As you can see the Canon 5D Mk11 is becoming the de-facto indie HD film like camera thanks in no small part to Philip Bloom DOP, with that in mind and the amount of switches, presets and menus the camera has to offer you need the “Handi 5Dmk2″ APP from the Apple store. I am in no doubt that a 7D version is on it’s way.

This is a great wee APP and well worth the £1.19, basically it’s a hand book in your iPhone, very handy when your memory fails you out on a job.

This is a cracking APP for the iPhone in fact you will never use any other storyboard program again after you use this iPhone version. It is called Hitchcock after the great man of film himself, the best part about this APP is the sheer flexibility and simple to use interface.

Lets start with the first page this is the miniature 16:9 storyboard…as you can see you can use the iPhone camera to populate the board or insert pictures stored in your photo library.

It gets a whole lot better look at the bottom left hand corner of the screen it’s called “Watch” by pressing this you are given a timed slide show of all your pictures…superb. Notice I said “timed” not only does it give you a running time but you can set the duration for each screen.

You also get dolly tracks that allow you to dolly into and out of the shot as shown above, you can also crab along the picture and you can even add people male and female. Better again is the ability to save your storyboard and send yourself, client, PA a PDF of your storyboard. You can add audio comments to each screen and notes.

Imagine flying around the world checking out locations for a new film and being able to “LIVE STORYBOARD” as you go along. Can I just add here “I GET NO PAYMENT” for informing you of this amazing APP and I payed my £11.99 like everyone else.

I have only scratched the surface of this brilliant iPhone APP…Hitchcock is what the iPhone was made for it’s a fantastic APP and only costs £11.99 a snip in my opinion.

Available from Apple APP store (iTunes).

iSlate is exactly as it says on the tin, it’s a slate or clapperboard, so what use can this be in the age of digital camcorders.

I have found this application very useful for identing my SDHC cards when filming with the Sony EX-3.

As you may know the Sony EX-3 takes 2 SxS cards or 2 MxM (SDHC) card holders.

To give me an archive and save a pot of money I use the 16Gb Transend Class 6 SDHC cards.

The main problem with these cards is you have no way of writing on them so you have to ident them electronically, this is where iSlate comes in.

As you can see from the picture on the right PROD is the production name, DIR in this case is used for the type of camera, recording format in this case 720p and the dedicated card number and the day it was shot.

The timecode is free run as we call it, so you are always given the present time of day. I don’t use it as a slate but more a card index. The other feature it has, is the ability to resize the wording to fit on the one line, this is a great feature, how many times have you bought a phone, start to type in someones details for the line of text to run out leaving you one letter short.

This APP is Highly Recommended by HD Warrior for video use.