Square iPhone Payment System (Video)

Graham — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:27:59 +0000

Here’s a quick video demo of the Square iPhone Payment System that I shot and edited last weekend with Kevin Rose. We used his Canon 5D Mark II for the shoot, and I was stunned with the results. It’s safe to say that I’ll be getting a HD DSLR very soon.

Followup: The Panasonic HMC150

Graham — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:36:56 +0000

Hello again everyone! It’s been a little while since my last post. My brand new Panasonic HMC150 has come in and I’ve had a chance for about a month to use it in various environments and I must say I’m more than impressed with the camera. The decision to buy this camera was definitely a good call. Shooting onto SD cards instead of tapes is just about the most liberating thing I can think of after nearly eight years of shooting on DV tapes. More of my thoughts about the camera (with test footaage!) is after the jump.

Ease of use

Having used a DVX100B for the last three years I was a little worried about going to a new camera because I’ve literally just mastered the manual controls on the DVX. After about 5 minutes of shooting with the HMC my fears were gone. This camera handles exactly like a DVX, the controls are in generally the same locations on the camera body, and navigating the setup menus to customize my settings were very intuitive. As far as when shooting, after the first few moments of using the camera and getting used to it, I nearly forgot that I was using a brand new camera, everything was very familiar.

Workflow

Let me put this quite simply. I LOVE the workflow for this camera. You prep, you shoot, you transfer the footage and you edit and post. Gone are the days of Logging & Capturing in real time and waiting for hours and hours of footage to digitize. Instead, if you’re using Final Cut Pro, you’re using a different process called Log & Transfer. Log and Transfer lets you look at the clips that you’ve recorded (and here’s the best part) as individual clips. Every time you hit the record button you’re creating a new clip. No more making your own subclips or marking clips in a huge queue of footage.

Currently I’m letting Final Cut convert the AVCHD footage to Apple’s Pro Res 422 codec. The file sizes are quite large especially if the footage I’ve shot is in 60P, but I anticipated this and I’ve got a few spare 750GB hard drives waiting to be filled up with loads of HD footage.

Previews & Preferences

One of the biggest concerns I’m hearing from folks about the AVC format is that the footage is being compressed before it is put onto the SD card. So essentially when you’re shooting on the AVCHD format you never get a full-quality uncompressed master version of your footage to work with. I, too, was very concerned that the footage I would shoot with this camera would come out blocky and digital-looking and noticibly compressed. One of the last thoughts in my mind as I clicked ‘buy’ to purchase this camera was, “Surely Panasonic’s QA dept. wouldn’t let something out of the gate that produced shoddy footage.” I must say, my instincts about Panasonic’s QA standards have held very true. Of the footage that I’ve shot with this camera, the footage I get back from the camera looks just as good as any other digital footage I’ve worked with and I have zero complaints whatsoever. I’m not so concerned about working with a compressed format because honestly a lot of research has gone into making this compressed AVCHD codec look as good as it can possibly look.

Working with SD Cards

The main reason I jumped on this camera was because it shoots on cheap, and readily available SDHC cards. P2 cards for other HD cameras are a strong proprietary format, but they’re extremely expensive. As far as for SD cards, I found a great deal on SDHC Class 6 cards at NewEgg.com — 16GB cards for $40 each. I bought three and even found an awesome little case to keep them in. Three 16GB cards allows me to shoot about 330 minutes of HD video with the HMC.

Test Shots

The first footage I shot with the HMC-150 (720/24p):

Onyx from Graham Hancock on Vimeo.

Outside shots, late evening (720/24p):

Drumline from Graham Hancock on Vimeo.

New TV

Graham — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:30:04 +0000

It’s a 61″ Samsung HL61A750 LED DLP HDTV. All the acronyms basically mean it is one killer television. Here’s the kicker: It was almost the same price as my old 37″ LCD TV! Couple that with selling my old one for the right price and I basically paid half of what this unit was worth.

Another fun fact is that DLP televisions seem to be on their way out due to LCD flat-panel televisions ruling the HDTV market right now. Only two more manufacturers even bother to produce DLP rear-projection televisions like this one anymore: Samsung and Mitsubishi. What this means is now is the best time to get one! Currently DLP TV’s are available in massive sizes on the cheap. I would have paid twice as much for a flat panel LCD or Plasma television of this size.

Traditional DLP televisions work by way of projecting a super-bright beam of light from a bulb through Red Green and Blue color wheels which then bounce off tiny mirrors to produce the image. In this unit Samsung has brought something new to the game: LED. Instead of a limited-life bulb powering the TV they’ve replaced it with super-bright LED’s (The same technology used in digital outdoor signage).

I was worried about several factors about this TV seeing as it’s the largest TV I’ve ever owned, but let me tell you this TV has been blowing me away since the moment I plugged it in this weekend. All of the potential downsides of DLP have been remedied by Samsung’s clever new LED engine. It’s clear, bright, and the color is pristine. Perfect for TV, Movies and Games!

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