Original video on Vimeo.

I had a lot of fun with “Charlottetown at Night,” which I shot one night last fall, and knew I wanted to do it again. So, I got my hands on a Canon 7D and hit the streets again.

I went out on Islander Day, a provincial holiday, so the streets are relatively bare. The snow was a little more wet and was falling a little faster than I would have liked, but it was relatively mild, which made for comfortable shooting.

Shooting with the 7D is tricky, to say the least. It’s a pain to get the exposure and focus right, and the fixed LCD ends up causing trouble when you’re shooting from a low angle. On more than one occasion, I ended up adjusting the shutter speed rather than the aperture by accident (you can see the jittery snow in the shots at the Confederation Centre). Overall though, the 7D is a lot of fun to shoot with, and it’s obvious that it takes time to master.

Once again, I borrowed the camera from photographer and pal Jason MacLean.

The music in this video is “Piano Lessons” from Keegan Dewitt’s fantastic score for Quiet City. You can see more of Keegan’s work (and even download the entire Quiet City score) at keegandewitt.com. You can see the trailer for Quiet City on YouTube.

So, with that in mind, I ordered business cards from Moo.com a couple of weeks ago. Today, they showed up.

Moo is an online stationary company that prints custom business cards, greeting cards, and postcards. I’ve not seen any of their other products, but I can say that the business cards that I received are some of the highest quality business cards I’ve ever felt (because, let’s face it, we all know that how a card looks and feels is as important as the information on it).

One of the great things about Moo is that they let you print multiple designs on the back of your cards. This is great for (and popular with) photographers, designers, artisans, etc., who can use their cards as mini portfolios. For mine, I photographed greetings written with Scrabble letters, and then Photoshopped them to make them a little more colourful and fun.

Moo also does MiniCards, which are a little less than half the size of a standard business card. I pondered ordering these instead, but thought I’d maybe try these full sized ones on for size first. I may the MiniCards a whirl next time.

My cards were printed on 16pt card stock (which is heavier than your standard business card), and shipped with a (fairly sturdy) paper box. They’re $21.99 USD for a pack of 50. After exchange, shipping, etc., my order came to $30.52 CDN, or about $0.61 per card. Not really cheap, but to be honest, I don’t plan to toss them out all willy-nilly, so for a heavy double-sided full colour business card, they’ll be worth it.

Now, if anyone is looking to hold a meeting where I could possibly have the opportunity to subtly show them off, let me know.

I had heard about last year’s podcamp at the last minute, and was unable to go at that point. When I heard another one was in the works for this year, I figured I should probably check it out.

Podcamp Halifax was also my first experience with an unconference, and the sessions I made it to were all very well done. I had hoped that more of the sessions would be on digital media creation/distribution/etc., but really, it seemed that media producers were few and far between.

I know it’s nothing new, but the open and free feeling of the unconference is very refreshing. I could get used to it.

McLean Greaves was the keynote speaker, and gave the roughly the same presentation he did at the ITAP session in Charlottetown at the first of December. His presentation, Web 5.0 (“5.0,” he said, was “a random number for random times”), was a detailed overview of today’s digital landscape, and made for some great discussion.

Other than McLean, I’m pretty sure I was the only cat from out of province. I know there was buzz from other Islanders about going, but I seemed to be the only one to survive the trip over.

There’s already of Podcamp Halifax 2011. Will I go? I’m not sure. While I certainly enjoyed 2010’s, I probably wouldn’t go next year unless I was inspired to present. We shall see.

It was great to meet and chat with those I did. Lots of interesting folks we have here in the region. Big thanks to everyone who organized and sponsored the event! It was greatly appreciated.

Once downloaded, I started it up, entered my Ustream deets, and started broadcasting, live to the world, from my phone.

This video is pretty long and boring. It was shot as a test. You’ve been warned.

It worked. Beautifully.

I know the app has been available for a while know for Jailbroken iPhones, but being a straight and narrow guy, my phone isn’t Jailbroken and thus I’ve never tried it. The app allows you to broadcast to your Ustream channel (at a resolution of 320×240), notify people that you’re broadcasting via Twitter and Facebook, and upload to Ustream, Facebook, and YouTube after you’re done shooting.

Also, Felix was able to shoot video with the app on his iPhone 3G, which we both found pretty interesting, seeing as though there are no other apps with Apple’s blessing that do so for the 3G. It was choppy (maybe 10 fps) but it worked.

The app also allows you to see the chatbox and poll the audience while streaming. I have no idea if all of this functionality was available in the version for Jailbroken phones or not, but it seems to be pretty feature-packed, all things considered.

The Ustream Live Broadcaster app is available (for free) on the iTunes App Store.

I knew it would be an interesting shoot and a great potential client, however, I was hesitant to get into producing for political parties. While I consider myself a politically-interested person, I don’t affiliate myself with any one party. I can’t say I agree completely with any of them, and I didn’t know (and still don’t know) if producing for politics is something I was (or am) interested in.

Original video on Vimeo.

Overall, it ended up being an interesting day, and I’m glad I did it. Mr. Ignatieff handled himself very well around the Farmer’s Market, and Islanders were certainly happy to talk to him.

First, while we were out at Rachel’s sister’s place that night, I shot a quick one of the kids (Wyatt still rocking the duck costume). It was fun, and the subjects were certainly cute, but I had to jack the ISO to an uncomfortably high 6400.

Original video on Vimeo.

After we got home that night, I needed to try the 7D outside, since it’s known for its low-light capabilities. So I fitted my Tamron 28-75mm F/2.8 to the 7D and hit the streets of Charlottetown. I walked about, dodging dodgy characters, getting whatever I thought might look cool. Then I made this:

Original video on Vimeo.

While the 7D is built for photographers first and can be a pain to shoot video on, it is a fantastic camera. The ability to swap lenses and the fact that it shoots full 1080p at 30 and 24 fps, (and can do up to 60fps at 720p) rivals some professional videos cameras that cost five times as much.

I’m looking forward to trying it out during the day so I can shoot as a more reasonable ISO and really see what this bad boy is capable of.

I shot this quick video while I was making coffee at the office this morning, and cut it together, on my iPhone, while I was eating lunch.

Original video on Vimeo.

ReelDirector was pretty easy and intuitive to use. It lets you add clips to the timeline by going into your camera roll, selecting the clip you want, trimming it (as you would with the iPhone’s default video app), and tapping “Choose” to pop it in. Once your clips are in the timeline, you can rearrange them (similar to the old school iMovie’s clip viewer) and add transitions. You can add opening and closing titles in a variety of styles, and when you’re finished editing, the video saves back to your camera roll.

That said, ReelDirector lacked some of the features I assumed it would have (and I don’t think I had really lofty expectations). For starters, you can’t access the camera from within the app, and therefore, have to do all your shooting before you launch it. Not a big thing, but surprising.

There is no way to edit audio. Even something as simple as being able to select a song from your music library is a feature I’m surprised to find absent. Also, while you can add titles to the beginning and end of the video, the app doesn’t let you place titles anywhere else in the video.

There is one major bug with ReelDirector: it does not intelligently rotate your clips. The app assume that all your clips were shot with the iPhone tilted on its left side. Any clips shot the opposite way will result in the clip being upside down in the timeline, and there is no option to rotate it yourself. Bizarre, yes, but true (“coffee time” actually had a whole section that I had to turn right side up after downloading it from my phone).

In the end, you have to ask if the app is worth the price. ReelDirector costs $7.99, but seeing as though it’s currently the only video editing application for iPhone, I’m surprised it doesn’t cost more. If you’re looking for something to stitch video clips together, it works (save for the clip orientation bug mentioned above).

If you’re looking for an iMovie Lite, however, you won’t find it here.

I was talking to Fr. Dennis Grecco a couple of weeks before about the lecture series. Fr. Grecco was the main organizer of the three-lecture series, and I offered to help capture the talks on video for archival and future public consumption purposes.

I’ve uploaded a video, as well as a lo-fi MP3, of the lecture, which you can grab here:

• Download Video – MP4 – 188 MB
• Download Audio – MP3 – 25 MB

William Sweet is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Philosophy Theology and Cultural Traditions at St Francis Xavier University, and has taught at universities all over the world. If you’d like to make use of this lecture for any purpose other than your own personal enjoyment or interest, you should really get in touch with him to make sure it’s okay.

You can see the whole photoset on Flickr.

Original video on Vimeo.

I had a lot of fun working on this project. As mentioned, Tim is a great guy to work with, and was trusting enough to let me take over creatively. That said, he and the band were still on top of things with some great suggestions, most of which I was able to fit into the final piece.

The greatest challenge was fitting all of the concert footage over top of the song Tim had suggested we use. I think I managed to line it up not too bad, but with the band obviously playing different songs, instruments, and tempos throughout the footage, it wasn’t always easy.

The interviews and concert footage was shot with a Sony EX 1, and the footage from the recording sessions were shot by Tim himself on his MacBook’s iSight camera. I think the combination of the HD clips and the iSight material is really interesting.

You can check out Tim’s website at timchaisson.com.