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June 13, 2004
Multnomah Falls, iMovie, Panos
Alison's sister Julie came to visit this weekend, so we took a trip out to Multnomah Falls yesterday. I think the falls have become our mandatory "out of town guests see this" stop. I took the camera along and got a few pictures but quite a bit more video footage using my Canon G5's built in video recorder. It doesn't produce very good results, but it did give me a bunch of clips to use while I learn my way around iMovie.
It's interesting, I guess, to note that iMovie's got an after-market add-on industry that supplies a lot of visual effects and transitions Apple didn't bother to include. I'm not so sure of the value of buying many of them if it means investing in something that comes with most of those effects anyhow and offers more overall flexibility. Word from Apple videographers welcome, provided you keep in mind my pre-existing dislike for featuritis. I don't know if I'd want much more than what iMovie offers, but a few more transitions and nicer tools to handle them might be cool.
I also had cause to pull down the excellent "Little Digital Video Book" by Michael Rubin. It has a heavy iMovie orientation, which was minorly irritating when I was working on a PC with ScreenBlast (the consumer-grade VideoVegas), but serves to provide a missing manual to iMovie (without requiring the purchase of one of the also usually good Missing Manual series). It's $14 at Amazon, and that's a really good value. The focus isn't on "making a film" as much as it is shooting compelling home video and how to edit it so today's home movie doesn't become tomorrow's Death March through the Archives. It's probably one of the most useful how-tos I've ever bought, and I have several shelves in the basement sagging under the weight of my impulse tech book buying.
Anyhow, the other technical note I got reminded of (more than learned, since I mainly manage to forget every time I go out to shoot) was that the G5 remembers the settings applied to each of its major modes. So while shooting in "P" mode, which provides control of most of the features, it remembers one batch of settings, but when flipped over to panorama mode (for instance) it remembers a different set. Minor bummer when I forgot to fiddle before taking a big panorama of the falls. It came out pretty murky... just a hair past Photoshop's restorative powers. I was much happier with the rest of the day's shooting. I've lived in green states before... Virginia, for instance, just down the road from the Blue Ridge, but Oregon's green is ... deeper. I feel like some of that came out with yesterday's shooting.
One more p.s., I guess: The search form is still the old design. There be shear here.
Posted by mph at June 13, 2004 11:15 AM
Comments
Hi, I like the new look. It is much easier to read, and cheery!
Posted by: Davei at June 14, 2004 06:08 PM