rebecca lawrence
so, i’ve finally made the switch to the Canon 5D Mark II. this is a sea change for me since i’ve been shooting with Nikon gear for years now. buttons are in the wrong place and for my first shoot, it was very slow going. but i know that with continued use, everything will seem as familiar as an old glove. i made the change because this camera lets me shoot high definition video and i’ve always had a love for video as an expressive media. photography is still my #1 outlet, but in many ways the two can coexist in the creative hemispheres of my brain.
the complications arise when trying to work with video. really, with a still image, as long as it can be read with photoshop, you’re good to go. sometimes this requires software updates for things like RAW file decoding software, but in the end, the tools just work on pixels. but with video, there are frame rates, codecs, editing presets, real-time effects rendering, field dominance, delivery format, and a variety of devices and media hosting platforms.
right now i’m some transcoding 1080p high def footage to 60 frames per second using advanced frame rate conversions so that i can get high quality slow motion clips. its a lengthy process that can’t be done in real-time. but if i want to edit the footage the way i envisioned it, this is the way it should be done to look the best, visually. i guess i forgot how time consuming working with video is!
generally, i use Final Cut Pro and Motion to edit my video. for a while, i’d considered doing video as a semi-pro. i’ve shot event, know how to author a DVD and can edit a pretty powerful, emotional segment. but i have the original version of FCP Studio and its support for HD video is somewhat limited. and i’m considering a move to FCP Studio v.2 to facilitate the advanced types of edits i’d like to do. its a $400+ upgrade from what i’ve got, but it could be worth it, especially since the version i have is showing signs of age. it doesn’t seem to take full advantage of the 8-friggin-processor cores i have in my beastly tower, and some the the creative possibilities offered in the new version are just mind blowing.
so, is there an outlet for fine art video work? (i think i could produce some) is video too transcendent and ephemeral a media to be appreciated as fine art? (its hard to hang a video on a wall and video installations in galleries have never appealed to me that much) but since these questions veer way too far off the my original topic, i think i think we’ll leave this is a discussion for another posting.