Not quite a year, or is it?

I suppose, given that we got a free day this year (Feb 29th), it might be considered a year since I last posted, but as it's not the 9th until tomorrow, I'm saying it's not quite. ;)

Anyway, yes, I've not been posting.  As usually happens, work has been getting in the way (not that I'm complaining, I've shot some beautiful people over the last year and produced a good number of images I'm rather proud of).

I've been teaching some workshops too, and have also recently relaunched an old site under the new guise of learning photography, so I will generally be posting there from now on.  I'll also be rewording and updating some of the stuff on here and shifting it over there in the form of new posts.

So, head on over to http://www.johnaldred.com/ and start following there instead. :)

Tweeting & Stuff

At the request (some might call it nagging ) of a few readers I've finally gotten around to registering over on Twitter (and I do plan on "tweeting" as often as is useful without spamming the place) and I've also added social bookmarking icons with links to most of the major sites (yes, I know there's a couple missing).

I've got a few more planned to put up as soon as I find the time to dig up the appropriate code & URLs, so stay tuned.  Please post a comment on this blog entry if there's any specific site you want me to try and add support for.

Big thank you to Mohanjith's Blog for the links, and another big thank you to jwloh over at Deviant Art for creating his Social.me icon set. :)

I will also get around to changing the template for this at some point.  I've been having a browse around the various blogger template sites on the web, but I've not really seen anything that jumps out at me as something I'd like to use.  So, it will get done in my own time, and make something of my own, as I figure out how the blogger template structure actually works.

Ok, so I lied a bit

Originally this was just going to be a photo blog, but as my wife got me the D300s for Christmas I've been wanting to try a few video projects with it to see how well it handles compared to something like the Sony PMW-EX1 (now replaced in Sony's line-up by the PMW-EX1R) or HVR-Z7E.  Over the coming weeks and months, I'll be using the D300s in certain situations where I might normally use the EX1 or Z7 cameras.

There are a few obvious differences.  The Sony EX1 is a dedicated Full HD (1920x1080) video camera that just about meets broadcast requirements, the D300s is not, it records "HD Ready" at 24fps 720p only (the Z7 is not full HD either, it's HDV, 1440x1080, but it does provide 720p @ 50fps just like the EX1).  The EX1 requires I spend a fortune on an adapter to mount my Nikon lenses, the D300s obviously does not.  While both cameras use CMOS sensors, the EX1 has three of them, whereas the D300s has one. While they both suffer from rolling shutter issues to some degree (a simple fact of CMOS sensors), the effect is much less obvious on the EX1 than it is on the D300s.  The EX1 has full manual control when shooting video, and the D300s does not (although there are some slight workarounds, as you can set the aperture manually in tripod mode and lock exposure).  There are other differences, but I'll address each one as they come up in future blog posts.

One of the biggest issues for me is the length of time the D300s can capture in a single clip. As the EX1 is a camera specifically designed for video, it does not have a maximum length of a single shot (handy for events and other live recordings that can't be repeated) and with dual card slots, there's no interruption for endless shooting as long as the camera has power.  The D300s has a limit of 5 minutes per clip when shooting HD video, so it's not really all that good for events, except as a support camera when using the EX1 as the main camera.

For something like a corporate promo or a short film where you're shooting clips rarely lasting more than a couple of minutes, it's not really an issue.  In that situation, even on the EX1, you're still shooting clips only lasting a minute or two and then editing them all together in post.

I'll wrap it up here, before I ramble on too much more, as this post was really just to let you know what I was planning for the future.  As projects come up that allow me to experiment a bit with the D300s video abilities, I'll pop up posts with techniques, observations, any problems that may arise and how to overcome them (if even possible).

Welcome to Kao's photo blog

So, I decided to setup a blog for this year's Talk Photography Photo52. Despite being very experienced on computers and the web, having been on the development teams of a couple of fairly large opensource PHP based projects and written many specific scripts and web-based applications for clients, I've never actually written on a blog before this. So I thought it was quite the leap for me.

Now that I've had a bit of a play around with it, I thought it'd be a good idea to setup a blog for other photo related topics that come up in the course of my daily life. Some days there are none, and some days there can be quite a few. Hopefully there will be enough that I can post to this blog regularly.

I'm going kick things off with the lovely Christmas present I received from my wife this time around. Thanks to Nikon's free SB-900 offer on the purchase of a D300s (see the pic at the top right), she went ahead and got me one for Christmas. It's been a couple of weeks now that I've had it and I have to say, it's a very sexy piece of kit.

I've not had that much of a play with it yet, but more than likely all of the photos for the Photo52 will be shot with it. Just for your info, the shot of the D300s and 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens was shot with the Nikon D200 and 50mm f/1.8D lens. Lit using an SB-900 placed directly overhead in a 24" softbox, with another snooted SB-900 pointing into the business end of the lens to try to light things up a little inside there and stop it looking like a big black hole in the image. Just a quicky shot in the living room, so nothing special.

More soon.