3 minute video. Filmed in the Finch Arboretum on November 3, 2011.
The walking scenes turned out quite nice, I think. Filmed using a Lumix GH-2, Manfrotto tripod, 501 head, Tamron 4-12mm C-mount surveillance lens for wide angle shots, and a Sigma 28-70mm Minolta mount lens for all other shots. Music is from the Sony Content royalty free library.
Nikon and Sony DSLR Production May Be Delayed for Months Due to Thai Floods.
The factory that made 90% of Nikon SLR cameras is underwater, and the plant that makes Sony DSLRs is apparently surrounded by flood waters but not, itself, flooded. (Another report says the Sony plant is underwater.) The Canon inkjet printer factory is underwater. Saw a Getty Images photos showing the plant underwater.
How smartphones are changing digital photography: Digital Photography Review.
Smart phones are largely replacing the point and shoot low end cameras. Will they move further up the camera tree to higher end functionality? Probably. But in the mean time, a lot of smart phone customers are now looking at the higher end “bridge” cameras that include many manual overrides, long zoom lenses, and generally better photo and video capabilities.
Test of my stereo shot gun mic set up – handholding the shotgun mic array in my left hand and holding my Canon HV30 and Beachtek audio mixer in my right hand. Not ideal, but an amusing little test clip. These birds were about 30 feet away from me, with a several hundred foot cliff just beyond. Pointing the long shotguns in that direction picks up some background noise – just noise – that is the city, miles away, bouncing off the cliffs. There is also a good sized stream behind me – they call it a river – which creates some background noise too.
I’ll try to eventually get a photo of the shotgun array set up. It’s two AT835b, 18 inch long shotguns, mounted in the crossed XY configuration. The mount is made from some PVC plumbing hardware, a piece of wood, and a paint roller handle – super high tech, the latest bit of Hollywood gadgetry, for sure. Or may be not. But its cheap and it works!
As I have decided to pay much more attention to the sounds in my environment, today I took a pleasant hike along a meandering river – more of a big wide stream, really.
From a sound perspective it had great potential – burbling water, crickets, frogs, squirrels and chipmunks chirping, ducks and birds. Now that I pay attention to sound, I begin to hear interesting things everywhere.
But as my luck would have it, being a Sunday afternoon, I managed to time my hike in between several groups of screaming children. They had only one volume – FULL. A full quarter mile away and I could hear them fine with my own ears.
Twice I stopped to set up for sound recording – with a shotgun mic, a Canon HV30 camcorder, a Beachtek audio mixer, and an 18 inch shotgun mic. And twice I had to give up. If my ears could hear the screaming, imagine what that sounded like in a sensitive mic.
I learned something today – if trying to record natural environment sounds, I need to so so on weekday mornings, free of screaming kids. I had not planned today’s hike out very well, from an audio standpoint.
