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THIS is gonna be good – if the author can keep up the pace. She is writing what nearly every newsie thinks at some point. “Why the hell are we covering this story. AGAIN!???”
A good point – which I hope the NewsQueen gets into more deeply. Why do we keeping covering the obvious – rather than ignoring it and looking into more worthy stories. Yes, it is (choose one) A-raining, B-snowing, C-neither, D-hot. Shades of Blue Canyon – a live shot hot spot I’ve had the fortune to only set up at a few times.
Read something a while back (wish I could remember where…) that the audience doesn’t CARE what other people think about news – they just want the news.
Thanks to Lenslinger for the heads up.
Emu-cam (def) An Australian native; similar to the pinhole camera
With the exception of the pinhole camera, every camera I’ve seen has had glass of some sort to direct light to the recording media.
Glass in cameras serves a number of purposes. Keeping dust out of the camera. Focus – focusing the light onto the recording media (be it film or CCDs). And also allowing the photographer or VJ to get closer or further away from the subject without having to move.
As mentioned in the post below (My Bag Over-runneth), I have two converter lenses. A wide angle adapter and a tele adapter. The former allows me to get an extremely wide view…maybe shoot in a small area and capture it all. The latter allows me to get a bit closer to the action without having to physically move closer.
Shot with Sony 2x tele adapter
Shot w/o adapters - regular HV20 lens
Shot with Phoenix .24 fisheye lens
That’s the simple explanation, which you can see in the photos above. Shot at about 15 feet away/from left to right:
Photo #1 – Canon HV20 with 2x Sony tele adapter/zoomed all of the way out
Photo #2 – Canon HV20 camera lens/no adapter/zoomed all of the way out
Photo #3 – Canon HV20 with Century .25 fisheye/zoomed all of the way out
Did I mention zoom above? Well, yes. Zoomed all of the way out is using the camera zoom to back off as far away from the subject as possible. Zoomed all of the way in is using the zoom to bring the subject as close as possible. Got it?
Then DON’T ZOOM! Check out this post to understand why (not).
Moving on…the other use of the lens to get the exact framing and focus and perspective you want.
Framing…why move the tripod if you can nudge the zoom a mite in or out? Saves time.
Focus (will have to follow up with photos and another post to explain this better) – if you understand depth of field, you can select your lens and distance and have certain elements of your shot in focus while others are out of focus. YOU choose – this isn’t luck.
Perspective – the look of the elements in the shot as related to each other. Look below. Two shots using the tele and wide angle adapters.
Shot with .25 fisheye adapter
Shot with Sony 2x telephoto adapter
Notice in the first shot (using fisheye or wide angle) the elements seem far apart…there appears to be more space between the front element Lego anchorman at desk) and the rear element (TV truck). Then look at the third shot…the TV truck and anchorman appear closer together…there appears to be less space between the elements.
This is all relative. The first shot was taken inches away from the anchorman…the third shot was taken probably five feet away. So if you compare the distance from the camera to the closer element and the farther away one, it is LESS in the first shot and MORE in the second shot. To get a clearer idea, see the illustration below.
The top illustration shows the photographer close to the tree and the tree about an equal distance to the mountain.
The lower illustration shows the mountain the tree the same distance apart, but the photographer has moved back.
So the distance between the photographer relative to the distance between the tree and mountain has been altered.
From the photographer’s point of view, the objects in the upper illustration are far apart…in the lower illustration they are closer together.
Questions anyone?
For the past few years I’ve been re-working my gear bag – what I carry around with me every day.
First there’s my “purse.” What I think it actually is, is a hunter’s ammo bag. Roomy with compartments for my goodies (in addition to what normal folks carry)…the bullet loops hold pens. The pockets hold HV20 batteries and tape. The front pocket holds my lav mike nicely.
Today I put it all together in a camera bag and realized I had my dream bag. A good camera, several mikes, room for tapes, lenses. Here’s what it looks like and here’s what’s in it. Add a tripod, and computer in bag and you have a mobile VJ kit.
Canon HV20 camcorder (with 3mp still capacity)
Three batteries
Sony VCL-2052 2x tele converter
Phoenix Super Fish Eye .25 converter
Azden ECZ-660 short shotgun mike
Stick mike (OK – this I swiped from my daughter’s Karioke remnants)
Radio Shack 33-3103 laveliere mike
Canon remote
Blank tapes & head cleaning tape
GREEN gaffer’s tape (what a friend gives a friend on a birthday – thanks Newell)
fileinfo.com is turning out to be a wonderful resource. A month or so ago I bought a couple of Aiptek isdv2.4 video cameras – very low end little plastic cameras. The price was right (about $70 each) plus I wanted to see how well they would work or not work with the older eMacs and iMovie 6 my students use.
They were kept on the back shelf until this past week when the rush of project deadlines hit and I discovered that they shoot to yet another file format I hadn’t run into (not that I’m a file format guru) – .asf or Advanced System Format File, which is described as
a proprietary video and audio container format; developed by Microsoft primarily for streaming media; contains audio and video data and optionally metadata, such as title, author, and copyright bibliographic data.
fileinfo.com had a link to a free download of a converter called iSkysoft Video Converter, so I was able to convert to mp4, which imports right into iMovie. If these cameras become part of the workflow for my program rather than an experiment, I’ll pay for copies for a couple of computers…right now I’m getting by on the free version which leaves a watermark over the video.
Always following the motto of one of my literary heros, Doug Adams: DON’T PANIC.
As usual I was looking words up in my Random House Dictionary (unabridged, 1966) when I realized that the book was forty-four years old and might not contain certain everyday words from the current year…such as “google” (the noun or the verb).
Took a peek – and yeah – no “internet.” A “computer” was a mechanical machine used for calculating payroll. Forget “USB” or “hard drive.”
But the words I want to spell correctly and use with discrimination are in there. Acumen was my target at the time (keen and pentrating insight) and I found it. Sometimes a generic word just won’t do – I like to search for the fine shades of difference between words and find the exact match for my meaning. So – no, I really don’t need a new dictionary. The really good words are the timeless ones.
…or problem solving.
I’m exploring the realm of video files and compatibility with older computers, operating systems, and editing programs.
And there are some serious issues which must be researched before purchasing anything.
But the entire problem solving issue is a wonderful learning tool. Too often folks take it for granted that when they buy something it will work. Hey – they even ask the salesman, will this work – can I edit with it on my computer.
I’ve found that most salesfolks will give the simple answer: YES.
The trick is knowing the follow-up questions. Will it work with Windows XP and MovieMaker? What if my computer doesn’t have a firewire? How about if my editing program was created before the format the camera shoots to?
This really isn’t the salespersons problem – it is and will become the buyer’s problem UNLESS the buyer is ready to research or learn how to problem-solve after the fact.
So I LOVE it when my kids come in with problems. The horrified looks on their faces says they are panicking – and it is my job to reassure them and then lead then down the path so they can learn how to recognize, diagnose, and solve the problem.
To me, school isn’t just about learning and memorizing. It’s learning the life skill of finding work-arounds, how to survive…and video production provides enough headaches and technical problems that you either have to learn how to find and fix it or get out of the editing booth.
So maybe I “waste” a lot of time working with individual students. But it feels right – especially if only a few of them realize that they too can be independent problem-solvers.
Oh (some self-righteous boasting here) – I’ve had the advanced students in both of my video classes rewire the equipment. They come in and have to learn the logic of camera into monitor – camera out to switcher – camera out to both program and preview. Ditto audio. At first it was intimidating, but then they realized it was simple logic and zoomed through and finished the job pretty darn quick.
UPDATE (3/4/10)
First period…a student who was using a little green Flip camera I picked up tried to import her files – and couldn’t. I looked at them in my laptop (remember, school computers are more than six year-old eMacs and my laptop is about four years old). The files showed up and played fine…but when transferred to her computer via flash drive, only audio showed up. These were .avi files.
Next step – convert using QuickTime Pro to QuickTime movies. Yeah – we had video. But when transferred to the old eMac, there was not audio. Short-term solution was to extract the audio from the audio only clip, match up with the QT clip and export to a single clip with both and bring it back into iMovie.
More work ahead…
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