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Technicolor Cinestyle Test 5 - Canon 60D Color Correction - Manual
| Braden Storrs | Vimeo
Some test with the Technicolor Cinestyle Picture Style for Canon DSLRs:

This is TEST FIVE I am doing to see the range of the Technicolor Cinestyle For Canon EOS HDSLRS.

So far I have been very impressed. There has been a large increase in detail in the shadows before grading/color correcting, when compared to the default Standard or Neutral Picture Styles or even the Marvels Cine 3.3 Picture Style.

In this test I took the Technicolor Cinestyle clips from the first three tests and Manually Color Corrected in Adobe Premiere CS5.

The Sony Nex 5N Kicks The Red Scarlet’s Ass! TBOE Opening Sequence Footage
| Jared Abrams | Wide Open Camera
Ignore the inflammatory headline, the Sony NEX-5N is still a pretty good camera.

I honestly bought it as part of my blogging gear stuff, etc but have totally fallen in love with it. It is so small and portable that I am inclined to have it in my hands all the time while shooting. It is also super cheap at around $600 for the body and $30 for an adapter. We have been using Contax primes and especially dig the Contax 28-70mm f3.5 here

For now, editing is a commodity and less a craft | Walter Biscardi | Blog
CNN recently announced they were relaying off production staff and replacing them with unpaid iReporters. Walter offers his thoughts on what this may or may not mean:

Basically editing is just a commodity right now in the minds of many. The craft is associated with cheap tools rather than the artist using the tool. There are millions upon millions of folks who use word processing software but that doesn’t make all of those millions writers. Writing is a craft that some folks can do and others….. well they can write letters, recipes, but you wouldn’t ask them to write your next script or promo.

Sony's new 18-252mm power zoom lens for the PMW-F3 | Sony
The new zoom lens for the Sony PMW-F3, the SCL-Z18X140 [$9,900] is now shipping, and there's a couple of rebates being offered on it:

REBATE OPTION 1: PMWF3 EARLY ADOPTERS ($1200 mail-in rebate):
End users who took delivery of PMWF3(K/L) November 30, 2011 or prior will be eligible for a $1200 cash mail-in rebate if they purchase the recently announced SCL-Z18X140 power zoom lens between November 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011.

REBATE OPTION 2: NEW PMWF3 CUSTOMERS ($500 mail-in rebate):
End users who purchase a SCL-Z18X140 between November 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011 and a PMWF3(K/L) between December 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011 will be eligible for a $500 end user cash mail-in rebate.

canon c300 vs nexfs100 | geco campos | Vimeo
Since he's using a compressed video from the C300 that was downloaded from Vimeo, I'm not sure how much you can compare noise, but you get an indication of how the two cameras perform in very low light.

the c300 video was downloaded from vimeo in .mov from the original review; and you can see that the nex-fs100 stand up very well against the c300, or even better; and the nex is about US$15000 cheaper than the C300

Vincent Laforet at B & H | B & H
Vincent will be speaking about his new book, and working with the C300 at a couple of lectures at B & H in New York:

Vincent Laforet on Technology, Reverie, and his new Short Mobius Sponsored by Canon
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 | 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Vincent Laforet on Technology, Reverie, and his new Short Mobius Sponsored by Canon
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 | 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Sony Announces New Upgrade of Vegas Pro Software | dv.com
Upgrade to Sony's video editing application has been announced.

Vegas Pro 11 adds significant performance improvements to the award-winning NLE, courtesy of OpenCL and highly optimized GPU hardware acceleration for video processing and rendering. Vegas Pro 11 is the world's first Windows-based OpenCL NLE, broadly supporting the open standard for core video editing operations, video effects and rendering. Other new features include NVIDIA 3D Vision support for single-display 3D computers such as the VAIO F Series 3D laptops and L Series 3D desktops, an enhanced video stabilizer tool, and new software tools for creating animated titles.

Cheap CFL Octo Softbox | Olivia | OliviaTech
Several vendors are offering these softboxes for under $50. For those on a budget they might be worth trying (note: most don't include a stand.)

There are other kits which will ship with a CFL bulb, and sometimes with a light stand. In the video we’re using a 65 watt bulb rated at 5500K. You can use a different CFL bulb with different wattage if you wish, but keep in mind that the diffusion panel may not fit if the bulb is too long.

Amazon: ePhoto Octagon Photography soft box Softbox Video Studio Portait Lighting Light ]$34.99]
Amazon: Cowboystudio 24in Octagon Photography Softbox for Video and Portait Studio Continuous Lighting [$45.00]



CBS sports using GoPro cams for behind the net POVs. Cutting them in w/...
| TwitVid
Tom Guilmette posted this short video showing how CBS is using GoPro Hero cameras for some of their hockey coverage.



Tutorial | Lake Keene
There are several tutorials for After Effects posted here, including these two that were posted this week:

How to track footage and make a matte with Mocha AE
This demonstration shows how to utilize Mocha AE and the Mocha Shape plugin to quickly track and rotoscope an object. Mocha AE data is then passed to the Mocha Shape plugin in After Effects and used as track matte.

Keying in After Effects with Keylight + light wrapping
This demonstration shows how to quickly pull a chroma key to create a matte using Keylight and After Effects. After the initial Key is created a light wrap is made, giving a more accurate final compositing result.

Top After Effects feature requests for the past year or so | Todd Kopriva
| Adobe Blogs
Adobe has posted a summary of the most common feature requests they've received, including some commentary. They are also asking for more detailed explanations of feature requests:

Which parts of the Vector Paint effect do you miss? Is it just the ability to paint in the Composition panel? The ability to wiggle the stroke/path? If you’re going to submit a feature request asking for the functionality of the Vector Paint effect to be brought back, please let us know exactly which pieces are important to you. There are many, many parts of this effect that are redundant with the existing paint tools, shape layers, and other features, and we think that we may be able to satisfy this request by just adding back in the specific features that are still missing, without resurrecting the entire Vector Paint effect–which would be a huge amount of work and would displace much other feature work.

Zeiss 25mm f2.0 ZE Distagon Review | J Torralba | Zeiss Images
This new lens isn't widely available yet, but here's a review:

I am a large person at 6'2" with fairly large hands and when I held this lens for the first time, it felt as is if it was designed to custom fit into my hands. I know this sounds a bit odd since we are concerned about more important aspects of the lens. But, it is worth noting that this lens should be the new reference standard for design and ergo. Outside of the Zeiss line up, there is no worthy contender to match up against this lens for build, look, feel and that feeling of you get what you pay for. Of course, if you are into the new plastic light weight lenses then that is a different story.

The Rise Of The Bread Maker | Glidetrack | Blog
There are some nice shots in this short video:

Filmed by Éric Dorchain using a Canon 550D, Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod and 701HDV head, plus a Glidetrack SD Shooter, Handmade Portraits: Yvan & John is a really cool video about two French bakers (Yvan and John funnily enough) being filmed creating a batch of bread from start to finish in a very traditional manner.

The Amazon movie revolution ... one year on | Ellen E Jones | The Guardian
A look back at one year of Amazon Studio's, Amazon's attempt to promote film making:

In fact, if there is one finding that seems to have emerged from Amazon's year-long experiment, it is this: the crowd isn't necessarily more creative than a traditional Hollywood studio. We'll have to wait till the first production hits cinemas to be sure, but based on the synopses for prize-winning scripts displayed on the site, Amazon Studios looks like a textbook case of a phenomenon observed by the influential web 2.0 critic Jaron Lanier in his book You Are Not a Gadget. "There's a rule of thumb," he writes, "you can count on in each succeeding version of the web 2.0 movement: the more radical an online social experiment is claimed to be, the more conservative, nostalgic and familiar the result will be."