There aren’t many examples of great technology that remain in production, unaltered for decades especially in the consumer electronics market. The Sony MDR-W08 was an example of such greatness until being discontinued by Sony a few years ago. I’ve owned a pair of these $8 headphones (or a variation of them) since I was about 12 years old – probably 50 sets over the course of my lifetime. I decided to replace the bad cable on one of them with the cable/remote off some old Apple ear buds. The result is the best set of portable headphones I’ve ever owned…
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I’m certainly impressed with the new sensor and quality coming out of the iPhone 6S. Having spent some time shooting extensively with an iPhone 5S at the beginning of the summer, the differences are immediately apparent. Besides the beautifully sharp, pinch-and-zoomable 4K resolution, the image quality itself has a more natural almost film like look. This is most noticeable in the flares which seem quite a bit more prominent. I love the look…
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That’s not my quote of course. It came from one of my high school tech club members in response to the recent Apple event and it sparked a lively lunch time debate. When asked to qualify the statement, I received some fascinating definitions such as; “A real computer has a file system”, “The iPad can’t even be used to develop apps for itself” (good observation) and my personal favourite, “It has to have USB ports”. I have to say, if only for an afternoon, it certainly was refreshing letting the teenagers sound like the dinosaurs for a change…
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By far the biggest star of the show was the iPad Pro and more significant than the device itself was how Tim Cook choose to preface it; “This is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing…” This is an elegant way of saying ‘The Mac is dead, long live the iPad’. The writing has been on the wall for a while and many will disagree with my assessment (or at least lament its truth). Apple isn’t going to kill off the Mac immediately and so long as they are selling, why would they? You only have to look at where the efforts are being invested and where the innovations are coming from to see where we are going.
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I have no desire to do a full review of the Apple Watch. There are plenty of websites out there that have done a thorough job of that. The interesting thing for me to talk about is why it’s no longer on my wrist. I guess once you get past all the pent up hype surrounding the new Apple device it simply comes down to how useful it is to have a remote control for an iPhone that’s already in your pocket. If I had to sum up my experience with the Apple Watch it would be this: It’s a well executed, first generation product that struggles to find relevance…
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I initially hated FCP X when it came out and couldn’t understand why Apple would strip functionality and abandon a whole industry that had emerged around FCP 7. But with time, I’ve come to love FCP X and it’s still my editor of choice in a fairly crowded market of other professional choices. But Aperture is different. Apple isn’t replacing it with a re-envisioned professional tool. It’s simply abandoning pros on it’s higher end platform. This is a disturbing signal to send out to the professional community about the long term viability of the Mac.
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Here’s a very short film shot on a Canon 550D with 18-55 kit lens. What makes this one significant is that it was shot by my 6 year old son. While we may have used slightly more sophisticated gear to put this together, I see kids now producing films all the time thanks to the iPad revolution. Learning film techniques, once the domain of a high school class or club, is now the mainstay of integrated, lower school learning. Students as young as 6 are becoming the curators of their own learning by using the iPad to capture audio, video and stills. This is unprecedented.
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Video is there but the specs are no better than the 5D3 and the quality may be worse due to the super high mega pixel sensor. Some features have even been removed such as a headphone jack for monitoring audio and clean HDMI output for use with external recorders. Canon clearly have a defined market for these new cameras and unfortunately, that’s not me for a number of reasons…
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Here’s a quick compilation of some footage I shot in the pouring rain last week. It’s really nothing that interesting but it was a fun day out getting to know the Sonnar a little better and dealing with the challenges of shooting in the rain…
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I finally got a free day with some dry weather to take my increasing collection of Jena primes out for a spin. This is the first time I’ve been able to shoot with them together for comparison so it’s a bit of test film more than anything else. Sorry it’s a familiar spot for me (Kensington Gardens) but since I’ve already shot this place to death with my Canon glass it made for a good location to test…
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