I’m sure we’re all familiar with the excitement that hits when someone is on the verge of discovering something new, when Christmas is fast approaching, or when a client tells you that your project turned out “beautifully.” That is the kind of head to toe excitement many videographers felt when Oakley billionaire Jim Jannard unveiled some astonishing details about the RED Scarlet camera back in 2008. It’s also the same kind of excitement that many digital cinematographers are feeling even now.

At first glance, this camera seemed to have it all: a 3K resolution recorded to a superior codec, virtually no compression artifacts, RAW recording, a highly modular design for added functionality, more dynamic range than you probably know what to do with, and a good price at $4,750 with a fixed lens or $2,750 without. Even with a $2,750 price tag, for a camera that can shoot at higher resolutions than anything else on the market, it was and still is a real steal.

Unfortunately, there is no fairy tale ending to this story. Unfortunately, in order to get the kind of fully functioning camera you’re used to, you would have to get a lens, a battery, an audio interface, a viewfinder, and grips for shooting. All together that high quality equipment can cost upwards of twenty grand – a very steep price for those who want to make great looking films on the cheap. Also, one of the biggest complaints about the RED camera is its post-production workflow. In order to have a chance at editing the footage from a RED camera, an editor would first have to make low resolution proxies from the original 4 or 3k files. Otherwise, these files are usually too large for any computer to handle successfully. As you’ve probably figured out already, this proxy rendering takes an awful lot of processing power and time which is often a real deal-breaker for getting projects done on a tight deadline. On the other hand though, super high resolution files above 1080p are a problem for any computer and RED founder Jim Jannard does have a knack for making very high quality equipment in which he spares no expense. As a result, you can expect to definitely get what you pay for with these products.

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The excitement of Super Bowl XLIV was viewed by millions, making it the most watched program in American television history[i]. Several professional photographers captured every moment of the action using Canon’s latest professional digital SLR camera, the EOS-1D Mark IV. With initial camera shipments beginning less than 6 weeks before the game, Super Bowl XLIV was the first major sports event where professional photographers had an opportunity to see for themselves how the EOS-1D Mark IV camera would perform. After the game, Canon U.S.A. chose to interview four of these professional photographers regarding their use of the EOS-1D Mark IV camera and from their comments, it is clear that for these photographers, the EOS-1D Mark IV camera aced its first big test.

“Shooting at Super Bowl XLIV with the EOS-1D Mark IV was a night-and-day improvement compared to previous EOS models. It blew them all away. The 1D Mark IV exceeded my expectations quite a bit,” said Daniel Powers, staff photographer, Gannett Co., Inc.

The EOS-1D Mark IV is designed to be the multimedia camera of choice for professionals across all photographic disciplines, with a new 45-point autofocus system, a 16-megapixel Canon CMOS sensor, Dual DIGIC 4 Imaging Processors, and 14-bit A/D data conversion, all at up to 10 frames-per-second (fps), with the widest ISO range Canon has produced to date. “Overall, in my opinion, the EOS-1D Mark IV is the best camera Canon has put out so far. I would have no hesitation recommending it,” said Scott Audette, a contract photographer who covered Super Bowl XLIV for Reuters.
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Panasonic today introduces the LUMIX DMC-ZS7, the newest member of the acclaimed superzoom ZS-Series of digital cameras that have gained worldwide popularity. Complete with its hallmark 25mm ultra-wide-angle Leica lens and a powerful 12x optical zoom (operable in video recording mode), this 12.1-megapixel powerhouse performer, also includes a new built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) feature that embeds photos and videos with the latitude and longitude location details, a useful feature when using an online photo-sharing website. The LUMIX ZS7 is also the world’s smallest photo/video hybrid superzoom digital camera*¹, which can also record High Definition (HD) video using the recording capability in AVCHD Lite, which includes a dedicated video record button and new to the ZS-Series is a manual shooting mode. Read the rest of this entry »

When someone new approaches me with a video project they’ve shot that they want me to gently critique I can always tell if that person has had any still photography training within just a few seconds. The first things skilled still photographers do is compose. They see the finished shot in their mind before they ever even put the camera to their eye. They instantly see the Rule of Thirds grid, or Divine Proportion, (also called Golden Rule), and they often say they “compose” shots everywhere they look, whether they are shooting or not. These are the people I call “The Eye”. They just have it, it’s in their brain, they “see” composition the way others see color.  Read the rest of this entry »

From an Aleratec Inc. press release.

Aleratec Inc., leading developer and manufacturer of “Prosumers’ Choice” solutions for the USB, Flash, HDD, Blu-ray, DVD CD, duplicating, and DVD/CD publishing markets, introduced today a new stand alone (SA) robotic disc duplicator. The DVD/CD RoboRacer SA is the 3rd generation of the highly successful RoboRacer DVD CD duplicator series and is a fully automatic, stand alone DVD CD duplicator with a 100 disc DVD copy or CD copy capacity. Stand alone means no computer is required and customers can load it with a source disc and up to 100 blank DVDs or CDs and it will produce 100 DVD or CD copies completely unattended. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok. We give up officially. The deadline for TV stations to abandon their analog broadcast channels was Feb 17th, then it wasn’t, then it was again, now it’s kinda June 12th if your local station wants to.

The latest bill that passed sent the drop-dead date out until June 12th, 2009. However most, if not all, analog broadcast stations were geared up to pull the switch on Feb 17th. Lawmakers are concerned that television viewers aren’t ready to make the switch yet,  and that there was a large unfilled backlog of digital converter coupons still left to be sent out.

The problem for TV stations is that it’s pretty expensive to run those analog transmitters, and they already have the new digital transmitters ready to go. So they’ve allowed stations to make the change any time they want between Feb 17th, and June 12th. Which means the transfer will happen in a piece-meal fashion over the next 4 months, with some analog and some digital channels overlapping.

I’m wondering if the Congress tried really hard, they could make this transition even more confusing?

In the meantime, we’ve given up following this story, and instead I’ll just let you know when my TV is working, and you can follow the FCC website daily.