What a year 2009 Was… I’ve been looking through my Flickr stream and pulled out some highlights. Apologies, as the page may take a while to load, but pictures seem to express the year better than any words I could write. Towards the end of 2008 I was at a dinner with Caalie and the Scobles. There were quite a few faces at that meal that ended up playing different roles through out 2009 – you can see Neville Hobson and Chris Heuer as well as Robert Scoble here.
Canon sponsored this week’s Tuttle Club, so not only did I catch up with Tuttle folk in London, I got a chance to see some of the kit from the Canon Pro Solutions Show in more detail. The video here was shot at Tuttle, with special thanks to Brian Condon for playing camera man and operating the Canon SX200is this was shot with. By the way, this is possibly one of the last shots of me with the Movember Mo. click HD or watch on the S90 Video on Vimeo to see a higher quality version. I’m even speaking in Web 2.0 now – “favourite-liked” indeed:
Sometimes people call it Bullet-time, but more properly it is called time-slice – freezing a moment in time, but from multiple views – an effect made most famous by the Matrix series of films.
The team behind the effect
I met the Time-Slice Films team at the Canon Pro Solutions Exhibition, and recorded this intverview with Tim Macmillan. The company was established back in 1994 by Tim, who originated the effect in his days at Bath Academy of Art, using film-based cameras and manual compositing. A far cry from today’s rig, here’s the interview:
I spent a good chunk of today in the company of Canon and many of the businesses in what has become a large and successful eco-system around their photography and video products. They took over the business design centre for two days, filling the exhibition space with dozens of exhibitors, as well as their own stands, and a steady stream of seminars in the rooms upstairs.
I’ll blog on some of the specific products over the next week or two, but first a few highlights:
Good news for Canon 5D Mark IIusers in Europe – it sounds like we can expect a firmware update in the new year to give us 24p & 25p frame rates. If that means something to you, you’re probably dancing in your seat. If it doesn’t, just take it that it is good news and will be something to look forward to early in 2010. Continue Reading…
We all need things to aspire to. There is no person that is perfect. There is no place that is perfect. We stand astride the great river of life, caught between two banks. We can not choose where the tide takes us, but we can paddle in the right direction, for all that we are worth. We do not know where that might take us, or the difference it will make, but we can, at the very least, try.
John Wesley said this:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
It’s been a little while since I had a Canon 5D Mark II in my hands. I’m very grateful to the good folks at Canon and at 1000Heads for loaning me such a wonderful beast to shoot the digital mission out at South by South West. When a gadget is “shiny new” it is hard to give an objective view of it, actually that is true for as long as you own any gadget. If you paid good money for something, you are always going to want to tell yourself it was good, aren’t you?
Well, the 5DII went back to its true home quite a while ago and since then I’ve been shooting with a 1Ds, a 40D and an old 5D (mark I). Now seems like a good time to reflect back on having the 5D Mark II and what I remember of going Full Frame and Becoming a Videographer.
The odd thing that really sticks in my mind was the battery life – it was brilliant. I normally have 2 or 3 batteries when I cover a long event. For the trip I had just one. In over a week of using the 5D it only got charged every other day, as I dived into my hotel room to change into evening clothes, then unplugged shortly after as I headed out. It didn’t get charged over night, as I only had one adaptor. Despite all that, it never even got close to having a low battery. Stunning.
Low light performance. This gets talked about a lot, and I mentioned it in my posts at the time, but it is a fact: the 5d Mark II seems to create light where there was none. I’ve used dozens of cameras from different manufacturers. Never experienced anything like it. With my love of night time photography and shooting events, it is a killer feature.
The size – it is not a full body – I’m playing with a 1Ds right now, boy is it a monster (and I love it in its own sweet way), but the 5D is big enough to get you into the press enclosure without being laughed out, and compact enough that you don’t end up looking like rambo.
The full frame sensor made my 70-200 IS f/2.8 L series lens a joy to use – a perfect zoom range for what I do. The 24-105 f/4.0 L IS lens I had on loan was a great walkabout lens, and ideal for shooting video (the image stabilisation a big plus).
I was stopped several times each day by people enquiring after the camera, “is that a Canon 5D Mark II?” Who knew there were so many camera geeks in the world! When I was shooting in New York a photographer brushed Julia to one side and started to ask questions about the video and image quality. It wasn’t so much Benjamin with a 5D Mark II, as the 5D Mark II with Benjamin. Anyway, my ego survived, and I got some great photographs to show for it.
There was just one thing holding me back from rushing out and buying one, and that was the lack of manual control in video mode. That’s now fixed in the latest firmware. Oh dear!
I’m finding this post more difficult to write than normal, so I’ll try and keep it short – as short as it can be, given the issues involved.
This is me, camera in hand, with its little SXSW press tag on. Videographer – Photographer it says on it. It does make me scratch my head and set one eyebrow lower than the other, quizzically. I wouldn’t really describe myself as a journalist. Yes, I’ve been paid to write articles for a publications, and taken photos that have too, but I’ve spent my career at the other end of the process, ‘creating’ news. Either way, my perspective on the whole process has altered dramatically over the last year or so, and that change was crystalized this last week.
I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, an activist. However, I do care about the conditions we live under. There’s nothing especially noble about that, it just makes good logical sense. Living under oppressive conditions isn’t conducive to happiness.
Almost a year ago was the first WordCamp (there’s another one soon). It threw together a spectrum of people, from technical geeks to traditional newspaper editors. We discussed and argued about the differences between blogging and “the press” and how new technology is changing the process for everyone – a light bulb started to go on in my head. Then, a few months ago I sat and listened to Clay Shirky talking about the role of journalists in the local press holding local politicians to account. The light bulb went on a little brighter. Journalism, even just the act of recording things, creates accountability.
You might have heard about Peter Gabriel’s “witness” charity. Yes, that Peter Gabriel. “See it. Film it. Change it.” is the organisation’s slogan. It is an international human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy campaigns. You can listen to Peter Gabriel’s moving talk about his reasons for setting up Witness in this TED talk (warning: adult themes).
Earlier this year, a piece of legislation was passed in the UK, which makes it illegal to take a photograph of a police officer, military personnel or member of the intelligence services, which “may be of use for terrorism”. That’s a very vague definition, and open to interpretation by the police – who under Home Secretary guidelines can “restrict photography in public places”. The law is part of the Counter Terrorism Act. In these days of Google’s streetview, it is hard to see how this law really adds to our safety. What it does do, is to restrict our ability to be witnesses. That became all the more important in the last week. That light bulb I mentioned is now flashing, red.
Ian Tomlinson is now a name that should be familiar to you. He died during the G20 protests. The Guardian ran a piece on his death as did the BBC. The Guardian posted an update today, which mentions something called “Kettling” – something I’d not heard of it until the G20 protests. It is a strategy used by the police to contain the protesters, which consists of surrounding the crowd and then not letting anyone go. No arrests. Just detainment. But it wasn’t just protesters. A number of passers by were held, without any charges, and with no access to toilet facilities or water, for hours. Take a peek behind the media head-lines and read Roo’s account of what happened to him On the ground at the G20 protests. I met Roo at HomeCamp, trust me when I say he isn’t a trouble maker. You can read Steve Lawson’s account on his blog: G20 protests – a change is gonna come.
The fact is, everyone needs to be accountable. Us. The police. Our politicians. Photography and videography has an important part to play in that process. If your mobile phone has a camera or a video recorder, you can be a witness. If you do that in London right now, you could be detained or arrested. That’s not right. Local photographer Simon Taylor has lodged a petition on the Number 10 site. It has been mentioned in the British Journal of Photography and you can go directly to it here. As Roo says: This is why we need more photographers at public events.
lens I had on loan was a great walkabout lens, and ideal for shooting video (the image stabilisation a big plus).
