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A histogram is basically the lightmeter of the digital age. It is a tool that helps you getting the most out of your camera.

Click here for a nice explanation of what they are and how to use them. You need Power point or similar. Alternatively, you can download a zipped pdf file of the presentation here.

ASC member and DP for the long-running 24 series, Rodney Charters, gave a 20+ minute interview, showing off his RED One rig that he used to travel around the world.  Equipped with the Birger Canon mount (about 1.200$), he uses the Canon 16-35mm 2.8 (1.450$), the Canon 24-70mm 2.8 (1.190$) and the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 (1.190$; $1.700 with image stabilisation) lenses. From Sim Video he has a special handle (1.200$) that doubles as EVF and battery holder.

He also had some custom made handle bar system, that does not need any rods – thus shedding off a pound or two, and saving further space (sorry, no link).

The whole set fits into one smart looking bag (the Think Tank Airport Acceleration, about 200$) that can be taken onboard a plane.

The whole interview can be found on the excellent Reel Show.

1. Save on food
   Budget properly for catering. The more so if your crew is underpaid. The more so, the longer the shoot is.
   Doesn’t cost much more, but does wonders for crew morale.
2. 16 hour days, 5 days a week
   Just because this film is the No.1 priority for you, doesn’t mean it is for everyone else on set. Not only does the crew have a right to a life as well, and not only do they need to be able to work on their next film, but overworking the crew makes you liable for accidents that may – and eventuall will – happen.
   If all these arguments don’t count: My experience is that 6 days with 16 hours are not more productive than 5 days with 10 hours.
3. Concentrate on the money shots
   While nice for marketing and your show-reel, the audience will only sit through your film if it is good in its entity, not just some scenes.
4. Who needs a DP – I can buy a camera instead?
   An experienced cameraman will free you to concentrate on telling the story by giving your actors good instructions. An experienced cameraman will speed up the production by knowing what to shoot, what will work visually, which lenses to use, which stock to use, and many more things that you have never heard of. more…

Matt Mullenweg of wordpress fame recently did an interview with the Yahoo Developer network. This video could have been better.

As usual in my improve series, I’m not going to talk about the content, but the technical side.

The goods

They used a tripod, they used proper white balance.

Nice to have some opening graphics, it gives the whole piece more weight. Though for my feeling, the title should have the same graphic feel and sound as the opening graphic.

Camera

There is way too much headspace. Tilt down a bit. Or even better: use 16:9 widescreen format, which works much better for 2 persons.

Change perspective. Flat on is usually boring. In an interview situation, I would move the camera so we see more of the interviewee’s face, while getting the interviewer more in profile.

Get closer. When you see that a person is talking for a longer time, zoom in. Preferably, have one camera locked on a two shot, and then have a second operated camera, that zooms in — and follows — the interviewee. Thus you can cut between those two, hiding those ugly zooms. If need be, then close-ups of the interviewer can be shot right after the interview.

Watch your background. White background is about the worst for a camera, it draws attention. Jeremy’s head gets almost lost in the background.

Sound

This is the weirdest miking I have seen in a while One huge attention-drawing microphone on the interviewer, and one tiny lavaliere mike on Matt, where no effort was made to hide the cable.

Interviewer and interviewee really should have the same type of microphone, otherwise it just looks ridiculous. Preferably a lavaliere — this would also help the informal atmosphere. And a lavaliere that is hidden under the sweater. If you don’t have time for that, put the wire behind the back of the interviewee.

If you have to use two totally different mikes, do us the favor and use 10 seconds to even those microphone levels in-camera. As it is now, Jeremy is way louder than Matt. If anything, the interviewee should be loudest.

These past weeks I have worked on a couple of web pages. In the course of it I came across some helpful sites that I want to share with you.

Flash files (from good to awesomely mindblowing)

Flash Den is a relatively new site, offering mainly Flash files. They have all from small pre-loaders to full webpages. And most of them of an exceptional quality.

In addition they also have royalty free music loops, some video files and graphics on offer. Plus a few fonts. But their main business is Flash.

Stock Photos (affordable)

iStockPhotos offers royalty free photographs for all kinds of usages. You can chose the size of the picture you buy, and a photo can cost just above $1. They have gained both size and quality, but unfortunately have increased the prices, while lowering the pay-out for the original photographers.

Still, you can easily browse for hours in their exhaustive library, searching for subjects, themes, emotions, colors, even whitespaces. Additionally, iStockPhoto also offers graphics, good vectors, cheap videos and lower quality flash files. One nice feature is that you can save interesting photos in your own lightboxes, leaving them for purchase at a later point. Or you can share your lightbox with a client.

If you have some good photos rotating away on your harddisk, you can start selling those pictures at iStockPhoto. Hey, you even can get some of my photos there.

Ajaxising (without knowing Ajax)

For the portfolio section of our new webpage I used a donation-ware component by Kevin Miller, called LightWindow. Besides adding that Ajax feel to your website (opening links without having to re-load), it also enables you to play back pretty much any media format around. Lots of options.

And if you use it, send some PayPal love to Kevin, so that he can get his well deserved Power Book Pro.

Shopping Cart (open source)

If you need a cart system for your website and you want to avoid having to pay hundreds of dollars in royalty payments (and probably some monthly fees), Zen Cart is definitely worth a look. Though it has a somewhat messy admin interface, it leaves you space for many tweakings. There are numerous extensions available, such as plug-ins, language packs, buttons and a couple of free templates.

See it live on our company’s brand new (and Norwegian language) shopping site.

Content management (minus the pain)

Now 1 1/2 years old, this blog has always run on WordPress. Though I’ve had some Windows like experiences, by and large I am impressed by this powerful — and free — tool. So impressed, that I have used it as the CMS for our new webpage.

With the new version of WordPress, I can even be lax with using links. A page that is really located at, say, www.abitofmagic.no/english/services/eng-crew can also be reached by www.abitofmagic.no/eng. The magic happens without me having to do anything.

Of the many good plug-ins around, the one I want to mention today is WordPress automated plug-in, which takes the pain out of upgrading your blog. Which is especially nice when the frequency of those updates increases, and exponentially higher when you have more than one copy of WP running. I’ve used it on most of the 5+ WordPress sites that I maintain, without a single glitch.

Graphic Freebies (quality, not quantity)

One of my favorite blogs on graphic design, BitBox, regularly offers high quality freebies, be it web 2.0 buttons, high res Photoshop brushes or vector graphics.

Photoblogging (free)

Pixelpost is to photos what wordpress is to writing. One great software to easily, yet beautifully, churn your digital photos into an on-going on-line publication. Lots of followers, translating to many exciting add-ons. Recently they also took the important step of easing the process of upgrading to new versions.

For fun, I am occasionally posting pictures on my pblog over at visualnary.com

Here’s some camcorder marketing talk you can ignore:

1. 100x digital zoom – digital zoom enlarges your digital image, resulting in lower quality.
2. Software included – chose the software that suits you, not some feature-limited, outdated software that comes bundled with your camera.
3. Filming at 0 lux – no camera can film without light. The result is a grainy, colorless, low quality picture.
4. Electronic stabilizer – while promising sturdy pictures without a tripod, this really degrades your picture quality. Optical stabilization is what you want. Or – for best quality – a tripod.
5. Digital effects – this is really something you want to do in editing, not in-camera. Keep your options open!

Derek Powazek has written a great post on how to work on events. While written for stills cameras, the piece also applies to video shooting. (via) Just replace “flash” with “on-camera light”.Talking of which, I try hard to avoid using them. They just kill the lighting mood, and the light comes from the same angle as the camera, removing any texture. In the past 5 years I have used a on-camera light on 1 occasion, for about 3 seconds.If you have to use on-camera lighting, try to soften it. Either with a gel in front of the lamp, or use a softer fixture, such as a miniKino, or a Litepanel.

After it turned out that my old SLR got stolen on a recent shoot, I am now looking for a new one.

I’ve always liked Nikon, but since both cameras that were stolen from me were Nikons, I start to believe that they might have some sort of karma.

But seriously speaking, I took the chance – since both body and lenses are now gone – of looking into a different system. And here the Canon EOS 400D comes out as a very promising candidate. The natural competitor would be the Nikon D40. Here the Canon has a couple of advantages, namely

1. Higher pixel count
2. Self cleaning sensor
3. Wider choice of lenses (as the D40 requires lenses with built-in motor)
4. And, as it turns out, Canon offers some cash-back on selected equipment

more…

Starting today, I’ll have a new offer on my blog. Often I come across really good video blogs, or other video films on the net, made by enthusiastic people. Some have amazing content, others are funny, and others again are just plain honest. What all too many of them have in common is that they could be easily improved. From time to time I shall pick out one video I enjoyed (and I am open for suggestions) and come up with some possible technical remedies.

I’ll kick off with Commoncraft’s excellent explanation for us non-nerds about what RSS is, and how it works. (Via Doug and Dawud.) I’ve been seeing RSS buttons everywhere, and have been told many times as to how cool and great they are, but before I had never understood the concept, nor its benefits for me. Now, I am enlightened. So, content-wise a fantastic video. Lets make it even better.

…and it’s a Friday, too. Anyways, here are today’s Gems from the Web:

• My favourite quotes – “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
• Wacky laptop tricks – While you are waiting for your MacBook, here are some things that you can do with your laptop.
• Apple Macintosh G3 tossed over a 45-foot cliff – Total destruction, unsurprizingly. But why would anyone want to do this?
• TechRepublic Photo Gallery – Chaoscope fractals showcase the beauty of chaos
• Securing OS X 10.4: Tips from Apple and the NSA – Apple and the National Security Administration (NSA) have published a security guide for Mac OS 10.4 with key highlights on network administration, securing Safari and the importance of physical security.
• Microsoft naysayer bandwagon gets crowded – Goldman Sachs removed Microsoft from its “conviction list,” the equivalent of a super-duper buy list.
• Lawmakers pushing iPods flew on Apple’s dime – Two state lawmakers backing a controversial plan to buy iPods for every schoolchild in Michigan were among a group of politicians who made a trip to California that was paid for at least in part by Apple, the maker of iPods.
• Welcome to Prisma – Imagine, an international company, and their sitemap is not clickable! Hmm…
• Creative Planet’s Digital Production BuZZ – News – Red camera supports the /i Technology, developed by Cooke Optics. /i Technology enables film and digital cameras to automatically record key lens and camera data for every film frame shot and provide it to post-production teams digitally.