ultra shares the award. It started shipping on September 3, and we covered the launch in detail.

Congratulations again to all of our winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted a product this year.

Which of these IBC 2026 winners would you put on your rig or in your bag first? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below!