4 posts tagged “drew keller”
Just when you thought HD cameras couldn’t get any smaller, 
Pure Digital, maker of the mega-popular Flip camcorders, is rolling out the the MinoHD. This is essentially the Flip Mino shooting 720p HD video. The Wall Street Journal’s Katie Boehret tested this insanely small profile camera and had generally high praise for this potential game-changer in the consumer HD camera market. You can see some of her test footage below.
This is not a camera that can be easily dismissed. The New York Times reported that the fastest growing company in Silicon Valley over the past few years was not Facebook, VMWare, or all-mighty Google. According to Deloitte, the professional services firm, it was none other than Pure Digital Technologies, maker of, you guessed it, the Flip video camera.
The appeal of the Flip has never been incredible optics or a robust feature set… no it is all about simplicity. When my daughter started shooting with flash-based cameras (she was 8) I marveled at the novelty. The rock-bottom price of these cameras put them in the range of an impulse buy at the electronics store. One of the potential challenges that Pure Digital may face is the price for this new camera. It jumps to $230 and puts it out of impulse range and more directly in competition with consumer cameras that have such novel options as an optical zoom, image stabilization and external mic jack.
But this is all about simplicity and you can be certain this camera is simple to operate.
Its internal 4GB of will hold up to an hour of video. I am not personally a big fan of the 720p format. It is a frame size that straddles the line between standard definition (480i) and HD (1080i). Both Sony and Cannon have adopted 1080 as the HD format for their cameras, while JVC and Panasonic have chosen 720. (Can you say VHS v. Betamax?)
Most new HD Televisions will handle either format quite nicely. The choice to work in 720 for the Flip Mino is logical. 1080 files are significantly larger and to get smooth recordings would require the ability to write a lot a data very quickly to the memory chip. Not only are you pushing fewer pixels around with the smaller 720 format, you are also pushing fewer 1’s and 0’s. You can record and retrieve files faster. Mixing your Mino footage with content from your Canon or Sony HD camera could be problematic as you will be mixing formats and most current edit packages don’t handle this problem very smoothly.
The new camera also will utilize new FlipShare software. This on-board software platform allows a user to plug the camcorder’s flip-out USB arm into any computer for easy drag-and-drop video organizing, editing and sharing. This has not always been true with past iterations of the software. Particularly when wrestling with a sometimes balky DivX codec.
FlipShare’s use of drag-and-drop video organizing resembles the way that Apple iTunes songs can be dragged into playlists. Users can manage their files, rename and copy through the intuitive interface. They have made following the usual paths of distribution quite easy (save to the computer, play full screen, share via e-mail, upload to YouTube, AOL or MySpace, or create a movie.) On the Mac side, it’s fully compatible with Apple’s video applications, including iMovie and iDVD.
While not quite perfect, and I usually hate to buy the first generation of any technology, I have a feeling I know which camera will be under the tree this Christmas.
With the rollout of the new MacBook comes the inevitable news that Firewire is dying. The machine is loaded with oodles of new features and many old favorites wrapped in a signature aluminum case. The drag coefficient for this new case must be significantly lower than the old plastic one, and that will be quite handy if I ever leave it on the roof of my car.
The development of this new machine does not herald any new or startling development in the Mac ecosystem, save one. There is no firewire port on the MacBook. And there is no way to add one. You can swap hard drives like you currently swap external drives, and the new track pad reflects the usability of the iPhone and Touch.
But losing the firewire port is a signal that consumers are not going to transfer their video tapes to their machines. No editing, no DVD, no looking back at your old movies when you make that video designed to embarrass your daughter on Prom night. (“Dad! You will NOT show me naked in the tub when I was 18 months old! You will NOT show me tap dancing at the talent show!”)
It is a sure sign that consumers are no longer buying tape-based cameras. Any trip to Circuit City will tell you that. Just try and find a tape-based camera on display. There might be one HDV… two DV. The rest are flash-based or hard drive.
That is fine going forward, but what about our legacy content? What do we do with that? And when the hard drive on our new camera gets full what do we do with the media? I hate tracking and searching file-based content. It is the definition of needle in the haystack. More likely, what happens when that hard drive fails?
I am still struggling with a closet full of legacy content; shelves full of magnetic tape slowly trying to reach a state of stasis. I have Hi8, DV, DVCam, Betamax, VHS, Beta, BetaCam, DigiBeta, DVCPro, D5 and HDCam waiting to get called back into action.
Apple’s decision just reaffirms what I have know all along. Those formats are not coming back into action. In 10 years you will have a very hard time finding a deck that will even play these formats. My kid’s birthdays, my family’s holidays, the business trips and vacations will all be inaccessible.
Truth be told, if you don’t edit your content right after you shoot it, odds are you will never get around to it. The industry knows most of this footage gets shot, viewed once and then forgotten.
Perhaps I need to send a thank-you to Steve Jobs for the wake-up call. This new computer tells me I had better start thinking about how I am going to get my stacks of tape transferred to something I can use. And I need to kiss my firewire dependence goodbye.
The line between still and video cameras continues to blur. True, that’s a painful pun, but there is no denying this trend is most evident in top-of-the-line still cameras. If we could look at the names on the waiting list for the Canon 5D Mark II professional S.L.R. I would wager most of them would belong to filmmakers, not still photographers.
This is because the high definition footage from the Canon is mind blowing. It is full motion, 30 frame-per-second, 1080p footage captured on an image sensor the size of a 35mm negative, instead of the video camera’s fingernail sized CCD. Not only is the capture system vastly superior with the S.L.R., but the glass in the lens means the image in the $2,700 camera rivals that of a $100,000 HD camera used for features. Using Canon’s interchangeable lenses means the filmmaker is no longer limited to a zoom lens full of compromises permanently mounted to the camera. You now have a prime lens system with out Redrock. And you have a digital cinema solution without the hype of Red and their proprietary file format hassles. You have a filmmakers Nirvana. You also have a very long waiting list.
There have even been a few rumors of late that Red pulled their plans to release Scarlet because the 5DM2 chopped the legs out from under it. Honestly, that would not surprise me.
Sure there are compromises. There is no audio to speak of so you are back to double system sound. But heck, I could figure that out using an iPhone or a DVcam.
The Web was buzzing a couple of weeks ago when photographer Vincent LaForet spent a weekend making a short, wordless movie using an early Canon 5D Mark II. He hired a couple of models, grabbed a crew, rented a helicopter, pulled together $5,000, and made an absolutely astonishing-looking piece of video. It was hard to find the thing online—Vincent didn’t want to host it on his own site because of the massive bandwidth required to serve it. (Here’s his writeup, and here’s the “making of” video.)
Finally, David Pogue of the New York Times writes that, “the original video has finally found a place online, and you should have a look.” I could not agree more, you should have a look. And as Pogue writes, “Just keep telling yourself: ‘It was shot with a still camera. It was shot with a still camera….’”
It was a great day today. One I have looked forward to for the past two years. Graduation has meant a lot to me, not just for the degree, but for the opportunity to show my kids what it means to set a goal and work really hard for it, sticking to the task until you finish it. As dopey as it sounds, over the past few years whenever my energy would flag I would visualize myself in cap and gown getting my masters, with my kids looking on (I never went so far as to imagine them looking on approvingly, they are 9 and 11. That would be way too much to expect.) Today was the day I worked towards, the day I saw in my mind's eye when the going got tough. And it was worth it.
Granted, it was a little different than I imagined. I didn't plan on the toilet backing up this morning and having to unclog it before I could go. I didn't plan on the hideous traffic and parking at the U. And I didn't plan on my lovely wife getting so sick Monday night that we spent all day Tuesday in the hospital. We barely got her well enough to drag her to the ceremony (you may notice in the photo below I am holding her up. She was trashed.)
I also never expected to be given the honor to speak at commencement. It was humbling, really. I had worked on my speech for a few days, and even practiced it in front of a few understanding folks. But I really underestimated the size of the event. I figured only a few hundred at most would be there. It looked more like 2-3,000 people from the stage. I was so nervous I had a hard time keeping my place on the page. It was not as smooth, and my timing was off from my rehearsals, but I think I got my message across. At least I hope so. I am not sure why they chose me. Really, there are equally deserving members in my cohort. I chose not to tell any of them about me speaking because I was embarrassed that I was chosen and they were not. When the time came they were very supportive and even teased me a little that I had not said anything. The bottom line is that I would not have passed up the opportunity for anything.
I also love that my presence on stage with all the regalia that a post graduate degree brings embarrassed my kids. I love that they had that great mix of pride that their dad was at the podium, and humiliation that their dad was at the podium. I think they really understood that this day was important to me, and ultimately, to them. College is in their future... whether they like it or not. There are a few other photos in the collection. One of me speaking and one that typifies just how excited I was to greet the day. Life is good.
