Been getting excited about using the Canon 5D Mark II as a professional quality video camera. Need some add-ons as there is no electronic viewfinder and the screen is way too washed out and hard to see as well as the fact that it won’t focus while shooting, so you have to focus manually. But sites like Cinema5D are so inspiring as are the videos being shot professionally now. And some great guides
The first thing you should do when switching your DSLR from still to movie mode is to make sure the Sharpness setting is turned all the way down. This won’t come close to eliminating aliasing under all conditions but it should reduce your camera’s problems. You need to reduce sharpness because to get from 21MP to the 5MP of an HD image, the camera skips scan lines, so you get artifacts when the camera sharpens. Its a good reason to use the custom settings of your Canon
Because large CMOS sensors scan top-to-bottom instead of all at once like CCDs, fast movements and pans can cause the image to appear to wobble, so pan slowly.
DSLR’s operating temperature rises to the point where the camera either shuts down automatically, or the image becomes noisier due to the excess heat. This generally happens after several minutes of continuous shooting; so shoot only a bit at a time.
Get a DSLR rig which is bulky but makes the camera stable which is good and really necessary for video because you can’t just snug it up to your eye and shoot like with stills. Redrock Micro,Zacuto, Cavision, and Cinevate make the high end ones that can cost more than the camera!
The two places online you need to go. According to Rennie, Scancafe.com does a high resolution scanning job and then you can pick your photos that you want. Perfect for all my photos that I never have time to scan.
And you can use smugmug.com to load your high resolution photos and share it.
If you don’t want to get locked into AT&T (which I don’t!!!!), then you can buy an unlocked phone from Canada, use it overseas (yeah!) and also go with T-Mobile or whoever. It actually makes some sense given the lockin that these guys have. I lost $1,000 alone this month just on a month of data roaming with AT&T, so it can payback very fast.
Tomorrow Canada will start selling unlocked phones according to CNBC, it will be pretty reasonable. About $637 plus tax vs. $200 for a locked phone with a two year commitment…
CBC News, that’ll be $659 for 16GB, $779 for 32GB, and $549 for the 8GB iPhone 3GS. All Canadian dollars, of course — the US conversion would be about $637 / $753 / $530, respectively.
Thanks to Scott, Gilbert and kai, some great wines
1. Brancaia. A Swiss family looks for a villa and starts a winery. The il blu is a super Tuscan. 2007. Rated 96 by WS. Also got a 2003 which is supposed to be a great year.
2. Pietopan Soave Classico. 2009. Varietals vie nervier heard of. Gorgonego, Trebbiano di Soave)
3 vermentinos. Well we haven’t had a bad one yet.
4. Siro pacente. Brunello from montecito recommendation. 2006
If the sync to your ipad doesn’t complete properly then the ipod music app can come up and then disappear.
Very distressing. Google search shows two simple fixes. Add or delete a song on iTunes and resync. This resets the music database. See http://www.ipadforums.net/ipad-help/5770-ipads-music-app-crashes.html
But simplest is to start the video app. This resets the sync information enough for the music app to run.
I was just telling someone that raising kids doesn’t make u an expert. After all it is not like people come with an instruction manual. Eve tells me I’m wrong turns out that dailyom.com has one
Few minutes in Portland airport but using the iPad as a mobile road warrior. The cant live without apps are
Gpsdrive HD. A gps with good navigation for $3. A little more a month if u ned voice. Works decently juts gets confused usually at end where it sometimes gets the location of the street address wrong and sometimes can’t find am address from contacts that google maps can
Goodreader because it can sync with google soca.
Iannotate. Haven’t tried yet but good reviews for signing documents with your finger. Good for legal SPCA
Todo. Invaluable for all those lists.
Expensify. Terrific for doing expense reports.
Then the fun ones
Netflix. Awesome for movies
ITivo to get TiVoed stuff fro, TiVo to mac to iPad automatically for free
Well this 18Mpixel sensor baby (aka the Canon 550D) is now available as a body only. It’s bigger brother, the Canon 50D is about to updated to the Canon 60D, so you might want to wait until August when it ships. The rumor is that it will also get an 18MP and be much faster at burst at 6.5fps. But also more expensive too. It is supposed to be smaller than the 50D
So at $800, the Canon T2I (aka 550D outside of the US) isn’t a bad deal and is way lighter than a Canon 5D Mark II that I shlep around. Everyone has it, but B&H has always been good to me.
And if you want it, you also need at least a Class 6 SDHC card, with 8-16GB recommended. Usually, I do the 16GB card as that leaves plenty of room, but I get two so you only lose half your stuff. Folks are recommending the Sandisk Ultra II, but these are Class 4 cards. BTW, isn’t the class thing confusing. The class refers to maximum write speed, so Class 6 is 6MBps. Duuuh. The camera maximum write is 5MBps which is why the Class 4 work most of the time and are literally half the cost. So DPReview recommend a 16GB Class 6. The Sandisk (which I use as they have been reliable as have the Transcend ones I’ve used) model is called the SanDisk Extreme which you can get for a reasonable $55 for a 16GB card.
I got comcast phone service and suddenly I’m getting all kinds of junk calls and random mail to my home address. Think they must sell the names. Working on the do not call registry and unlisting the number now. So beware!
