Tag Archives: Adobe

A Bunch Of Stabilizers!

Test­ing con­di­tions for Video Sta­bil­i­sa­tion software!

My last post, a gen­eral medi­a­tion on the Apple Mac­book Air, Final Cut Pro X, and edit­ing video while you are wait­ing attracted a rea­son­able num­ber of com­ments. Sta­bil­i­sa­tion seems to be a hot topic at the moment, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that it is one of the planks that Adobe’s new After Effects CS 5.5 is stand­ing on. The piece of video I used to illus­trate my recent post was a chal­leng­ing piece for any sta­bil­i­sa­tion tech­nol­ogy, con­sid­er­ing that I was hand hold­ing an iPhone 4, on a windy day, walk­ing back­wards on a beach!

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On Video Editing on a Macbook Air, Hacks, FCPX, and Waiting…

The Beach

My day job is IT; a nec­es­sary part of that role is waiting. Wait for a process to fin­ish, wait for some­body to com­plete a task, wait for equip­ment to boot up.

I dread to think how much of the last 15 years have been spent waiting.

So while imple­ment­ing a major pro­duc­tion change this week (and encoun­ter­ing some frus­tra­tions) I put my “wait­ing” time to good use by test­ing out Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and Pre­miere Pro CS5.5 on my Mac­book Air to put together this lit­tle video. Shot on an iPhone 4, Warp Sta­bi­lizer in After Effects (more on that in another post), and fin­ished up in Pre­miere Pro. I don’t think it turned out too bad, and the “Air” behaved very well, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing it is the low­est, 2Gb RAM, 64Gb HD model.
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Posted in Gear, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Super Moon Over Manly

Super Moon Over Manly

Super Moon Over Manly

Nearly for­got about this; so fired up the trusty Canon 7D @ ISO160 F11 with my 70-300mm IS onboard. It was pretty cloudy, but man­aged to grab a cou­ple of shots.

 

The Clouds Begin To Roll In...

The Clouds Begin To Roll In…

 

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Back To The Mac

A photo of my 17

My Mac!

This post has lit­tle to do with pho­tog­ra­phy, but it per­haps does answer some of the most com­mon ques­tions I have heard at trade shows, in forums, and the like… What’s your setup? What do you use? Many will lament the com­plete lack of pho­to­graphic merit in those ques­tions, but as a tech head, I will indulge my inner geek.

I recently started read­ing a great set of inter­views where IT per­son­al­i­ties give an overview of the hard­ware and soft­ware they use per­son­ally called “The Setup”. I really love the for­mat of these inter­views, being very breezy, not get­ting bogged down in the details, while still pro­vid­ing some great insight, tips, and hints for help­ful tools and soft­ware. I doubt I would ever be invited to fea­ture in “The Setup” but I will try to write this post in the same style.

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Posted in Gear | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Recommended

Rec­om­mended.

I get asked for prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions fre­quently. And my rec­om­men­da­tions are ignored fre­quently :-) .

Oh well.

I am a bit of a “gear head”, and love research­ing new cam­era gear. If only I had some way to pay for this obsession?

What about an Ama­zon Store you say? A good idea indeed. Behold my new Rec­om­mended Page!

In the spirit of full dis­clo­sure, as a signed up Ama­zon Asso­ciate, I get a tiny per­cent­age of any prod­ucts bought through the links in this Ama­zon store. I won’t be buy­ing a pri­vate jet any­time soon, but it should help towards the cost of run­ning this site. And just in time for a Christ­mas bailout!

Each of the hand-picked items listed I have either owned in the past, own cur­rently, or would love to own in the future. There is no filler here, it’s all good stuff, and I would hap­pily rec­om­mend to my fam­ily or friends.

Enjoy.

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Before & After — Moody Adam

Moody Adam Three
I recently sub­scribed to an excel­lent blog enti­tled “Seri­ous Ama­teur Pho­tog­ra­phy” by Jeff Lynch. In par­tic­u­lar I liked his how-to posts, i.e. how to achieve a cer­tain pho­to­graphic result. So in that spirit, I want to share how I cre­ated the image above…

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Editing Canon EOS 7D Video with Premiere Pro

The emer­gence of Canon DSLR video has been a tri­umph and a strug­gle for wannabe Steven Spielberg’s, me included. The tri­umph is the undoubted qual­ity of the image, and the cre­ative avenues opened up by the wide vari­ety of lenses available.

The strug­gle includes the intro­duc­tion of so much new ter­mi­nol­ogy, so many new ways to be cre­ative and to fail mis­er­ably, and the inevitable havoc caused to well estab­lished work­flows with the intro­duc­tion of video. This post out­lines my efforts to arrive at some­thing resem­bling a usable work­flow for video, using  MPEG Stream­clip, Adobe Pre­miere Pro, and YouTube.

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Posted in Blog Posts, Video | Tagged , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Snapshots of Rome

Slowly but surely I am sort­ing and sift­ing my way through my back cat­a­log of images. This new gallery fea­tures some of my favorite shots from a two week trip to Rome in 2007. Dur­ing that time, we really got a feel for this won­der­ful city, and espe­cially it’s food! […]

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | This gallery contains 0 photos.

My Top Three Adobe Creative Suite 5 Features

What’s In The Box?

So Adobe has announced Cre­ative Suite 5. There have already been some amaz­ing pre­view video’s, but, as always with Adobe prod­ucts, there will be the debate whether to upgrade or not. I am lucky enough to have Adobe Mas­ter Col­lec­tion CS4, but here are the top three fea­tures which will prob­a­bly push me down the upgrade path…

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The State Of The DAM 2 — Adobe Lightroom

Screenshot of Adobe Lightroom 2

Adobe Light­room 2

In my pre­vi­ous post on Dig­i­tal Asset Man­age­ment, I briefly out­lined some of the entry level con­tenders for DAM soft­ware such as Google Picasa and Adobe Pho­to­shop Ele­ments. In the rest of this series, I will look at some of the heavy weights, the pro­fes­sional asset man­age­ment sys­tems. I will start with the one I use most —  Adobe Light­room. Not sure if this is a good idea as I it is the prod­uct that I am most inti­mate with, know­ing its strengths and weak­nesses. Let’s get started…

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