December 2008

<p>There are many benefits to shooting nighttime scenes during the day. If you have ever wondered how to shoot a day-for-night scene, or why you would want to in the first place, check out this month's tutorial for everything you need to know about achieving that nighttime look in broad daylight.
Also in this issue, you will find tips on shooting in the wild, distributing your videos by way of mobile devices, and how to use a 35mm lens adapter to create that desired film look.
Our annual Camcorder Buyer's Guide and our Buyer's Guide to Lens Adapters and Converters will assist you in making decisions for your next camcorder upgrade.</p>

Features Stories

Day for Night Shooting Tutorial

How to turn the light of day into the dark of night... The technique of shooting outdoor night scenes in broad daylight has been around since the early days of film. It is commonly called Day for Night (DFN), and you can spot it in films like It's a Wonderful Life, Planet of the Apes and Jaws; documentaries like The Creation of the Universe; and, of course, the French film, Day for Night.

Expanding your Horizons: A Buyer's Guide to Lens Adaptors & Converters

Most consumer and prosumer video cameras come with only a permanently-affixed, built-in lens that lets you zoom in and out. While this works in most circumstances, there will be plenty of times when the built-in lens simply isn't enough.

Camcorder Buyer's Guide 2008

Back in the early 1980s, when Howard Cosell was wrapping up his hosting duties on Monday Night Football, MTV still showed videos and the internet was still confined to colleges and army bases, the first camcorders came in exactly two flavors. But these days, both the quality of camcorders and the sheer quantity of available features and prices have grown exponentially. So, before you whip out your credit card and go shopping online or at the local big box store, let's try to make sense of those options.

Wild Things: Shooting in the Wild

Shooting in the wild changes how videographers would normally capture events. You have to slow down, take your time... and wait... and wait some more... and wait even more. But the video is well worth the time.

Reviews

Canon XL H1A HDV Camcorder Review

Ready, Aim, Shoot! Whether you feel you're ready to enter the professional realm of cinematography or you're a serious amateur, Canon's XL H1A is here to meet your expectations.

SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 5 (Scoring Edition) Audio Creation Software Review

The Sound and The Fury... Everyone knows that the musical score is responsible for a lot of the emotional impact of your video. The score underlies the emotional cues that you want the picture to express.

Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 Video Editing Software Review

Edit Easy... It's interesting that editing software of all levels has gained features unimaginable even a couple of years ago, while becoming easier to use at the same time. This is the case with Corel VideoStudio Pro X2. For a lot of quick editing jobs, there's really not much this program can't do.

Synology Disk Station DS408 Network Attached Storage Device Review

Easy and Powerful... The Synology Disk Station DS408 is more than just a simple network attached storage device (NAS). With its 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, Linux Kernel, USB and LAN ports, it's also a media server.

Columns

35mm Lens Adaptors for Video

Why on earth would you want to put a 35mm camera lens on your video camera? It's already got a perfectly good lens on it. One word - bokeh. bokeh is a Japanese word that has no English equivalent - it means... "the quality of out-of-focus areas in a photograph."

Directing Children

Directing children for your video can try your patience, as they are easily distracted, need plenty of visual instruction and communicate differently from adults.

Viewfinder A Few Years Down the Road

The world of video is moving swiftly through two unprecedented changes. The first change is our encoding system. Most people are not familiar with encoding systems, but they have been viewing an encoded analog video signal whenever they've watched TV, a videotape or often a DVD.