I’m loving the Fujifilm X100 for image making. It has a great sized sensor in a beautifully well made, retro-styled body.
It does have its issues though. It is sluggish when taking multiple raw photos and its manual focusing is fiddly. They are not really issues that concern my use though, and I feel most of the niggles so far reported can be fixed with a firmware update. For me its good points far outweigh the bad. Great image quality, a hybrid viewfinder, a lovely fast lens and near silent operation to name a few.
That said, for the X100 to be my every day workhorse, the camera I always have by my side, it also to be useable for video blogging. This is my first real test shooting video and although the lens delivers a great quality image, even in low light, a couple of clips appeared to have a buzzing on the audio and then for no reason.. it went. I didn’t do anything to make it go and can’t seem to get it to happen again. Nevertheless, it was weird and I can see myself doing a few more tests before trusting the camera to deliver both stunning video and acceptable audio. Even if just for video blogging.
(I recorded my initial impression of the camera here on audioboo should you want to hear more.)
I visited Warwick University with Paul Hadley and talked with Professor Alan Chalmers about developments in High Dynamic Range (HDR) video capture. We got to see some incredible footage, as it should be seen, on HDR monitors.
We considered dropping some of the footage into the interview above but it would have really sold the experience short. If you google around you can find some pretty impressive footage not even shot with the 20 f-stops of latitude we got to experience.
I am quite looking forward to seeing how quickly HDR video monitors become affordable and who will make the first off the shelf HDRV camera available to the average video blogger.
And dont worry about being awash with hyper-real over saturated video footage as today, in a room somewhere in Europe, a group of people are sat around deciding on a HDRV standard for all. Let us hope it emulates what the ‘normal’ eye sees and not one on hallucinogens.
We may never know the Impact social media had in shaping our new rather bewildering government.
Maybe it reached a lethargic non-voting population and changed their minds. Perhaps it taught the party campaigners to engage with more mobile tools in order to rally their troops. Maybe all it did was introduce other channels of communication to the mix.
All I know is it certainly played a part.
@CraigElder sources David Cameron questions on Twitter to answer at The Open University
Perhaps now with new Natural Language Processing tools for measuring our online sentiment we will finally get an idea of how much of an impact these new media tools are having in the mindset of the general voting public. This is both amazing and scary to me. We seem so desperate to know yet many of us are just having fun. Playing with tech as tools.
It was @Ilicco and Reuters that though it was OK to let the geeks loose with tech in close proximity to the leaders of our parties. And as the security perimeters thinned with each encounter, Brown to Cameron to Clegg.. we would try out more tools and techniques experimenting ways to bring the outside conversations in and to share the conversations we had with everyone. There were times when Ilicco wondered how much trouble we may or may not get into. That said.. I don’t think he ever stopped having fun.
Some of these groundbreaking platforms championed by @Sleepydog lived only during this extreme period of change. His coders would use zero’s and one’s like lego. All the bits are now back in the box. Till next playtime.
We were not too hung up on the quality of anything, be it the video stream or the questions I would slip into whatever conversations we were having. I do remember feeling excited and sharing way too much coffee with friends who’d been given the opportunity to collaborate on projects that excited and inspired.
It was a social media playground like no other. Mobile phones verses the HD stream. Political pundits verses the twitter stream with in many ways the geeks given free rein.
I’m not sure if we will ever again see such a massive change in communication in such a short space of time. Not to the extent that Reuters championed. It was the beach on which the waves of old and new media crashed ..and we all got wet.
Now everyone and their dog is a ‘Social Media Expert’ the air is muggy with hot air and opinion claiming the right and wrong way to engage using real-time web tools.
In the words of Yoda, “Do or do not… There is no try.”
Participation is the key and feeling free enough to play allows you to subconsciously learn from your mistakes.
The people who were both in the rooms and working remotely in these projects are too many to mention. Perhaps they would like to link in or comment their experiences below.
The unquantifiable nature of all this will be just a memory next time round. The tools are coming and although I feel we are a long time away from totally understanding the impact from this kind of exchange, we are getting closer all the time.
If I’m honest it’s the metrics that excite me the least. Let the practitioners experiment, explore, dance around new ways. For every ten people willing to show the way, there will be ten thousand wanting to sell you the map.
“When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point.” ~ Alan Watts
Advertising revenue is down, newspapers are struggling and as the economy takes a downturn production costs are up, at the same time online readership and revenue continue to rise. So what’s the answer? Go where the eyes are. Whether you are writing, taking pictures, shooting video or recording audio you can build communities with your content. But only if you take it online.
Three years ago online video was something I mostly only viewed. I’d played around with recording and uploading video but this was a long winded haphazard affair involving hand coded xml files every time I wanted to add a video to my podcast. Then if I wanted to share it further afield I’d upload it to YouTube giving me the option to embed on a website or link to it in an email or forum.
Now it’s just as easy as sending an email. Many of the sites I visit today are either video conversational platforms or at the very least places where video is being shared and commented on. Video is now a medium of conversation.
Recently I have been asked more and more by companies “Do we really need to get involved in video?”
The short answer is “Yes.”
For me, engaging with online video is a no brainer.
The easiest way for me to explain why this shift from old analogue methods of communication to online ones is so important is to compare online video with TV. The buzzword for a while now has been Social Media, Social Media does exactly what it says on the tin, it allows people to have conversations on a new level of engagement, be it from an entertainment or marketing perspective. TV could not be further away from this world. The most interactive thing TV can offer us is the red button. Nowadays people expect a conversation with their content.
TV advertising is also fleeting and expensive. After the cost of creating your media, you pay for your slot and when it’s gone it’s gone. Online video on the other hand, can be made at a fraction of the cost, and if you spread it intelligently it’s viewable forever. Not only that but the viewer can comment on, respond to, and share it for you. This conversation around your content keeps it alive, relevant, and in the public eye way beyond other forms of old analogue media.
Online video is also instantly global, searchable, on demand and with viewing stats that are easily measured.
It really is a no brainer.
Whether you want content for your website, to launch a brand or product, produce video news releases, or just show the human side of your organisation, you need to have a presence in the digital world, you need to be using online video. I can show you how to do produce content cheaply and effectively. I cover the kit, how-to shooting tips, file compression, uploading and aggregation, how to make your video visible, and loads more. Whether you wish to use some of the free solutions out there like Twitvid, Tokbox or Qik, or shoot HD on a hand held device, I can be there to guide you through selecting suitable equipment to shoot, edit and distribute your video effectively.
For a little while now I’ve offered one to one consultation and informal training sessions on all aspects of social media and video making for the web. Now, for the first time, in conjunction with Econsultancy, I’m going to be able to offer a formal workshop (snappily titled) ‘Video For The Web‘.
4.7 billion videos are watched online in the UK every year. Make one of them yours.
So here is what the fuss is all about. Finally a low cost hand held HD video camera with a microphone input. I’m yet to get my hands on a Kodak Zi8 for a proper test but I had a quick fondle for a couple of minutes behind the Kodak stand with Jenny Cisney at NYC 140 Conference.
In the dark shadowy corner I shot this very quick video in 720p as the SD card I had to hand was not high speed and couldn’t cope with the fat data rate of the 1080p setting. The camera feels good in the hand. Well made and similar in form to the Zi6.
Already I can see the low light ability is better than that of the previous two models but more importantly I am looking forward to plugging in an external mic and seeing what kind of audio quality is possible.
The specs are as follows:
• Full HD 1080p video
• Built-in image stabilization
• 2.5” color LCD
• Swing out the USB arm to upload, share, and charge
• 5 MP 16:9 widescreen HD still pictures
• Built-in software for editing and uploading
• Compatible with PC and Mac
• Record up to 10 hrs of HD video (20 min per 1 GB at 720p HD at 30 fps) with SD/SDHC card up to 32 GB
• Face tracking technology
• External stereo microphone
• HDMI cable included
I’m thinking that finally camera producers are beginning to understand the importance of decent audio.. more important than picture quality in my opinion. It’s too soon for me to express anything other than relief at the mic input with the Kodak Zi8, but I feel with devices like the Zoom Q3 on the horizon (which is effectively a high quality audio recorder with a camera on it), I feel the goal posts have been moved and video blogging devices are entering a whole new era.
Once again it’s June the 25th. I spent most of the day doing the same thing I did this time last year and this time the year before last.. I had a picnic at the Grave of Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell. Today is his birthday and for the last couple of years I’ve met with Dr John Perivolaris to pay our respects to the great writer and talk about the years events around surveillance and civil liberties.
We had a drink, munched on some food and made some media.
Last years post can be found at www.SocialMediaPicnic.com We hope to do the same thing next year so please put it in your diary and come along. There’s always some passers by who are also making a pilgrimage. This year it was some German folk, a lady on a bike and @Hedgewytch.
Throughout the year if you come across any relevant links or content around surveillance or civil liberties, please tag it with the #1984 hash tag.
Fair enough I thought, but when I met him he was just frank and very funny.
The video of the panel we did at the #140conf is floating around somewhere in the ether. I may even drop it in a blog soon.
What I have here in the mean time is a brief conversation with Paul at the end of the day. We were on the way out the door and both of us had cold beer on our minds. That’s probably why this is not so much an interview as a chat in a corridor over a conference when what we really wanted (and had later) was a chat over a beer.. well away from the conference.
Jeff Pulver, the chairman and founder of Pulver.com was the main man behind the 140 characters conference in New York that brought together Twitter users from all over the world.
New york was the first of the 140 Characters conference and others are planned in both London and Los Angeles. Originally the event was to explore the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and Politics”. These topics were covered, as well as many more. As ever many of the conversations happened outside the main auditoriums..
I was asked by The Open University in England to grab some interviews with the assistance of Matt (@Barnstormed) and in the corridor we caught up with Jeff and asked how the conference had come about..
E3 was a blast.. Loads of meetings, loads of gameplay, some Audioboo action and no doubt this will all keep trickeling into my feeds over the coming weeks..
On the last day at E3 we were ushered into a room within the Xbox Live stand and sat with Aaron Greenberg (Director of product management at Xbox). We were allowed to ask him anything, so i started the ball rolling with a question from avid Xbox fan and gamer Nik Butler (@Loudmouthman) Nik wanted to know why you couldn’t cross dress Xbox Live avatars..
(I must apologise for the crappy sound but the expo was really noisy and i have found out the hard way that the Kodak Zx1 is nothing like it’s predicesor the Zi6 in handling noisy environments. As a result the audio crackled on all the footage it shot. (No low cut filter me thinks.) I am going to try shooting video with a more highly spec’d camera for a bit..Mainly because i have dropped my trusty Zi6 )
Whilst at the first ever ‘Network of Networks’ entitled Amplified 08. I took the opportunity to question some of the social media practitioners that were there.
I asked.. “What is the future of social media?”
Thanks to NESTA for hosting such a great event and for all the people who took part.
I have embedded the film in Viddler so that if you see yourself you can tag tag your name or leave a comment.
Please pass the video on to those uncredited.
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