Philip Bloom is prolific. - "Sky"

Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

One of the things I appreciate the most about Philip Bloom is how prolific he is. Over the past couple years watching his work it is just amazing to think of the sheer quantity of pieces he has shared. The "People" series, the Skywalker Ranch piece, the Prague 1DMK4 piece and his new fascination with time lapse is just amazing to watch. I got to hand it to him, I really enjoy his work.

Surprised to see my footage on ABC News

Last fall I cut a promo video for "Neverland", an awesome local Michael Jackson Tribute band. They were just given a cease and desist letter from the Michael Jackson estate and they were told to not use the name anymore. Sucks for them.

It was a bit shocking to see that the Local ABC station totally used footage from the demo reel I cut for them on the news. Not only did I cut the piece but there was a fair amount of 5D footage that I shot in it as well.

By the way, they are changing their name to "Foreverland".

I'm an Aperture fan.

I've never been really into Aperture, Apples pro level photo library app. When Apple released their latest update this week however, I downloaded it and I've been playing with it. A producer I work with asked me today what it was all about and I said, "It's basically 'iPhoto Pro'". I know that's a GROSS generalization but thats the best I could come up with.

It made me realize that I REALLY don't know that much about it but I've been playing with the new Version 3 Trial Version and I'm starting to really appreciate it.

If you want to learn more about it check my friends site. Aperture Expert. Joseph Linaschke use to work at Apple and really knows this app backwards and forwards and if you follow him on the twitters you know, he's really happy with this upgrade. 

But as it turns out... I think I'm becoming a fan of the app. BTW, it allows me to make HD QT movies from the slide shows, and it has some pretty nice themes. It will also allow me to embed by HDSLR movies from my 5DM2 or 7D... 

You may want to try the Trial Version whiles available... I'm hooked.

B&W hiding bad white balance?... Yep

Be honest... have you ever "decided" to make something black and white because you screwed up the white balance? I did. I mean, it works and all, and I could sit around and justify it for days, but the color on this piece was REALLY off.

SF Supermeet - Canon Announcements

There are e ton of people reviewing the "Big Announcement" from Canon last night. So I think I'll throw my .02 cents in the ring.

Face it, everyone wants, AND ASSUMES, that Canon will be announcing a hybrid camera this year, maybe as soon as NAB, supposedly it was gonna be last night. What do we mean by a "hybrid"? What everyone wants is a proper video style camera but with a giant sensor like the 5D, or even a 1.6 crop sensor like the 7D.  

A "proper video camera" would solve the ergonomic problems of the DSLR bodies, it would have a useable audio sub-system, it would have a flip out screen that was viewable form multiple angles AND it would have a large sensor like the DSLRs and the Canon lens mount that would allow you access to the wonderful Canon Lens family. Thats what everyone wants. 

My guess... its not gonna happen.

What did they announce? 

A New Plug In

A really cool new FCP plug in. This plug in will allow you to bypass the entire transcode dance that we have all been doing with the MPEG Streamclip or Compressor. Here is how the plug in works. First you mount your CF card from the field. The you run Log and Transfer and pick the ProRes Coded you want to use, it only seems to work with ProRes as the output format. You can then name your "Reel" and add other metadata, Choose your in and out points just like you would expect to be able to do in Log and Transfer, choose the clips you actually WANT to transfer and let it rip.

There are two really cool added features. First, timecode. Well sort of, it will take the time of day from the camera body at the time that a clip was made and fake some timecode from that frame forward. So each clip has different code and no longer will ever clip start at 00:00:00:00. Pretty cool.

The other feature addd by the plug it is that all the metadata that the camera would have put into a RAW or JPEG file if you had snapped a photo at the time you started the clip (or maybe when you stopped the clip) will be embedded in the clip. If you don't know that metadata is in the .THM file that is already on your CF Card. If you change .THM to .jpg and open it in iPhoto or Aperture you can read that metadata now.

All in all, this plug in looks really cool. It will easily become the defacto workflow for HDSLR shooters (well the Canon ones at least).

A New CODEC

This had leaked, or was released, a few nights earlier. This can be read about anywhere but basically its a Long GOP MPEG-2 50 megabit codec. The dude from Canon showed some frame grabs and explained the difference between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 and why this is far superior and it looked great. The core problem was that it will not be in the DSLRs. When pushed on the subject in Q&A and asked would it be in a "firmware update" to the DSLRs all he said was, "well its not that easy, the codec that the DSLRs record to is baked into the hardware". Short answer, we're totally stuck with H264 for the time being with the hardware we currently have. Which makes sense.

A New Camera

Ah, now we talking. Is this the Hybrid we all want. Short answer? NOPE. It looked like an HVX-200. Had a fixed lens so you can't use the bad ass Canon lenses. I am pretty sure I heard it won't have the big sensors, and if it was they sure were vague about telling us. And basically they had nothing but a mockup under a plexiglass box. 

Bottom line... if you were waiting to go by your Zacuto or Redrock Micro support gear because you thought you were gonna get your new Hybrid Canon camera in the next couple months, forget it. Go buy your Tactical Shooter or Captain Stubling now. Well... that my opinion, I could be wrong.