Nikon D5000 SLR

Having been a photographer most of my life, the last few years have been tough, my Nikon prosumer point and shoot model basically died a slow death and with little work coming in, there was no way to replace it. Recently a couple of good contracts allowed me to think about getting a new camera and finally this past weekend, I did.

Bought at L.L. Lorzeau (which had a great deal and as a serious camera only store, incredible selections and service) I also bought what I consider essential extras. Remote shutter release, extra battery and polarized lens filter. The kit came with 2 lenses, 18-55 and 55-200mm with an anti-shake feature. I also got a superb macro lens. Yes I went over the budget I had set, but it was worth it, I am the sort of person who might sell his house before going without a camera.

So far, I am over the top happy about it. The images are really good and it's a gi-normous upgrade from the other digital cameras I've been used to using. Looking forward to some portrait shots to see how it fairs in that department. I also have been excited to do some time lapse stuff and long exposure work that the other camera and even past cameras just could not do. According to the specs this one should handle it all very well.

So far the video function is not very impressive. The quality isn't that great, but good enough to not take a video camera on vacation, but not film anything serious with. At least not without a lot of post work.

Click on images for larger versions.

Adobe CS5 Master Suite test

Though only using a testing version and not having the chance to look into everything in detail, I have been playing around with the CS5 suite and getting to use some software I was curious about but never touched before. Overall for those who don’t like to read through an entire article. Some welcome changes but not worth the huge price to upgrade in my opinion. Basically you seem to be paying mostly for more stable software, which for the most part it is. Stability should be a bug fix for free, not a paid upgrade.

The biggest disappointment is Premiere Pro, it had issues with sound, rendering, exporting you name it. I was hoping to use it in place of updating Final Cut Pro. I like some of the new ways things are set up and the media exporter integration is very nice, but if the final product is missing sound or if it takes 5 times as long to edit something because of render issues, it’s a step back not forward. Soundbooth was a new one for me and it’s excellent, though I was hoping for better ability to make music from clips like sound track pro has. Could just be unrealistic expectations on my part. After Effects is fine, I haven’t had any footage to try the new rotoscoping features. So far I haven’t had reason to switch from my CS3 version. That could change if I get deeper into it. EDIT: many of these issues did not appear when I started a project from scratch as opposed to importing an older project. Many of the issues may be a result of importing older versions that already have rendered files associated with them.

Photoshop, as usual, gets the best updates, the content aware fill is nice but not perfect, a good start for a complicated fill job. Like content aware scaling, I suspect the feature is less useful than it is impressive (when working on an ideal file for that feature) in the real world. The new paint brushes and colour mixing features are quite amazing, many artists will really profit from them. Best thing is the constant crashing seems to have stopped from CS4.

Dreamweaver STILL has the same text not visible issue I’ve had since Apple updated to Snow Leopard and Adobe has not been able to do anything about for over 8 months. Dreamweaver CS3 does not have this problem. Indesign is nothing to write home about and frankly, it’s a shame, not because adobe doesn’t have a great layout program, bit more because it’s almost impossible to get printers to update the software. Many are still on CS2 and you can only save to one version behind. So no matter what Adobe does, unless you work with all up to date print companies, the latest version sits on computer opening any indesign file you click on despite telling the finder use an older version. (A very annoying bug!)

Fireworks, finally stable, Flash... like the Flash Catalyst idea except that older versions of Flash did this very thing with components in effect, without having to leave Flash. Illustrator has some nice updates, but the main one, the perspective drawing is a little premature.

Encore I like a lot, it’s got a learning curve if you are used to other similar software but the end product was really professional.

Not sure I’d pay the upgrade of close to 1000$ (canadian) for what amounts to a few new features and one additional software I’d like to have (Encore).

Is the world still in world wide web?

More and more when I search for things on the www I find myself locked out. “Sorry, this video is not available in your country” sort of messages appear more and more. I am sorry, but don’t put your info on the world wide web if the world can’t see it. I am in Canada, virtually all the clips I want to see are shown here, just at times I might miss them. I can watch them on TV, copy to see later even, but not on the “information super highway”. The weird thing is, these clips are shown for free in any case, so what’s the harm?

It seems the web, which once promised a free flow of information to anyone anywhere is pretty much under the control of whatever corporation decides what it wants you to see or not. I am all for protecting your copyrights and all that, but once something is on the airways, copied to millions of videos, Tivo’d and put on the web (in the USA) for free, you’ve really no reason to restrict it from being seen online. No wonder so many people illegally download stuff... it’s easier than seeing it legally!

It’s just sad to see the internet going this way, we had a good thing for a while, but as they say, good things don’t last!

April news

There are some pretty interesting things going on in tech April. None of them are affordable to be right now because work is so bad, but we can dream.

Of course you’d be living in a cave if you didn’t know the Ipad was coming out. Press has changed from «just a big iphone» to a must have device as it’s uses are more apparent. I don’t have an Iphone, nor an Ipod Touch so for me it would be a great little device for trips or sitting in front of the TV to catch up on emails and a great device to show off work to clients. I like that you can use pages and Numbers with it as it means I could update my blogs and write on it while away, making bringing the laptop less obligatory on short trips. Like the Ipod when it came out, it will take a little time for people to realize what they will use it for... but I have a feeling it will get used!

Abobe releases CS5 soon too, though photoshop has the splashiest updates and it seems, most of the updates released to press so far, it’s still not on my must buy or die list. For one thing, CS4 is still not showing text correctly on my tower and Adobe has made very little effort to solve the issue. You might say they’ve made a negative effort even, just sending me links to «fixes» that don’t apply to my situation and in one case, was not even for my OS! I also have a feeling that the price will be too high, but in this economy, almost any price is to high as it is. Some of the features, like mixing colours as you would paint are pretty amazing and the «Intelligent fill» which is a follow-up to the «intelligent scale» form last time looks very impressive. Like the last time though, impressive as the tech is, in real life application, you will find yourself looking for ways to use these features rather than them filling some need in the everyday workflow. I imagine the new fill will be like the old scale in that it will work well in very specific problems that fall into certain parameters but in many cases you’ll fall back into using whatever techniques you were doing all along. In situations that do warrant the function, however, it will be amazing and fast. Another problem with Adobe updates is they come too quickly lately. Most printers are still on Adobe CS2 for InDesign, making it impossible to use those features in many projects as you can only save to the previous version and only if you don’t use any new features. I haven’t seem much on Dreamweaver as far as improvements go, another sign that once Adobe bought out the competition, they let just let the Macromedia products wither. Except for Flash, of course, which they have totally turned into a monster no one wants to deal with now.

After settling some Final Cut Pro issues, I think I’d update to the new version of that, which is really well priced before buying any of the new stuff this April. For once, I’ll let other get burned and adapt late!

Walk With Me

Logo design for Oneil Junior, dog walking service, Boston

Do Do bird

I am working on another animated character, but for what is a mystery... even to myself. I hope to get deeper into C4D Bodypaint for the final textures and develope a very stable rig and maybe some "canned" animations like running, walking etc to use in tests.

Art does not Equal Money

One comment I hear quite often, bothers me quite a bit. It’s when someone shows they have an artistic talent, makes the mistake of showing people, and then have to hear comments like, «You should sell your art and make millions!». I know it seems like a completely positive thing to say, but the reality is it just makes the artist feel like a total loser.

Why? Think about it... how realistic is that statement? If someone could make a million dollars doing something they love that easily.. wouldn’t they be doing it already? Almost all those making the statement don’t buy art themselves... where do they think these «millions of dollars» will come from? As a result the artist ends up thinking they have somehow failed in exploiting their talents or worse, they think that they actually can make tons of cash and will crash into depression when they discover winning the lottery is more likely. The statement also devalues the personal statement and drive to make the art into a simple product anyone can make and sell.

Success, the type of success these comment speak to, is extremely rare in the art world. For every Andy Warhol, there are 2 million people who never even get a chance to show their work, no matter how fantastic it is, in the local café. Face it, the most successful artists are dead ones.

The same is true for creative jobs, like I have. If you are anyway involved in making movies or TV shows, you are assumed to be raking in the dough. A film like «Avatar» might cost ½ a billion to make, but that doesn’t mean each technician made 1 million each. In fact many make less salary than your average person despite having very rare and specific skill sets that involve constant retraining and experimenting to keep up to date. I might charge 50$ an hour for contract work, which seems like a lot until you realize getting 40 hours of paid work a week is actually impossible, that my computer system to do the work cost 5 000$, that the software to do the work costs even more, plus updates every 18 months... you see what I mean. Also a small filmmaker like myself will work alone for years on a film that will costs hundreds of dollars (not including time and already existing hardware etc) and they won't even make that money back.... ever. No matter how many hits they get on Youtube.

It’s perfectly reasonably to want to make such hopeful (yet misguided) statements to someone who’s work you admire. Most people work in offices, where many things, like the cost of software and hardware for example are covered by the company and never thought of. So unless you have a way to get this creative friend of yours into a situation where they can actually make some money off their talent, please refrain from making them feel it’s a given they will, or worse, that it’s their fault somehow that they haven’t done it already. Instead, if you like it that much, offer to buy it for a reasonable price for the time and effort put into making it. Now THAT would be a true compliment!

Fini!

It looks terrible here on the blog so you might want to just go to you-tube to see it

youtube link

To Flash or not to Flash your clients

It was THE thing online for many years... every client had to have a Flash site, even if they no idea what it was. I worked with a print designer who kept saying he wanted «the flash» in his site. Turns out «the flash», to him, was a simple html rollover, but because it changed something on the page, it was Flash to him.

It was and is still an amazing technology. It came on the scene when a fast connection was 56k by your telephone line, yet I was able to design pretty complex and interesting interactivity with it... all under 800k per animation to keep loading under a couple minutes. (Yes, people actually use to wait minutes to load sites back then). It still is the only good way to get decent animation in light files online.

Why all the hate now, then? There are some very good reasons for this. Early excesses was one thing. Sites with flash became so damn complicarted they took forever to download and usually for no other purpose than to satisfy the needs of some bored or badly trained web designer to show off. Spinning logos were everywhere... elaborate web intros with no «skip this intro» buttons were a plague on early internet browsers. It became more and more associated with bad design, excess and annoying download times.

Another big problem was the over reaching of the format. It’s practically it’s own operating system now. It’s animation tools have become secondary to it’s developement tools and though there has been recent improvement in the user interface, it’s still an incomprehensible mess to non programmers. It’s really lost it’s way as it has tried to be an animation program and a developement platform at the same time.

Personally I love what flash brings to the table animation-wise for the web... limited interactivity is great... small fun games, interesting presentations for your site, it all works for me. Under Adobe, however, it has gone far beyond what many designers and certainly what animators need or even want. Instead of enhancing the experience, it’s become something to avoid. I still use it, for small animations, but I don’t even tell the client it’s Flash sometimes. That’s how bad the reputation has become.

I say drop the pretense that it’s an everything platform and go back to the basics... an internet format for interactive animations that loads quickly. Make it something to be desired, not avoided once again.

À venir / coming soon

voice - recorded

thanks to Michael Z. Keamy

model - rigged and ready (I think)

thanks to Cactus Dan, C4D Café and Denis LeClerc