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Yesterday was April Fools Day, making trawling for news a rather hectic affair. Here's a few things that came along, who knows whether they are true or not!


Video Shootout: Nikon D800 vs. Canon 5D MkIII | Dan Chung | DSLR Shooter
A very thorough report from Dan, primarily on the Nikon D800, with comparisons to the Canon 5D Mark III along the way. Nikon seems to have definitely upped their game in video, with new features. The image is sharper than the Canon:

This does give the D800 an advantage for news shooters on tight deadlines who do not want to have to post-process files. In-camera sharpening can be turned up on the 5D mkIII, but this introduced some haloing effects and a slightly artificial quality to the image that I didn’t like – a possible compromise is to turn up sharpness just one step above zero.

FCP X: Native vs. Optimize vs. Proxy Media | Larry Jordan | Blog
Larry explains the differences between media in Final Cut Pro X:

Optimized media is always ProRes 422. When the “Optimize Media” checkbox is checked during import, FCP X transcodes, which is a fancy way of saying it “converts,” your media from its native format into Apple ProRes 422.
Proxy media is always Apple ProRes 422 Proxy. Proxy media creates a reasonably high-quality media file, but at about 1/4 the size of ProRes 422.

There's also an interesting article on dealing with sync drift: Solving Audio Sync Drift



Recently in After Effects | Rich Young | Pro Video Coalition
A round-up of After Effects news, including updated and new plug-ins:

Here’s another summary of the last few weeks or so of news on After Effects— this time with Mocha and tracking, track mattes, organic lines in Particular, point clouds, HDR, and assorted tutorials, expressions, and plug-ins new and old.

ANDY'S C300 SCENE FILES | theC47
Podcast looks at C300 Picture Profiles from Andy Shipsides:

I obviously wouldn't shoot with EOS Match with the exposure levels that hot. I just metered and kept everything the same except the Custom Pictures (unless noted in the video).

Photographers | Bureau of Labor Statistics
Hmm...doesn't seem like being a photographer is a great business:

2010 Median Pay: $29,130 per year
$14.00 per hour