Last week I went to the opening of the new shows at the ICP museum but as always with openings it was difficult to take in the work properly, so today I went back to check them out, specifically the Susan Meiselas retrospective. I call it that because there is work from the most famous projects of her almost 40 year career on the walls and the accompanying catalogue is a weighty tome featuring beautifully reproduced photographs, essays and interviews, pages from her published books and all manner of notes and clippings which cover a lot of the work she has done so far.
This isn’t the 720P of the Nikon D90, which uses simple motion JPG as its codec . This is 1080 30i using the latest H264 video codec at a data rate of over 47 megabits / second. If these number are greek to you – relax. They won’t be after a while, because high quality video is coming to a DSLR near you a hell of a lot faster than you ever thought it would. (Scoffers – you can now eat your hats. Bon appetit!)
The bottom line on this is that at least as far as the specs go, image quality is full HD, 1920 X 1080 interlaced, at 30 frames per second. The recording data rate is faster than on some pro video cameras. The depth of field is that of a 35mm full-frame camera, not one with a sensor 5X to 9X smaller.
Bigfoot just updated his store with new original artwork (to hopefully appease everyone that kept asking about original work available!) in addition to the skateboard decks, prints, shirts
And, the more I think about it the less dominant I feel video will be online because it’s just too slow when it comes to communication. If you’re offering the reader a headline with a lead photo and a story along with a video clip, audio clip maybe and picture slide show. The most hits will go to the headline and lead image and everything else follows depending on the time and interest of the viewer (headline writing is an underrated skill in the media world).
The guy on the left didn’t get the memo about the difference between throwing the horns, and the sign for “I love you.” Apparently he also didn’t get the memo about not wearing flowing, pirate-style shirts, or his mom’s jeans when trying to look evil.
In December, Nikon will ship an updated version of its 50mm f/1.4. The new lens, called the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G, features improved optical performance, a nine-blade aperture mechanism, 58mm filter size and Silent Wave focus. It has an estimated selling price of US$439.95 in the U.S, including the HB-47 Bayonet Lens Hood.
This introduction, however, stands alone, and Leica’s making some pretty remarkably bold statements about its new S-system. The first device to take advantage is the 37-frickin’-megapixel S2, which sits between Canon’s EOS 5D and EOS 1Ds MkIII in terms of body size. The company designed the camera to provide “the quality of medium format and the handling and flexibility of 35mm,” and the outfit also has nine S-system lenses on tap. As for expectations? Leica says it’ll perform “twice as fast as Hasselblad H-series cameras,” and if that wasn’t straight-up enough, the firm’s David Bell proclaimed that “[Leica] thinks it has the best professional camera system in the world with this.”
When will we band together and demand to be compensated for the last 15 years of the digital revolution? Maybe it will have to wait for the Mark X’s. In the meantime I’ll sit back and watch as the industry continues to make its largest profit directly from the photographer himself, as we sink deeper into debt, in the name of progress
1. The 5D MKII camera produces the best stills in low light that I’ve ever seen – what you can see with you eye in the worst light (such as sodium-vapor street lights at 3 a.m. in Brooklyn) – this camera can capture it with ease.
2. It produces the best video in low light that I’ve ever seen – at 1080p. A top commercial film editor who who regularly edits RED camera footage – and has seen the raw footage from the 5D MKII – says the 5D MKII is “far superior to the RED camera” in terms of low light performance…
They steal, they hit, they kill dogs. And for New Year, they decorate the holiday tree in the backyard with the skeleton of a Russian soldier.
After some 14 years of war, terror and lawlessness, the children of Chechnya have been damaged in ways outsiders can barely fathom. Even now, with the war part of the war essentially over, Chechnya remains a place of hidden horrors, where life is fragile and exceedingly cheap.
We may soon have to rename Bigfoot “Bigbelly.” Researchers warn that the elusive backwoods creatures are hooked on junk food and have become dangerously overweight!
Jean Francois does not believe photojournalism is dying or in turmoil. Instead, he believes that magazines and other media outlets have lost their way.
“They like to print Britney Spears. Angelina Jolie has twins isn’t that amazing news, oh my god. Michael Phelps wow what a star, I don’t give a s***,” is how he put it.
Now to all aspiring photographers, high school students with cameras, former and current chronicle staffers with cameras and other people just amused by me who read this blog. I will tell you the secret to my rise from lowly chrony photog to mediocre editor and photographer at a bi-weekly paper.
These photos were all taken within the past six months – some taken from the borders, peering in, others provided by North Korea itself, and several generously shared by freelance photographer Eric Lafforgue, who recently spent some time inside the country
The employee told Tech Digest that Canon have the technology to “blow the competition away” in terms of image sensors, but are instead being asked to focus on headline figures like the number of megapixels a camera has. When asked for his opinion on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which we covered this morning, the employee said:
“I am hugely disappointed because once again Canon engineers are dictated by their marketing department and had to keep up with the megapixel race. They have the technology to blow the competition away by adapting the new 50D sensor tech in a full frame format and just easing off a little on the megapixels. Although no formal testing has been done on the new model yet, judging by the spec and technology used, it just seems to be as good or as bad as the competition – not beating them by a mile (which we used to).”
But what if the biggest games of now fell into the hands of a 2600-era artist? We’d have Atari Modern Classics, a vintage look at our new favorites through the pixelated beer goggles of an era where simplicity was king.
Canon also announced today a new prime wide angle lens. The EF 24mm f/1.4L II is meant to provide better sharpness and weather sealing than its predecessor
