My thanks to Canon UK for the loan of the C100

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Just before Christmas we lost Jacobs photographic store, before that Photo Factory and now Jessops, Glasgow city centre has only one small camera store left, Merchant City Cameras.

Merchant City Cameras are a family run business based in Parnie Street, Merchant City, Glasgow and is owned by Jim Dobbie, his daughter Kimberley helps dad run the shop. I bought a new Sigma lens from them last year, Jim and Kimberley are very pleasant to deal with.

The store is a combination of the new and second hand with a great selection of second hand lenses in the window, they are also one of Scotland’s premiere telescope suppliers. It’s not a Jessops by any stretch of the imagination but a more personnel, informative experience something lacking in the likes of Curry’s who also sell cameras but don’t have people who are passionate about the product.

Jim still thinks he is dreaming, with Jessops closed it has taken Merchant City Cameras to the number one pole position and this week has been one of the busiest weeks in January he can remember.

Just outside the City Centre is Calumet located at Oakbank Ind. Estate just off Garscube Road, a major UK chain of photographic retailers selling everything from cameras to video and lighting. Calumet was once the only place for the professional photographer but has expanded it’s appeal to a wider audience.

Calumet has a significant stock of both Nikon and Canon camera body’s, lenses and has a rental department. It’s the only place in Glasgow to stock some of the dearer professional photographic lenses that you can try before you buy.

Jessops was good not only for it’s locality but were also happy to let you try lenses before you bought them.

This is me taking a picture outside the shop about two years ago and an assistant keeping an eye on me, it’s a sad state of affairs when you see the shop today, in fact I bought one of my all time favourite cameras from Jessops a Nikon D3.

Jessops, Suchiehall street also sported a pro department down stairs where a great range of both new and secondhand equipment was for sale, they also had people who knew the cameras and were enthusiastic about the product, sadly Jessops hierarchy decided to close the pro department a few years ago and instantly killed off many a seasoned photographer in doing so.

Glasgow has not woken up to this yet but it’s shameful that such an important resource has gone from our high street, photographers all over the city will not realise it’s effects till they need to try out a new camera or lens.

Jessops did not help themselves with over inflated pricing and getting rid of their pro department, the shop badly needed refurbished but that’s all history now  the web sites like Warehouse Express can only benefit from a third major high street photographic chain going under but it’s one less place to visit and one less reason for heading up that part of town.

The internet could be to blame but Jessops had a fairly decent web presence themselves but items were either not in stock or took too long to deliver not to mention pricing, when I questioned their policy of web versus store price in other words a few items were cheaper on their web site they just shrugged their shoulders.

We are now down to two retail outlets Merchant City Cameras and Calumet, lets hope we all take stock of Jessops and support your local store and spend less time trawling for the cheapest on line camera deal !

Merchant City Cameras…

http://www.merchantcitycameras.com

Calumet Glasgow…

http://www.calumetphoto.co.uk/eng/storeLocator/redirect.cfm?sectionID=b2c/storeLocator/storeDetails.cfm&storeId=31&locationId=9147&var=d&ckey=UK

 

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Simon “Thanks for raising the topic. Its something we should all be talking about far more often.

With each new technology, we seem to be going to media with shorter and shorter storage lives. From the age of film and vinyl records which had a very long life; to tape with still a fair life; to DVD/CD/BluRay with about 17 years; to hard disks with about 4 years.
I certainly remember when I learnt about the likely lifespans of hard drives, and then was a bit shocked to learn that they can have a much shorter life when they aren’t used regularly. Had been archiving everything to hard drives and placing them in storage at that stage.

Learning that and not having tapes to go back to, started me thinking long and hard about how to store all our assets for the long term.
Am testing LTO tape – long life but clunky process. In the meantime am working on the basis that we should have three copies of everything and at least one copy kept off site. Like Petter, a Mini and RAIDs works well as part of this.
None of this is quick and its proving reasonably expensive. Am looking forward to a better long term approach to archiving media assets.
Certainly something to talk more about.

HDW : Archive was easy 25 years ago, we had tape and although not without it’s problems it worked very well for archive purposes. Today most of us are stuck with 2-3 copies of important video files on various hard drives. Hard drives are the most common, cheap archiving for todays digital age, Solid State or SSD drives are  far too dear and beyond 750GB cost a small fortune.

The boys in Japan have never quite conceived the problem with archive and digital media, Sony’s SxS and Panasonic’s P2 cards are a prime example, useless for archive due to cost.

Sony have unveiled their next-generation Optical Disc Archive storage system. The system, which provides guaranteed inter-generational compatibility and ultra-reliable long-term storage, is at the heart of Sony’s vision to create a complete archiving solution for broadcasters, motion picture companies and production houses.

Optical Disc Media
A variety of high capacity media cartridges are available for the Optical Disc Archive system, from 300GB to 1.5TB. Each cartridge allows random file access using the Universal Disc Format (UDF) system. Optimised for ultra-long term media archiving, the cartridges have an estimated 50 year lifespan and are built to withstand changes in temperature and humidity, and resist dust and water droplets. Each cartridge has a built-in RFID to check the contents of the media with mobile devices for efficient asset management, such as cartridge loaning, stocktaking and shelf archiving.

This system does not seem to be available yet but by all accounts it will be expensive, but how do you equate Expense v Lost Work

Duncan’s solution “Personally, I keep all my rushes on pairs on USB2 1.5TB hard drives, really cheap and easy to do.

The original footage might have been rewrapped to QT or optimised to ProRes, but I will only then archive the assets that I created (animations, AIFFs etc.) and the masters involved. And again this gets archived to pairs of USB drives.

If I need to recreate and edit I still have the camera originals, and all the assets it’s simply a case of reinstating them from the archive.

On a daily basic, I incrementally backup up my some of my scratch drive, a 2TB internal RAID to a 1.5TB external at the end of each session. Again very easy.My aim to minimise hard drive failure will be to replace the internal RAID every year, only £200 at the most. I might well use 2x 3TB drive once their a sensible price/GB and more reliable.

Of course, I’m not working with 200 hours of uncompressed HD over 5 simultaneous projects, But I don’t think you are either?”

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Today while editing I heard the noise that puts the fear of God into any editor…the click…click…click of a hard drive failing.

It’s only through experience and your first failed hard drive that you get to recognise the deathly clicking noise telling you that failure is only minutes away.

Some sage advice, take a screenshot every month, especially if you are using a few hard drives, the shot above is from my iMac which has two internal drives and one external drive so screenshots every month for this computer is a tad excessive.

My edit suite has twenty five hard drives, twenty one of them running from five Sonnet fusion towers so you can see the sence in taking a screen shot of this amount of drives.

The screenshot will allow you to determine which drive is lost as it will disappear once you locate it and remove it, more important if you have a few drives.

My important files are QT (Quick Time) files so everything that starts with QT is a complete program. All .mov or .mp4 are potentially important, the .mov files especially, clients footage must be stored onto two separate drives just in case the worst case senario happens.

We become all to set in our comfort zones and forget that one day a drive will fail, God forbid it’s a critical drive or one with a major edit on it, thats why it’s important while filming a job to keep all the rushes till the job has been Quick Timed onto two separate hard drives.

I am going to spend a day this week siphoning off all my .mov files to a self contained hard drive as a further back up measure, you can never be too careful with important QT footage and remember you can always update and edit with a QT master file, granted you don’t have the original footage but most of my clients want an update using fresh footage so it shouldn’t cause a problem.

A more simpler way to store files is via a cloud service, today I joined Bitcasa a service that is as easy as drag and drop with the advantage of 10GB of free space, mind you thats only JPEGs etc. video files are too big for cloud usage.

Welcome to the Bitcasa Infinite Drive from Bitcasa on Vimeo.

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Flash Band Correction appears in both JVC camcorders the HM600 and 650, it’s an attempt to stop waisted unsightly frames on your video production especially useful for weddings where the constant barrage of flashguns can become off putting.

You need to go into the cameras menu system under “Camera Function” and you will see “Flash Band Correction” open this up to reveal on and off, it’s off in the default setting. Note : You will not be able to use this function till you switch off the cameras shutter.

Once you have switched it on you will get an ikon showing you that Flash Band Correction (FBC) is on but be careful especially at weddings every time you power down the camera the FBC reverts to the off position.

Here are some live samples of flash banding as you can see it corrupts 2 frames which is a nuisance but not the end of the world.

As you can see the frame is now over one frame and is mainly white (flash) so it does compensate for the loss of 2 frames which is far more pleasing to the eye. The JVC GY-HM600/650 is one of the few camcorders to date with live flash band compensation built in saving you a ton of time correcting it in post.

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JVC “People who have an interest in capturing high-quality video of fast-moving action will appreciate the uncommon capabilities of the “Procision” GC-PX100. At its core is Full HD 1920×1080/50P at 36Mbps for extremely high quality images. To slow down fast movements for analysis or art, high bit rate progressive recording enables Full HD slow-motion video playback. And the full range of recording speeds, from high-speed to time-lapse, are flexibly controllable by a single dial next to the lens. The bright and fast F1.2 lens, 1/2.3” 12.8Megapixel Back-Illuminated CMOS Sensor, and Optical Image Stabiliser provide an ideal inlet for high quality images. And with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, playback images can be beamed to and viewed on smart devices. Used together with special apps developed exclusively for this camera and downloadable free of charge from Apple App Store or Google Play Market, this camera’s high-performance functions and Wi-Fi capability take on special meaning as the ultimate “assistant coach” as it now will enable coaches to watch the video stream on a tablet while scribbling annotations onto the playback image, and more. Those looking for ways to improve their performance or prove their talent through visual power will find JVC’s GC-PX100 a perfect qualifier for their needs.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and for video enthusiasts, JVC’s GC-PX100 will be worth much more than that with its uncanny ability to capture precise moments even with fast-moving action. Content creators and sports coaches alike can take advantage of the GC-PX100’s unique capabilities, such as 36Mbps/50P high bit rate progressive recording which enables Full HD slow-motion video playback. Clear slow motion images will help athletes to recognise how they can improve, and will yield dynamic images for creative visual content. To accommodate any situation there are five shooting speeds available ranging from 100fps to 500fps, and they’re freely selectable by turning a single dial located conveniently next to the lens. There is also a function to grab bursts of 9 still images from video at the touch of a button, similar to the motor drive on an SLR still camera.

AVCHD, MP4 and MOV format recording is supported, including iFrame compatible 720p. In MOV mode the audio is recorded in Linear PCM for highest quality and usability in post-production. Brilliant images are assured by the bright and fast F1.2 wide-angle GT lens, 1/2.3” 12.8Megapixel Back-Illuminated CMOS Sensor and Optical Image Stabiliser, and give this camera serious ability to shoot excellent visual content outside a controlled studio environment.

Also contributing to the truly unique character of this flagship camcorder is built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, and by installing the free app “JVC CAM Coach” on a tablet, it’s possible to watch and annotate videos by “drawing” onto the touch screen. Flaws in an athlete’s form can be pointed out graphically on the spot. The large screen of a tablet offers comfortable on-site viewing by both coach and athlete, and means the camera won’t have to be dismounted from a stationary position (such as on a tripod) for viewing. Another helpful function of this app is Twin View, which enables simultaneous side-by-side playback of two different video clips after they’ve been transferred to a tablet. Comparative viewing will help expose details that otherwise would be missed. A simple yet very helpful function is the Tagging function, which lets the user tag any scene for easy access later on. The combination of GC-PX100 and smart device puts incredible analytical power in the hands of any coach, and brings unique tools into the hands of creators.

“Uncommon” camera features abound, such as Zoom Position Memory. This allows you to instantly switch to Full Wide, Full Tele, or a user-selectable position in between, enabling responsive capture of your subject, such as immediately going from a field full of people to a specific individual. Buttons and controls have been positioned to facilitate responsive access and maximise the user’s videographic technique. In short, JVC’s GC-PX100 is an extremely well made camera, and in the hands of creators and coaches, it may prove to be a gold mine.”

HDW : UPDATE. Sometimes the consumer side of major organisations come up with cameras that would fit very nicely into the professional side. Having looked at JVC’s web site I remembered the previous model the PX10, this camera has a 10x optical zoom, it also records at 1080 50p at 36Mbps, it also films high speed video 250fps/50p but no mention of 720 or 1080.

So from that info we can assume the PX100 has a minimum of 10x optical f1.2 glass and records hi speed video at 50p.

UPDATE : The PX100 has a 10x zoom.

Although this camera has a small sensor this would bypass the need for any Sony FS700 priced at £6K for the minority of times you will ever need slow motion. My thanks to Matt for giving me the URL. (PS. I STILL WANT ONE)

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We have a new Lens Mug on offer to the person with the best caption that best portrays the picture above, I have started the ball rolling with my caption. Closes on Tuesday 14th January 2013.

Sony just sent me a press release for BVE 2013 and I think this is a perfect caption thanks to Sony “4K penetration into production”

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Panasonic is pleased to announce the HX-A100 Wearable Camcorder, designed to let users easily capture and share images of everyday life  such as sports and events.

The compact, lightweight design of the A100 makes it comfortable to wear. By setting the camera on the included Earhook, users can enjoy hands-free shooting without a helmet. A Multi-Mount option is also available for mounting the camera to a helmet or backpack. The waterproof design enables even greater shooting freedom in situations where the camera might get wet.

Another feature of the camera is its built-in Wi-Fi functions, which allows users to broadcast live video with simultaneous Full-HD recording. It also makes it easy to upload recorded images to SNS using a smartphone or tablet.

Despite its compact size and lightweight design, the A100 achieves excellent image quality. Featuring a host of image-enhancing technologies, including a bright F2.5 lens, the BSI Sensor, and Advanced Image Processing LSI, this wearable camera captures clear, low-noise images in both bright and dim lighting situations. It also minimizes shooting mistakes, with an Image Stabilizer to suppress blurring, and a Level Shot function to automatically correct tilted images.

The A100 also offers a large number of advantages that are made possible by Panasonic’s long history of camcorder development. This is what makes it possible to shoot and share images with the user’s precise line-of-sight perspective for special events, sports activities, and everyday situations.

Features of the A100

• Features an IPX8-compliant waterproof design for safe outdoor shooting in water depth down to -1.5m / 5ft for up to 30min duration.
• Dustproof design allows shooting safely in sandy or dusty environments.
• The Wi-Fi connectivity makes it possible to broadcast live streaming video on Ustream as it is recorded in Full-HD Quality
• Recording can be turned ON/OFF with a smartphone or tablet while watching in live view
• Content can be easily shared on SNS using a smartphone or tablet
• High low-light performance with an F2.5 bright lens, 1/4.1″ BSI Sensor, and Advanced Image Processing LSI
• Level Shot for automatic correction of tilting images, which often occur unnoticed
• Image Stabilizer suppresses blurring for crisp and clear images
• Sharp, impressive slow-motion video in HD quality
• Recording formats: 1920 x 1080/60 fps, 1280 x 720/120 fps, 640 x 360/240 fps
• Wind Noise Cut function suppresses excessive wind noise
• 140 minutes of battery life* for extended shooting on a single battery charge

* When recording in Full-HD with Wi-Fi turned off.

HDW : Looks like the POV camera is on it’s way back and just is case you are interested it records onto microSD cards something Panasonic seems to have omitted to tell us on the press release, no word on price but with the GO-PRO 4K camera is there a need for such specialised POV cameras today ?

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Introducing RØDE iXY stereo microphone for iPhone and iPad from RØDE Microphones on Vimeo.

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When Sony’s Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai stepped up to show the TV’s stunning images at the end of his presentation during the Consumer Electronics Show, Mr. Hirai got a nice Windows error message from Microsoft. “4K is not the future. It’s now and Sony is leading the way,” said Mr. Hirai before the error message appeared.

It seems to me when the pressure is on to get it right the last software on earth you rely on is Windows or any computer…what you do is playback 4K pictures from a known source like an AJA Quad Pro. The Sony OLED TV was a 56″ prototype.

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