Archive for the tag 'Hardware'
Video: Great Pans with Rubber Bands
Penguin July 1st, 2008
If you have a great tripod with a great head, then you have the potential for great pans and tilts. But sometimes the equipment is great, but your hand is not that steady. Rubber band to the rescue!
Strap a think rubber band to the handle and pull it in the direction you wan it to move. The rubber band acts like a shock absorber, dispensing energy as necessary.
No more jerky pans or tilts.
-Penguin
Related postsRadiohead’s “Nude”: The old school hardware remix
Ninja June 6th, 2008
If you’re a tad on the impatient side, the song starts at about 1:10 into the video.
Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there. It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum—Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-86 Dot Matrix Printer—Drums
HP Scanjet 4c—Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array (act as a collection of bad speakers)—Vocals & FX
Fan video by James Houston.
Cheers to Ray for the tip.
Related postsJohnny Lee: Wii Remote Hacks
Penguin April 13th, 2008
If you haven’t seen Johnny Lee’s hacks to the Wii remote, this is a great summary of what he’s accomplished. Johnny Lee is a PhD grad student at Carnegie Mellon University. He’s also the one who came up with the poorman’s steady cam. He’s around 30 and he’s already presented at TED. How cool is that?
-Penguin
Related postsDrobo: File Storage Solution
Penguin April 4th, 2008
Drobo is a “RAID” external storage solution. I put RAID in quotes because it really isn’t. It functions similarly to a RAID 1 setup, but the cool feature is that you don’t need to format the drives or even run identical capacity drives!
Ever since I started working with video, storage and archiving has been a huge concern/fear of mine. Love Angle took up a whopping 88 GB and 20 DVDs.
DVD is still probably the best longer term (5-10 years) solution, I still need an immediate solution for all my HD footage, especially as I work on multiple projects simultaneously.
The Drobo is a bit of an investment at $500 USD, and that’s without any drives. But it’s expandable with 4 bays, hot-swappable, and tells you when drives fail.
-Penguin
Related postsArchiving Solutions Compared
Penguin March 26th, 2008
Little Frong in High Def compares various archival solutions:
LTO3 (Tape)
$0.08/GB
Pros: Cheap, long life-span
Cons: High setup ($2000), sequential read/write
HDD
$0.20/GB
Pros: Fast, no setup costs
Cons: Unreliable
DVD
$0.19/GB
Pros: No setup costs, easily expandable, versatile
Cons: Slow, takes up space, medium life-span (5-10 yrs)
Blu-Ray
$0.90/GB
Pros: High capacity, Can produce HD content, reliable, long life-span (50+ yrs)
Cons: $600 setup for drive, takes up space, slow
As it stands, for pure backup purposes, DVD is probably the most practical. As Blu-Ray comes down in price, and especially if you are doing a lot of HD, it may make sense to move to the new format, especially since HD-DVD is dead, there’s no more uncertainty in the format war.
Prices as of March 2008
-Penguin
Related postsStargate: Found!
Penguin January 22nd, 2008
Make:
Un-freakin’-believable… and there was a pair of ‘em! Both sides of a mold made specifically to crank out weensy little StarGates about 9″ across. Personally, I’d always thought Richard Dean Anderson was taller than that, but whatever…
That is crazy awesome! To stumble into a junkyard and find THE Stargate!
Aside from the whole Stargate aspect, I found this really interesting:
If you embrace the philosophy of improvisational fabrication , a scrapyard is the best possible place to fritter away an afternoon looking for…whatever. ‘Whatever’ can manifest itself in unexpected ways, provided you a) pay attention, b) avoid over-focusing and c) recognize opportunities.
What if we applied this philosophy to film-making? Yesterday, I posted about how I was just too focused. If we looked around and paid attention to opportunities that arise, we could make some truly amazing films. Not just noticing shots, but also noticing characters, scenes, snippets of dialogue, or entire stories.
And sometimes, we’ll stumble on something wonderful, like a Stargate!
-Penguin
Related postsCanon HV20
Penguin January 3rd, 2008
I’m going to be a proud new owner of a Canon HV20. Here’s a rundown on the key features: shoots in HD, shoots in 24P, has microphone in (mini-jack), has a headphone out, all for under 1000$. Ninja has been really generous and got it for me for Christmas. I’ll post a review once I have it in my hands. I’m just really excited!
-Penguin
Related postsDomo-kun flash drives
Ninja September 19th, 2007
To say, “I like Domo-kun” would be an understatement. I even have a Domo-kun hat (read: I stole Penguin’s Domo-kun hat)! ^__^
Cuteness, portability, + flash drives come together!
Size capacities are 1 and 4GB. They cost $49.95 and $109.95, respectively. These lil’ guys will be available in early November.
You can get your own at Domonation + mimobot
via geek sugar
Related postsGripper 3025
Penguin August 9th, 2007
The Gripper is a massive pump suction cup that can adhere to almost any surface. It also includes a 3 axis swivel head so you can point the camera in any direction. The system looks pretty good if you don’t have a tripod. But the beauty of this is that it can be put anywhere! On your hood to get driving shots? On the side of the car? On ceilings? Wherever! Brilliant!
You can pick one up from www.filmtools.com for about $92. I plan to get one in a month or two. Once I do, I’ll write a review of it.
-Penguin
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