Gear Guides

We're getting close to that time of the year, the time when many of my students will start fretting about graduating. And it's not so much the Becoming a Real Person Dilemma as it is what do I need to buy?

I say it often - we do a great thing here at UGA in providing gear to our students. It completely eliminates an economic barrier to taking the classes and finding your passion. But it also means the students don't have to buy anything or start building their kits. So when their last class ends and they have to hand back the kit, they go into a bit of withdrawal. Or, more accurately, they go into shock over what it costs to build their own.

David McIntyre over at Black Star Rising has a short post on the basic gear a freelancer needs and it's a great starting point for a discussion that will go on for a few weeks here.

Super Twitter

Not intentional, but this post is much like the last - all about Twitter. The New York Times has an interactive ... well, I don't know what to call it ... thing that looks at what was Twittered throughout the Super Bowl Sunday night.

Click on the "People saying go" and let it play, paying attention to the timeline. Very entertaining. 

The Story of Twitter (in More Than 140 Characters)

I am still not convinced that Twitter is something of value. I use it. A LOT. But I do wonder whether it's just a play thing, a way to avoid time. And then some breaking news event happens and I know because I have a Twitter client running on my desktop (Spaz).

One of the creators, Dom Sagolla, has now told the story behind its creation. 

iMovie Image Stabilization

The latest version of Apple's iMovie now has software image stabilization - and the results are, well, dramatic. 

I don't know how this works, I don't know if it's seriously degrading the quality or if it's better or worse than in-camera stabilization. But it is cool ... 

New View of the Inauguration

It may seem simple, but it means a lot to be able to get something different from a Presidential Inauguration. Chuck Kennedy managed to do it, with a low and wide remote shot from Tuesday's event.

More on Reuters at Launch Pad 39A

Reuters has posted a 10 minute video that shows how they set up their remote cameras and can now transmit a photo to their clients within minutes of a shuttle launch.

Very cool. 

(Camera) Geek Predictions for 2009

Thom Hogan has posted his predictions on what camera goodies we'll see in 2009. Real inside baseball stuff, but the talk about market share is something to pay attention to. While we focus on storytelling, there's an industry that provides us with the tools to do that storytelling - it's mildly important that we pay attention to that industry.

Princess Leia on CNN?

If you watched CNN on election night (or followed the Twitter comments on it), you got to see an ... well ... entertaining bit of technology - holograms. (Okay, the experts say they were really tomograms.) Poynter has put together a piece explaining them for you, including a video link to CNN's technical explanation. 

Useful? Or just technology for toys sake? 

THIS Changes Everything ... Perhaps ...

Canon has announced it's replacement for the long-in-the-tooth 5D, the 5D Mark II. All of the goodness you'd expect are there - higher resolution (a whopping, card-massacring 21 megapixels), better autofocus, better shadow detail, better noise control at high ISO, etc., all with the pure joy of a full frame CMOS chip. 

As with Nikon's D90, there's now a video mode, as well, and it tromps the resolution of Big N's camera -  1920 x 1080 pixel (1080p) resolution versus the D90's 1280 x 720. But that's not what has me tempted to call my Canon guy at 8 in the morning - it's that the 5D has a microphone jack built into it. And that, as any video shooter knows, is the killer feature.

Every point and shoot camera, as well as the D90 has the ability to record ambient sound through a built in mic, but none (that I'm aware of) has the ability to choose the microphone and microphone placement that is optimal for the story you're working on. Bad audio is something viewers just will not tolerate - shaky video is okay if they can hear what's going on. 

With news shooters needing to do video and stills, this camera should allow them to do both with one kit. 

Of course, the price difference between the D90 (around $1,000) and the 5D Mark II (around $2,700) is substantial. But a high definition video camera is more than the difference between them in price. 

Update: Canon also revved their top of the line point and shoot, now called the G10. The big news is the lens goes wider (to a 35 mm/full frame equivalent of 28 mm), but they also crammed 14 megapixels onto a very small chip. I'd rather have the previous chip with this lens, but oh well ... 

Georgia PPA Convention

This weekend, the Georgia Professional Photographers Association has their annual convention in Athens. (The Southeast Professional Photographers Association convention is here in the spring, too.) There's a trade show (which you can get into for free) as well as a lecture series (which you have to pay for). 

Not a bad opportunity to go look at photo stuff for a few hours.

Film vs. Digital

Okay, I admit, I haven't had this argument in a very long time. And I don't want to have it. Really, I just don't care anymore. It has been almost two years since I ran a roll of film through a camera and, as discussed in this post by National Geographic's Director of Photography David Griffin, I shot film because of the camera (my beloved Leica M6) and not because of the medium.

(What? You haven't heard me wax poetic about the beauty of the Leica? *sigh* I so miss mine, but the digital version just isn't there yet. Maybe the next generation will hook me in again.)

Rob Haggert pointed to this entry from his blog, A Photo Editor, and also noted the closing graf, which I shall echo:

At National Geographic we do not require photographers to shoot one way of another–we support both approaches. Ultimately, we care more about what is being photographed and less about how.

Sage advice.

NPR on Shooting at the Olympics

Short piece on how Michael Steele and Getty Images cover track events in Beijing.

One for the Soon-To-Be-Graduates

Lisa Williams over at the Idea Lab has a post on the "10 Things Journalists Should Know About Surviving in a High-Tech Industry."

It took me a moment with thinking of "journalism" as a "high-tech industry," but it is. A lot of the insane things dot-commers were doing a decade ago we're doing now ... a decade late. Don't know how to code? Learn it on your own time, get yourself a better job. Don't know how to do an audio slide show? Learn it on your own time, get yourself a better job.

It's no longer good enough to be good at your current job, you need to be good at the next job, too, even before you get it.

Flip Ultra vs. Canon HD

David Pogue at the New York Times pointed this out ... Kirk Mastin, from the University of Washington, shot a story on a Canon high definition camera and a Flip Ultra, then edited them exactly the same way in Final Cut Pro ... and the results are, well, surprising ...

It is not the gear, folks. It is the story.

THIS is TOO COOL

Here's the scene: You're a wire shooter, assigned to cover the European Swimming Championships. There's a guy, Alain Bernard of France, who may set a record. So you know you're concentrating on him. Of course, every other wire and agency photographer is going to focus in on this guy, how do you do it differently?

Well, shoot it from underwater, of course. It's been done that way for years. But ... then he sets the world record in the 100 meter freestyle. If you're shooting from underwater, on a remote control ... how do you get your photos out faster? Can you afford to wait until the end of the meet, then dive down to fetch your camera?

Read all about how Wolfgang Rattay set up not just an underwater camera, but a remote controlled underwater rig that wirelessly transmitted the photo to his laptop over on the Reuters photo blog.

Geek to the max, but ... but ... four minutes after setting the record, he had the photo on the wire. FOUR MINUTES.

We Scooped the New York Times

Tech writer David Pogue just wrote a review of the Flip Ultra, something done here back in November.

Jeez, no wonder the Times is in trouble ... though Pogue does point out that the Flip has captured, ahem, 13% of the video camera market. Which is, well, stunning.

An Air Disappears into Thin Air

Tech writer Steven Levy over at Newsweek has, ahem, lost his computer - a loaner MacBook Air from Apple.

And that's why I didn't buy one ... plus, it really wouldn't work for me. Well, it would, but, you know, not without some other things ... like a Mac Pro for home.

Blog Note

Small note here - that last post, on trapezoid cropping, was the 300th post on the UGA Photojournalism blog. Which also happened to celebrate its first birthday on Thursday, February 28.

iPhones for Everyone!

Well, if you're enrolling at Abilene Christian University. Not here in Athens.

So, is an iPhone a teaching device? I'm going to think about how I could use one. Well, use one in class ... I can think of lots of ways I could use one for myself.

- Vodcasting classes (though I may move around too much to make that work)
- Sending out class updates/assignments via SMS
- Forwarding relevant links to everyone

Any others? I'm sure there are lots, add your ideas below. Maybe I'll look for a grant ...

The Speed of News

I spent time working for the wires (Associated Press and Agence France-Presse) and did enough newspaper night coverage to have pushed deadlines as much as the next guy. I remember waiting for a lower-office candidate to concede one night in Providence, R.I., so we could get the governor to come out and celebrate his win.

That little twerp, down by 10 or 15 points, refused to accept he wasn't going to be elected to Chief Bottle Washer or some such thing. Shooting for the AP, I had an editor in New York paging me every 10 minutes asking where the photos were ... she actually asked me why I couldn't make the governor appear.

Anyway, once my image was on film, I had to drive across town to my bureau to soup, edit and transmit. It was only a five minute drive and it would take about 12 minutes (cutting some corners) to have the film ready to scan (chemistry was mixed and cooking hours earlier in preparation). Another 10 minutes to scan, caption and send and I was done for the night. Less than 30 minutes from appearance on stage to bouncing off the satellite, I thought that was pretty good.

(We built a lot of darkrooms on-site, too, but not that night.)

Fast-forward eight years to November 2002. I'm photo editor of the Utica, N.Y., paper and have all hands out for election night. Me, I'm an hour or so outside of the city, waiting for a city councilor to make his victory appearance at his brother's bar. My deadline is 11:15 p.m.

It's clear he's taking the seat early, but he's not there. Nine p.m., 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m. I find his brother to get an update. "He'll be here when he's ready." Uh-huh.

He shows up at - honest to God - 11:05. Why? Television is live ...

He gets out of the car in front of the bar. Five frames of that. He hugs mom, four frames of that and I run to the parking lot. I have a laptop sitting on the front seat of my truck. Card in one side, cellphone plugged to the other ... seven minutes later, I have a photo on my designer's screen.

I was The Man.

John Harrington put together a video of interviews from Sen. John McCain's Potomac Primary celebration. I knew about Reuters' remote editing system (though I've never seen it in action), but J. Scott Applewhite's statement shocked me: TWO MINUTES from appearance to being on the Associated Press' wire ... and that's working by himself.

Preparation is everything, even now.