TWiP #200 – The Boys Are Back in Town

On this episode of TWiP, it's our 200th episode and we've brought the band back together. This week, we catch up with some of the original TWiPers to chat about what they've been up to and how they are incorporating video into their workflow. Plus, Bruce Clarke sits down for a special interview with David Ziser.

Hosts: Frederick Van Johnson, Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne, Ron Brinkmann, Aaron Mahler

NEWS & DISCUSSION

It's our special 200th episode and we brought back most of the original TWiP crew. Since he was last on the show, Scott has relocated to Las Vegas and has been busy with his Photofocus podcast, working on Going Pro, and is close to launching a new book. Aaron Mahler is back and has been busy with his day job at Sweet Brier College but he's planning a road trip to the Pacific Northwest to travel and do some photography before attending WWDC.

VIDEO DISCUSSION

Scott has been shooting both Canon and Nikon now which leads to a discussion about why he's shooting both and when he chooses to shoot one over the other. Although he has been getting more into video and uses his dSLR to capture video, he is now using traditional video cameras instead of HDSLRs for most of his video work as they are just better suited for video. Scott thinks that once you realize the main advantage of shooting video with a dSLR is that you can use some of those sweet lenses like the Canon 50mm f1.2 to get a sweet a depth of field, and you discover that you don't need that for every shot, you can use it just when you need it and shoot with the rest with a true video camera. He likes Canon's new video cameras and they have advantages over DSLRs because they have features such as the ability to take XLR mics, built-in ND filters, zebras, peaking, etc. Video helps change the way you look at your still photography and if you combine it with your still shots, it can give a better story.

Apart from his day-job, Ron isn't really into working with video  other than some quick vacation clips but thinks if you're really going to do it right then there are lot of other layers to consider including editing, audio, etc. Aaron enjoys video as a creative outlet and has done a few projects for the college and is planning to shoot more video on his trip. He plans to take some of the GoPro Hero cameras to record some B-roll footage while he's hiking, driving, etc.

Frederick asks the panel about shooting video for stock. Scott doesn't plan on doing any but thinks you have to do a lot of work for very little money. He thinks video is great for telling your own stories and documenting events. Even if you don't use it right away, if you capture it then you have it to use down the road.

Another big component when doing video is working with audio. If you are planning to overlay music then you don't have to worry about audio as much but if you want to do audio, there are a lot of great tools on the market to capture it and sync it up. If you get into dialogue then you really need to step it up to the next level. Video is generally not a solo pursuit but can be more fun if you like working in a group.

Alex suggests that an important piece of gear to consider if you're going to get into video is a good self-leveling fluid head for your tripod and a stable tripod. As a videographer you need to allow things to happen in front of your camera rather than trying to follow, compose, and recompose like you do with stills.

In terms of backup and workflow, everyone on the panel ensures that they have some form of redundancy in their systems including a combination of multiple drives and online storage.

INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ZISER

David Ziser is an internationally renowned wedding and portrait photographer in addition to being a world class instructor  for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and one of only 98 people worldwide to hold the title of Fellow as bestowed by the American Society of Photographers. TWiP staffer Bruce Clarke sat down to interview Mr. Ziser who was speaking at the Canadian Imaging Conference in Banff a few weeks ago. To learn more about David Ziser, you can visit his blog at www.digitalprotalk.com or follow him on Twitter @digitalprotalk.

TIPS OF THE WEEK

We've suffered some growing pains with our forums so we've temporarily taken them down until we find a replacement solution. Since it's our 200th Anniversary, we're bringing back the Tip of the Week feature for the next few shows and we'll bring back the Listener Questions once the forums are back up and running.

Tip #1 – Alex: Keep your camera around and shoot a lot and don't worry about making sure everything is perfect before you shoot.

Tip #2 – Scott: If you're shooting panoramas, turn your camera vertical and capture the scene using a series of verticals and overlap them.

Tip #3 – Frederick: Check out photography meetup groups in your local area. Meetup.com makes it easy! Bay Area Twippers.. check out: http://fvj.me/NateDonovan to see our previous meetup.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Scott – Magic Bullet Photo Looks 1.5 & Nature Photography Workshop by Nat Coalson

Alex – Zoom H4n & Kata DR467i

Ron – eBay for Camera Batteries

Aaron – HyperDrive Colorspace UDMA and Zenfolio's iPad Update

Frederick – Kata Photography Bags

WRAP UP

Follow us on twitter.com/ThisWeekInPhoto. Join the Flickr critique group. You can also join our Facebook group.

Scott Bourne – http://www.scottbourne.com or http://www.twitter.com/scottbourne or http://3exposure.com/

Ron Brinkmann – http://www.digitalcomposting.com or http://www.twitter.com/ronbrinkmann

Alex Lindsay – http://www.pixelcorps.com or http://www.twitter.com/alexlindsay

Aaron Mahler – http://www.halfpress.com or http://www.twitter.com/halfpress

Frederick Van Johnsonwww.frederickvan.com or www.twitter.com/frederickvan

CREDITS

TWiP is brought to you by the following sponsors:

Squarespace.com – the fast and easy way to publish a high-quality website or blog.  For a free 14-day trial, go to Squarespace.com/twip. And be sure to check out their annual plans for savings of up to 20% off!

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Pre-Production and Show notes by Bruce Clarke www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclarke

Producer: Suzanne Llewellyn

Bandwidth provided by Cachefly

Intro Music by Scott Cannizzaro

5 Comments

  1. disappointed to see His Royal Ego Scott Bourne was on the show. almost ruined show #200 for me. fortunately, there are only two sections where he has any lengthy speaking, and they are easy enough to fast forward through.

  2. I love Scott and just got a kick out of his stock video Sears photographer comparison. I shoot stock video for iStock as my full-time job! I worked as a Radiology Technologist for 15 years, I make more shooting stock video then I did in the medical field! So if they are paying that much at Sears I think I might check it out!

  3. I just want to point out that using RAID-0 for backup is a terrible idea. Yes, you get blazing fast write speeds, but the reason is that it splits the write blocks over the two drives. What this means in the end is that if ONE drive fails you loose ALL of your data, all of it — You will not be able to recover the data from the drive that didn’t fail because half of the file information is on the bad drive.

  4. I was glad to see Scott Bourne take up the question off non-camera branded lenses. Sure, a cheap lens is not as nice as a Canon L series, but for folks who only take a few hundred photos a month (or even a year), there are serious advantages of having a lens, even if it won’t last for millions of photos.