• You need an assistant for a shoot but can’t find one?
• Your backup shooter just called to say that he wont be able to make it because he drank too much the day before?
• You won a bid for a project that is just too big for you and need help?

The goal is simple: matching shooters who need help with those who want to provide the help, based on location, skills and interests.

The feature set is kept minimal (for the moment) and designed to be friendly: it is super easy to browse the shooters list and registering takes around 2 minutes.

As you are all aware of, the usefulness of a site like this is directly proportional to its number of members. So take a moment to register!

Beta?

The site is still in beta, which means it is not officially launched yet. As far as I know, everything is rock stable but I am still working on a few additional features to improve the user experience. I did not put any invite code so feel free to tell your friends about it too (Twitter is our friend here!), the server should handle the load and the more we are, the better it is for all of us.

Why this site?

FindaShooter.com was created because of real world need: I am often contacted by studios asking me to provide them with names of people they could hire for short or long time gigs. This is how I referred some work to friends for local gigs but I could not help them when it was outside the Montreal area.

This is when I realized the importance of a site like FindAShooter.

For Shooters, by a shooter

I don’t see Find A Shooter as a reversed Model Mayhem. Maybe in times it will, but this is not the initial goal: I want shooters to contact shooters for (professional) collaboration no model/clients interactions.

Nearly 80% of the money I have made with my photo/videography gigs was from other shooters asking me to help them out in one way or the other. The bulk of the money is not coming from clients, and I am convinced the site could do the same for you.

Conclusion

I think I made my point clear: if you want to take your shooting to the next level, you have to put your name on the list and/or find people to shoot with (or let them find you!).

What are you waiting for? Register and tell your friends about it!

Notes 1: If you want to follow the site evolution, you can follow @findashooter. I will only use this account  to post about new features.

Note 2: If you have any ideas regarding the site, please contact me. I would love to read them! Same if you think you can participate in its development.

Note 3: Expect a lot of content about the importance of networking with other shooters in the coming weeks

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This is pretty huge when you come to think about it. Vincent Laforet said a few years ago how the HDSLR where game changers. I think we all agree that they are, but having an Oscar finalist (and potential winner) shot on a HDSLR confirms it.

This is the best example of how HDSLR have leveled the playing field for film maker. Big budget is no longer a requirement for the ‘film look’.

I have not seen the film yet and don’t know if I will since it is a very touchy subject that I am no trying to think about as a father of a small baby. But, from what I have heard/read, it is quite moving.

Note: as far as I know, this is the first Oscar nominee shot on a HDSLR (hence the news, if I am wrong, correct me!)

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As a photographer

Nothing surprising here: improved ISO, shutter speed, less noise, more and faster focus points Spock would not be impressed. They call it the best camera Canon ever made, of course! It is their latest flagship product! Did you really expect them to step backward?

Actually, they did in some regard: the pixel count is going down in the name of bigger pixels. It is interesting to see Canon following the approach Nikon did with the D3. Problem is: Nikon came out later with a 24mp sensor which offered an even better sensor. So it is possible to get high ISO, low noise, high dynamic range while keeping a high pixel count.

Now the stupid feature: in camera HDR! The guy who had the idea to put this in the camera should be fired! I don’t know a single person who shoots HDR who would accept that a computer does all the composition automatically. There is one exception to this: if the end product is a RAW image, but from what I understand it is going to be a compressed JPEG.

As a videographer

Instead of taking another leap forward, the 1Dx is more of a refinement. While a lot of wedding and sport videographers will complain about the lack of 60fps@1080, anyone who really cares about image quality will be happy about the moire and jello effect improvements.

The addition of time code and edit friendly compression formats are nice but not quite what people would have expected. Especially since the newest version of Premiere and FCPX can edit native H.264 now. Why didn’t they get their inspiration from what is done with Magic Lantern? There is a reason why most non Canon sponsored filmmakers use it!

I have not been able to find anything about the video out capabilities but I would be highly surprised if it was a clean HD feed while recording. But hey, we can always hope!

Will history repeat itself?

The 1Ds MrkIII will be remembered as the camera which, while providing some decent incremental gain, did not gain a lot of traction because it was quickly made obsolete by its (cheaper) alternative: the 5DMrkII.

Will it be the case with the ESO 1D X vs the 5DMrkIII? A lot of people were expecting more significant improvements in the video department from a pro level camera, especially since the 5DMrkIII is expected any time soon.

This put us in an interesting situation: Canon has to make the 5DMrkIII significantly better than the MrkII version while keeping it under the ESO 1D-X. I have a few theories about this but I will leave them for an upcoming post.

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Why a tilt-shift? I have set a new challenge for myself: this year, I want to start selling prints. So far, I have been able to make money with my photography/videography doing portraits, weddings, product shots, etc… But so far, everything I ever shot was at the request of a client. So my challenge now is to shoot something that others will be willing to pay for, even tho they have no connections to it.

At first, I thought it was easy but now I realized how much of a challenge it is, especially given the incredible choice potential clients have. So I am setting up a strategy which I am going to share with you in the next few months. Stay tune for updates.

On a side note, I have been shooting a lot lately (hence the hiatus on the blog) and I use FCPX to edit everything since the target media is the web. And believe it or not, the more I use it, the more I like it! Of course it has a lot of missing features or strangely placed ones (btw why do we have to use a predefined set of values when retiming a clip?) but it really speed up my workflow at the cost of some precision. Still, in my case, it was a worth it.

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Will it work? I pretty sure it will! The deal is excellent since you can get the suite for around 850$. It is more expensive than FCPX with Motion + Compressor but you get Photoshop and Illustrator included in the deal too! Adobe tailored the whole Premiere website to target frustrated users, it is going to be very interesting to see Apple response.

In my mind, there is only one thing Apple could do: refund everyone and make this first version of FCPX free.

FREE?

This may sound a bit extreme but losing FCPX sales is nothing compared to what could happen if people started to move to CS5. Why? They would quickly realize how PC are faster than Mac when running AE and Premiere Pro thanks to the Mercury Preview Engine. So instead of losing sales of FCPX, they would be losing Mac Pro sales which a much more damaging.

Knifes are out!

What ever happen, we are going to benefit from it! On my part, I keep giving FCPX a chance. Why? It is far from perfect and I am still trying to figure out how to do a few things but it works very well for what I do which is only targeting the web / Apple devices.

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Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

We would like to address a report that has been released by the company Kelvinkamera+ on June 5th regarding Carl Zeiss as an e-mail press release. This report contains several statements that need to be clarified for the benefit of our customers. We would be very grateful to receive your support in this undertaking.

In the report, the company Kelvinkamera+ has announced a new line of lenses to be called “Carl Zeiss babyPrimes.” It also states that the company has reached an agreement with Carl Zeiss. Furthermore, the report declares that the manufacturer has already worked on an earlier project at Carl Zeiss (DigiPrimes). This gives the impression that the babyPrime lenses were created together with, or with the approval of, Carl Zeiss.

However, these statements do not reflect the truth. Since Carl Zeiss enjoys a very good reputation in camera lenses of high quality and performance we would like to clarify the situation for the benefit of our customers:

• Carl Zeiss is in no way involved in the babyPrimes project or product of and does not maintain a relationship to the manufacturer.
• The company Kelvinkamera+ or the quoted persons were not and are not in any form involved in the DigiPrime project or other projects at Carl Zeiss.
• Carl Zeiss cannot confirm that the optics used in the advertised product line are from Carl Zeiss, nor can we confirm that these optics meet the typically high standards of a Carl Zeiss lens
• All Carl Zeiss lenses are subject to extreme specifications, tests and measurements to ensure the respected Carl Zeiss Quality from their development to production to use. In this case, it is not permitted to label these products as “Carl Zeiss” lenses.
• We would like to emphasize that Carl Zeiss cannot accept any liability for products that have been altered through unauthorized modifications. Therefore these products cannot be covered under the international warranty of Carl Zeiss.

For 120 years, Carl Zeiss lenses have been known for their outstanding performance, quality and reliability. In manufacturing these lenses, we take advantage of everything that is optically and mechanically possible to create an extraordinary product experience from development to production to use of the lens. This is just one of the many reasons for the outstanding reputation enjoyed by the name ZEISS among photographers and moviemakers around the globe.

What this means

Basically, someone at Zeiss did not like how kelvinkamera is piggybacking on their reputation and brand. And it is understandable since who would buy the CP2 lenses if these were the same level of quality? Note that I am not saying they are not, I have not tested them yet.

It is all about marketing and legal stuff. But I wanted to make sure the lawyers dont send me any nasty emails.

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Firmware Version 2.0.9 incorporates the following improvements and fixes.
1. Improves writing/reading speeds when using UDMA 7-compatible CF cards.
2. Fixes a phenomenon where the IS function will not work when custom function C.Fn III-2 is set to [5: IS start] and the lens attached does not have an AF stop button. This is because custom function C.Fn III-2 allows users to assign IS start to the AF stop button on the lens
3. Corrects misspellings in the menu screens displayed in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai languages.

 

You can download it here.

Thanks to Canon Rumors for pointing this out, almost missed it!

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The thing I don’t understand is RRM justification (over at planet5D). Basically they want to slash the price in half while maintaining all the important features. What about just delivering the thing at the same price as the Zacuto EVF? The interest generated by the Zacuto EVF proves that demand is there and needs to be satisfied. HDSLR manufacturers are not social enterprise. People who care that much about the price are not the type of client you want anyway.

Given the choice between getting it now at full price or next year at half the price, I think it is clear what people will pick.
This sounds like the only excuse they could find to justify delaying the product once more.

Speaking of delays, anyone wants to place a bet about the delivery date of the RedRock microRemote? It still says Spring 2011 on their website and they publicly committed for mid-June. Let see how it goes.

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This is a very simple site: each post starts with a question and finishes with an answer.

Questions touch both video and stills and the goal is to cover all the most popular ones in the next few months. We are currently publishing one question per day, so you can either visit the website every day or subscribe to the RSS feed and get a new hint every morning.

Questions are submitted by you, the visitors, and can range from the very basic to the super technical. There is something for everyone. So please pay us a visit, add your voice to the answers or submit new questions!

We are also looking for people willing to help us manage the content. If you are interested, contact us.

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Fear not! After looking around, I found a solution (for  OS X users). Follow these easy steps to transform the updater into an installer:

• Download the EOS Updater
• Open the file and copy the ‘updateinstaller’ file on your desktop
• Right-click on the file and select ‘show package contents’
• Browse to content/resources
• Right-click on the file ‘SDI.bundle’ and select ‘show package contents’
• Browse the content/resources
• Delete update.plist
• Close all the windows and double click the installer.

I hope it helps you guys! I am going to test the profile over the weekend. From what I have seen so far, it will be a major improvement over anyone who never shot flat before. For those who were already shooting with one of the various flat profile, the improvements are there but smaller. But I need more testing to confirm all of this! Hard to test something when the sun isn’t up…

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