A friend recently asked for suggestions of a few stocking stuffers she could give her partner who is getting into photography, thought this might make a good post so here goes.

1. Lens Pen: I was introduced to these by a DOP a few years ago, one end has a normal brush that most people have in the camera bags, the other end has a small disc that has a small microfiber like substance used to remove annoying little smudges on lenses etc. I have found that these little devices are pretty much the only thing you really need for cleaning if you have to cut down your kit. I still carry a blower and a microfiber cloth as well, but I have these seeded throughout all my camera bags.

2. UV Filters:  Lenses are expensive, scratches and marks are common, every lens you own should have a protective UV filter, they are comparatively cheap and protect your lens from day to day damage, and they are very easy to replace if you do scratch them.

3. Flash Diffuser: Onboard flashes are next to useless for anything other than happy snaps, however if you must use one, you can knock out a bit of the harshness with an onboard Flash Diffuser, do a search on eBay and you can get them for $10.

4. Remote Shutter Release: One of those things you dont need often, but when you do, you really do!. Most professional DSLR,s will take a connection that allows you to remote trigger the shutter release, as well as focus, and some will also allow other functions as well. Make sure you get one that supports all the features of your camera. The one I have works long distance and also supports Bulb (a great feature is if you set to bulb and hold the release for more than 10 seconds you can let go of the button, and the shutter will stay open till you press it again to close the shutter. Very useful for time-lapse shots.

5. Lens Cloth: Available from the PhotoProShop website, this little cloth snaps onto your camera strap and fives you a nice little cloth that you can use at a moments notice to quickly clean a lens, I also use it to lay over my camera body if I have a lens off it to stop dust getting in as I change lenses. Only problem is you Canon owners might throw up a little in your mouths if you have to have a cloth that has the word Nikon on it.

This link was kindly provided by Alex. Havnt had a chance to give it a go yet, but looks like it will trick a Mac into playing the D300s AVI files on a Mac in Premiere for editing.

http://www.alexbeckett.co.uk/blog/2009/07/02/techie-importing-d90-d300s-d3s-dmovie-video-into-premiere-pro/

So here’s the link to the Connect Session – Using RED Digital Cinemas Systems with CS4. Just for fun I ran this entire session on my MacBook Pro just to show you how little grunt you really need to edit 4K RED Files.

Here is an interesting article on using the Casio still cameras that can shoot upto and over 1000fps. This article explains how to shoot sort of Matrix inspired freeze frame motion shots on a camera that can cost as little as $500

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/stuckinmotion/

So have my final eSeminar for the year this Friday. We will be covering working with footage from the RED Digital Cinema System.

Learn how you can hire a RED camera for less than most pro video cameras a day, and shoot up to 4K feature film quality and then edit that footage natively in Premiere Pro CS4, grade in After Effects and then produce a BluRay DVD of the project, all native, all realtime. Its pretty cool stuff actually.

As always the sessions are free, just need to register here, we will be live as 12:00 Melburne time this Friday.

Here is the link to the Connect Session I filled in for Premiere CS4 for beginners.

A very quick runthrough on some of the features that people new to Premiere may not be aware of.

Hi guys, I will be covering for one of the other Adobe Ambassadors with Thursday at 4pm for his Connect – Premiere CS4 for beginners. We will be going through the basics of Prem, how to get media in, edit it and export for YouTube, iPod and FLASH.

As always these sessions are free, you just need to register here

http://www.adobeeseminars.com.au/events/seminars/482253e888a23

On Friday I did a little shoot for an odd little Podcast call The C Word: Naked. This is for a trailer for the Podcast that is to go out onto the interwebz. It is being edited as we speak but I have cut together a few of the shots. We chose to use the Nikon because for half of the sequence we were shooting in a voiceover booth and the light levels were very low, too low to use the 202. Also we wanted it wacky so the fisheye was used for a few shots. For audio we recorded to an external solid state recorder, all up I think we used three channels. The audio in this edit is just the onboard mic however as I havn’t synced the audio tracks yet. The rig performed great, allowed me to get nice stable footage (I dont think I noticed any rolling shutter effects in any of the footage) As to what the trailer is actually about, you will just have to wait and see, check it out soon at www.cword.tv

So, for those of you who don’t live in Melbourne, Australia, we take our sport rather seriously, a little too seriously in fact. so much so that we have a horse race, called the Melbourne Cup, apparently it is so important that we get a holiday to watch it (they call it the race that stops a nation). Well, seeing as the race goes for all of about 2 minutes to run, I figured I needed something to fill the rest of the day. So I decided to put the finishing touches on my skateboard dolly. I’m not going to do a step by step of how I built it, there are plenty of those on the web already. I did however put my own stamp on things based on my experience with using dollys similar to these in the past. The Major design change was I made it entirely out of aluminum. most skateboard dollys I see are made by bolting the wheels onto aluminum brackets and then bolting them onto large pieces of ply. well they are heavy and when using a dolly this is a good thing, but when carrying a dolly around shoots it is a pain in the rear end. To that end I decided to replicate the Wolly Dolly as much as possible, this little dolly is significantly lighter than a normal skateboard dolly, as well as it disassembles for easy transport. After looking at it for a while I decided that making it disassemble would add too much fabrication, more than I really wanted to do, so I went the either route with pre-cut pieces of aluminum and plastic joiners. Another difference, all be it small, was I added three plastic end caps, this is where the tripod feet will sit, the Wlly Dolly has three small holes but I have always had trouble with the tripod spikes jumping out of the holes, I figure the large caps should provide a nice seat for the sticks. And finally I am trying out using aluminum tubing instead of the normal PVC tubing. This is still in the planning stages, but what I want to do is sort of replicate what you get with the support skeleton of a tent, those little rods attached together with a bungy running down the centre,

I figure if I can get 4 or 5 pieces of aluminum with a bungy running down the centre I can disassemble them pretty easily but when put together the bungy will hold them together, preventing gaps. I will let you know how I go but in the meantime, here are some photos.

Here’s the link to my latest Connect Session – Using CS4 to encode to multiple formats such as H.264, FLASH and BluRay
http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p61913948/
Cheers