Friday, August 29, 2008

Quick Hit Friday With A Little Inspiration Thrown In

Good afternoon everybody,
Today's posts are a little different than in the past "Inspiration" posts, but the news is still very inspirational to me. Did you see Nikon's announcement about their new D90 [link] - it been all over the Internet - 12.3 mega-pixels, 4.5 fps or 24 fps! But, folks, you need to read the fine print because we are looking at a gender-bending new camera here.

Here is the part of the camera's description that tickled my creative brain cells by hitting me up the side of the head, "Fusing 12.3-mega-pixel image quality and a cinematic 24fps D-Movie Mode" Yep, this camera also does video - and I mean really good video. Check out the link to the Nikon videos right here. It's only five minutes of video. Why, because, get this - the sensor has to cool down. What's going on inside that little puppy anyway? Actually, you can get up to 20 minutes at a lower resolution video, but on the slightly down side, it's manual focus for the video.
I wonder how many out of focus videos will be made on a camera that's normally always set to auto focus. David Hobbie aka "The Strobist" is even speculating that because of this capability , it may be one of those high native sync cameras like the Nikon D70. Anyway, it's still way cool.

OK, so your thinking, so what? What? - Can you see the opportunities for weddings, family portraits, senior portraits? The creativity and possibilities are endless. OK, let me explain more. I see myself shooting the wedding, click, click, click, getting great images. Now as part of the shoot, just getting the bride and groom to "ham it up" a bit with their friends and capturing these moments on video.

Or how about not just grabbing that quick candid image, but capturing the whole candid moment - Wow! Or capturing the laughs and giggles, the children's horseplay as the family members come together for their formal portraits. OK, where am I going here? Folks, we deliver albums to our wedding and portrait clients, many of us also deliver DVD's. Who cares which is your chosen final delivery product? These little snippets of movies can now be used to really enhance the entire image viewing experience for the client if cut into the regular presentation of images in an exciting way.

All I'm saying is that we have a wonderful opportunity to become a Cecil B. DeMille - cinematographer and photographer! Well, I'm very excited and think it will enhance our creativity and bottom line in the coming years with these new features being built into our equipment.

Hey gang, it doesn't stop here. Now we can easily grab some quick footage for our web sites that will blow the competition away. I mentioned last week, that we spent some time with my buddy, David Jay. DJ was introducing this new line of cool websites - Showit Sites - that are super easy to set up and they include the addition of video to the site presentation. Check out Jasmine Star's site to see how she incorporated some exciting video into her Showit Site web site - it's way cool! Using the new Nikon D90 would be a great way to get some of these video clips.

Also, think of the possibilities on the type of video you could get - long telephotos to fisheye lens, to night video with a super wide aperture lenses. I'm sorry my brain is flying with ideas and possibilities. I think this new coupling of the technologies, image capture + video, is not just a new gimmick to sell cameras, but can possibly become the borderline earth-shattering feature that will change how we approach and manage our photographic assignments.

How much for the new Nikon D90 - only $999 MSP - the video is worth the price of admission alone. If you couldn't tell....I'm stoked!!

3 comments:

  1. If you want to shoot video, become a video guy. Do we not have enough to do then to mess with video as well?

    I do like your idea's of other uses.

    Love the blog.

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  2. David, love you blog and posts, but I have to disagree a little with you on the benefits of the video. You see we could already do that today with a 'video camera', but there is a reason we don't - because we are photographers.

    You could carry both camera and video camera now to a wedding, but while you are videoing you couldn't be shooting, and the same applies even if its one camera.

    In my openion a great photographer doesn't nesc translate to a great video camera man. So what you might get are some good to slightly better than average video at the expense of missing your key shot.

    The feature is cool, and has some application, but I think that people who are too eager to use it for the sake of using it will be sacrificing their trade a little.

    Curious to hear if others disagree.

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  3. hello David,
    I think i like the video function in Nikon D90.Atleast something is better than nothing. I have had moments where i have captured the shot and still wish that i could grab that moment as a live video too...just for the sake of remembering memorable moments so I'd say it's a great feature and we should take the advantage when we can. Doesn't really mean we just stop doing photography and start doing video. I wish i had that in my Nikon D300, atleast once in a while i could do something crazy with that.

    David, you're one of the most amazing wedding photographers i have seen. But it surprises me even though you being a professional player why you don't go for Canon's big guns like Canon 5D, 1D Mark || or |||. I always see your images with 40D. I wonder why you wouldn't want to take the advantage of those high ends. I know it's not the camera but the technique that matters but just curious to know the secret behind that.

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