Size Does Matter... in Photography!

In response to recent questions, I'd like to demonstrate why shooting stills at your camera's highest quality settings (and not necessarily raw) enables you to do very useful things.
In this example, a friend used her Canon Rebel EOS on an outing we made to Matanzas Creek winery to enjoy the lavender before it was all harvested. A passing stranger was willing to shoot a foursome of us, so we got this badly composed but very large image: 8.9mbs. So, I liked the way Kay and I looked, cropped it radically to make a photo appropriate for a mailing label, but even so, the finished image was nearly 400 kbs, a very usable size. Here are the images so you can see for yourself.

Original










Cropped:

New Business Card Released

Reflecting the changing world of an experienced cinematographer like myself, just calling your self a photographer, videographer et al, seems old school. So now I have created a new business card that more accurately reflects what's happening in the image collecting business. Using the new cameras, like the Flip Mino, the Canon T2i or even my Sony DVCAM (which still uses Mini-DV tape) require a wider range of abilities and fortunately my 30+ years in the business has helped me make the transition.

Canon T2i Footage Shows It Deserves It's Reputation Among Professionals:

Richard Berkvam of BerkvamProductions.com has joined the users of this amazing camera, the Canon T2i, for video production. Yep, I said video production. Using the huge array of Canon lenses available to still photographers, this camera can duplicate image quality in its video capture. Results are astounding; more and more commercials are being shot this way.
Here's a short test clip we did recently, to evaluate exposure modes. We couldn't afford any real talent so we made do....
Now, of course, we don't use the audio from the camera... we use an external audio recorder, in most cases a Tascam digital recorder, with built in mixer, and the sound is re-linked to the video footage in post production. We use Final Cut Pro Studio for most of our work.