Micah Walter

I’m really hot to get a small HD camcorder these days. I t would be great for lots of reasons, but mainly I am interested in using it for collecting multimedia content. The new HD camcorders are really amazing. For around $1000 you can get one that is fairly decent. Of course, I am pretty new to HD, and really, pretty new to video and audio, so I have been doing my homework.

I found a few cameras that I thought I would mention here. Three of them are pretty good candidates and the last one is out of my price range, and probably just too large for what I want to use it for. The Canon HV-20 is the cheapest at about $1000. It has a single sensor, with a color filter array (just like your digital SLR) but it can shoot in 24P mode, which makes it very attractive. It is also really really small. I have seen some sample footage from this camera, and it looks pretty nice for what you are paying. All I would need to add would be an XLR mic adapter, and a nice set of mics to get myself up and running. Of course there have been some complaints about the low-light performance, but that seems to be the big issue with all of the smaller consumer grade cams.

Another option I am seriously considering is the JVC HD Everio. This camera is also exceptionally small, and I like the black finish. The main difference with this camera is that it doesn’t use tapes. It has an internal 60 gig hard drive that stores your footage. To make this feasible, JVC decided to go with an MPEG-2 format (I guess their version is also somewhat new and better). With this format you can store up to 5 hours of full resolution footage. I would much rather use this type of system and burn my raw footage to DVD, than deal with all those little miniDV tapes. I have heard lots of mixed reviews about the HDD option, but it makes sense to me. I haven’t seen any sample footage yet, but I have heard that even with the MPEG compression, it is still very nice. The JVC goes for about $1500 and would also need an XLR and mic setup to make it sing.

The next step up in the price range is the Sony A1U. This thing was recommended to me by a couple of people over at MediaStorm.org. The A1U runs for about $2100, but comes complete with a mic and XLR inputs. It looks very similar to the old PD-150 that was really popular. The main drawback to the A1U (and the JVC) is that they don’t appear to have a 24P mode. I’m not sure how big of deal this is. I saw some sample comparisons from the Canon HV-20 showing off the difference between normal mode and 24P mode. There is certainly a difference, but I wonder how hard it would be to achieve the “film look” with filtering in post-production.

Right now I am pretty focused on the JVC. It really looks like a “Micah” sort of camera. The fourth camera in my list here is way out of my price range. It’s the Sony HVR-V1U. This thing was recently featured in a very interesting article by David Leeson from the Dallas Morning News. He has been using the camera to make frame grabs for still images. his article, which you can read here, is very enlightening, and I have to agree that we will be seeing more and more frame grabbing going on in the years to come.

The HVR-V1U looks incredible, but definitely too expensive and a little too large for my purposes at the moment. Has anyone out there had any experience with any of these cameras?

Click the pic to be taken to my DRR site!

I have been going back and forth between Digital Railroad and PhotoShelter for as long as I can remember now. They both have very similar features and are pretty competitive in price. I had really liked PhotoShelter’s method of creating a seamless integration with your own website. You can basically customize it to look however you like. On the other hand, the simplicity and consistency of a DRR archive is also something to be desired. Photo buyers who have used the system before will easily be able to navigate through my archive and make requests.

PhotoShelter has a really nice integration with FotoQuote so that buyers can automatically make Rights Managed purchases, or be begin a negotiation process. But, DRR has a similar set-up, only requiring a small amount of interaction between client and photographer.

In the end, I spent countless hours trying to figure out how to fully integrate PhotoShelter with my website. I was nearly there, but there were so many minute hiccups, that I decided to call it quits. So, now, I will be directing everyone to my Digital Railroad archive. Now that DRR has their “Marketplace” open for business I think the two are so closely matched that it almost doesn’t matter which you go for. And, since I have so many images already in my DRR archive, and I know the system pretty well, I am going to focus my attention on DRR.

I may keep a free account on PS, or at least drop it down to the least expensive version, but I have a feeling I won’t be using PS much anymore. Some people have mentioned the idea of maintaining archives on both. That makes perfect sense as it gives your photos potentially a broader reach, but it is just too much work at this point. Maybe, one day, when I have my Personal Executive Assistant working for me from India, I will have him or her replicate my archive to PS on a daily basis.

For now, please enjoy searching through my DRR archive. You can enter a keyword in the footer of any page on this site, or click the Image Archive ink in the menu bar to be taken directly to my archive on DRR. It is not necessary to sign up until you want to buy something or create a light-box, so enjoy the pics, and let me know what you think of the two companies.

Thanks to Brightcove.com I am launching a Multimedia section for this website. For now, there will be just a few short videos in there, but soon I will be adding more and more. Each video will wind up on the main Multimedia page, and there will be a special page for each video featuring selected still images and text. Enjoy!

Oh, and here is a short (very short) time lapse movie I made a while back. This was shot down on our beach in Dominica.

I’ve been playing with Brightcove for the past 24 hours and all I can say is, Brightcove rocks! Once I figured out how to set up a Pro account, which by the way, is mostly free, I found a whole new world of customizations available and possibilities.

This is really a great web service for multimedia people. You can essentially set up your own Internet TV station in a matter of minutes. Below is the same slideshow from yesterday’s post. This time I used the ApertureToFilemaker Pro plugin to quickly export a small set of images to Final Cut Pro. I haven’t built in any Ken Burns yet, as that takes a little more know how in Final Cut, but mostly I was just interested in creating a 16:9 format player in Brightcove and getting some content up and running.

I am thinking about doing a series of posts having to do with multimedia photojournalism. There is a possible series of projects to do here in Dominica, so if that all goes well, I will be sure to blog all about it. Once the content begins to accumulate I will likely create a special page just for multimedia content.

I’m really into multimedia stuff these days. Things got a little exciting this week as SoundSlides Plus was announced. SoundSlides, which is a great, cheap, and easy tool for creating multimedia content quickly, has expanded their product line with a more advanced model. The new Plus version will add features such as Ken Burns effects, and the ability to control transitions for each frame. The Plus version is currently available for download a s a free beta from the SoundSlides website.

I’ve also been checking out the website Brightcove. Brightcove is similar to YouTube.com in that you can upload and share video content. They convert your video into a Flash player, which you can then embed on any web-page, or blog. But Brightcove differs as they allow you to make money off your content by allowing you to charge for it. I have just started to explore Brightcove, so maybe in a few days I’ll write up my impression, but so far I really like the look and feel of the Flash player.

The movie above is a quick sample I uploaded to Brightcove to try it out. This movie was quickly made in iPhoto. iPhoto has a pretty decent slideshow feature that allows you to add audio and Ken Burns transitions. You can’t control the timing, but its really easy to produce a quality slideshow in just a few minutes. You can even pull photos from your Aperture Library. “Vahrey nyzeeee.”

I thought I would start a new section called Objects of Desire. I know, I know, it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. But, I will be the first to admit, I am a bit of a gear-head. I mean, I really love things like cameras, computers, and industrial farm equipment. There is a certain something about a piece of fine machinery that lets one into the mind if its designer. It is sort of the same as a painting or a photograph to me. You get to see the work of humans, creating from scratch. Good stuff!

But, enough about all that. Today’s object of desire is of course the brand new Canon 1D Mark III. I will leave out all the specs as I am sure, if you are at all interested in this thing you have read the hundreds of reviews around the net.

I’m not sure I even really want one, now that I am so obsessed with my true object of desire, the Leica M8, but it does look like the perfect camera. Maybe too perfect. If they could fit all this camera in to the body of the 5D, add a full-frame viewer and about 10 more megapixels, we would really have something! Next year I guess…

The Mark III is now shipping, so plunk down your $4k, and get in line!

Click the picture for a larger version.

I have a new project in the works. I will be redesigning the website of our local watering hole, The Tomato Café. Now that they have added a patio with tables I am planning to make some images of the café and its regular patrons, and then eventually completly revamp the website.

Since Kendra and I have been living here, the Tomato has become a mainstay. In fact, as it has free wireless internet, and ice cold Kabuli beer on tap, I can frequently be spotted on the balcony pecking away at my MacBook Pro.

For more info on the café, check out their current site at The Tomato Café and stay tuned for the new site in the weeks to come.

As you can probably tell, I have been busy working on other things. Lately, my time has been primarily occupied with writing for the various websites I write for. I’ve also recently found myself making my way back to a bit of computer programming, which has been fun and interesting so far.

However, over the past couple of days, I have been working on my Aperture library and I began to notice that I haven’t shot much of anything for over a month now. This bothers me. As I look over my archive I can see that normally I shoot quite a bit more on a weekly basis, even if I don’t have assignments. I used to continually shoot my life, my friends and whatever I thought might be fun to photograph. Why have I stopped? What is even stranger is that last April, I also didn’t shoot a frame!

Well, I can tell you, my camera has been sitting idle in its bag, stored away since I came back to Dominica. I have been trying so hard to spend all of my time on my computer getting “things” done. I can also tell you that this down time is coming to an abrupt end. I have spent the past couple of days pouring over the internet, looking at images, and reading about cameras. I have to say I am now officially obsessed with the new Leica M8 and am currently saving my pennies. Hopefully sometime before the end of the year I will be able to afford one, and maybe by this time next year I will even have a lens to go with it!

Seriously though, the camera looks wonderful, despite all of the sharp criticism it has been getting. There is a great thread going on over at Lightstalkers here, and my hope is that by the time I can afford one, Aperture will support its DNG format!

This brings me to my next point–Apple. This year I am doing something I have never done before. I am heading back to San Francisco to attend the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). It should be very enlightening, and I hope will greatly improve my skills as a part-time programmer. Skills that will surely aid in my attaining a new M8!

So, I will be working hard to get ready for WWDC in the next couple of weeks and I will try and keep you all posted, because according to my stats, there are at least 4 or 5 of you out there who read this blog.

But, more importantly, I am planning to try and post more of my day to day pictures here. Sometimes with a caption, sometimes with some text, sometimes all alone, regardless–I will do my best to keep the dust from settling on my 20D.

Below is a set of pictures I recently converted to black and white. If you click the pic, you will see a larger version and be able to view the rest of the set. Enjoy…..
-m

Click the picture for the entire set.