Last week I picked up a JuicedLink DT454 as I was really missing a proper audio monitoring solution for my Canon 5dm2. And overall, I’ve been very happy with it so far!

But being that I’m starting to do a few more shoots with my 5dm2, I really wanted to put it up against my Sony EX3 and see what the difference in audio is going to be? And since I never saw anything comparing the two online, I decided to do my own little test.

  Below is a quick little video I put together testing the two camera’s audio functionality using a wireless lavalier mic. As you’ll be able to tell in the second part of the video, the audio from the JuicedLink DT454 has a bit more static than the EX3 and the compression drops a bit of the low end from my voice as well. I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as my Sony EX3, but for what I’m using the 5dm2 for I think the DT454 will end up working just fine. It’s a decent little box.

  WordCamp Vancouver is a annual conference that took place at the Museum of Vancouver on June 12. It’s basically for anyone who wants to learn, and share, more about developing WordPress sites. Here is the video lineup of everyone who spoke this year as well as a write up each of them. (thumbnail and write-ups courtesy of John Bollwitt & WordCamp Vancouver)

Nadia Aly

Socializing Your WordPress Blog
@digitalkvan

  Nadia Aly holds a Masters of Digital Media from the Centre of Digital Media in Vancouver,BC. Currently she works at Microsoft as an online community manager. She specializes in Social Media practices, marketing and much more. She started developing websites 14 years ago at the age of 12 …..and never stopped……

  Nadia does Social Media with an attitude !! Want to know how to make your blog social? What’s the secret behind getting those fancy retweet buttons and links to share content ? Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Wibiya ….how do you get the best out of them? Best practices?? Best modules?? This is the place for you to learn how to bring the social world to the front steps of your blog…..and craving to come back for more !!

John Biehler

WordPress Development Environments
@johnbiehler

  John Biehler is a jack of all trades, and can often be seen tromping through the puddles in Vancouver with many of his digital SLR cameras. When not photographing the Vancouver Olympics or random fashion event, John can be often be found hacking away on PHP and WordPress sites while sipping a locally brewed Vancouver beer.

  John will be talking about WordPress-related development environments such as WAMP and MAMP. Using these environments, it’s possible to work on a WordPress site offline and simply merge changes to your live site as needed. John’s talk about WordCamp Fraser Valley on this same topic was very popular, so it’ll undoubtedly be a very informative session if you’re looking to expand your knowledge on how to tweak WordPress sites.

Christine Rondeau, Dave Zillie & Cam Cavers

WordPress as a CMS
@bluelimemedia @dazil @camcavers

Christine Rondeau has been developing websites since 2001. In the past 5 years she’s developed over a 100 sites based on WordPress. Most of these sites have a blog component, but more and more of them are websites that look nothing like WordPress sites.

  With a strong background in project management, teaching, and developing for the web, Dave brings years of experience and tremendous enthusiasm to his work as the principal of dazil Internet Services, a web development and hosting company, with a focus on developing and hosting WordPress based sites. WordPress has been a highly successful platform for Dazil clients, as it is such an easy to use platform, and can be adapted to fit pretty much any type of website.

Lauren Bacon

Being Curious for a Living: How asking questions creates loyal clients (and better websites)
@laurenbacon

  Widgets are awesome, and writing beautiful code is an art and a science. But if you’re spending all your time implementing client requests rather than asking questions, then you’re replaceable — and replaceable doesn’t make for much of a business model.

  Veteran web strategist and designer Lauren Bacon shares the key questions you can ask your clients to turn them into loyal, repeat customers — and to make yourself an indispensable, trusted advisor. You’ll learn how to have more fun at work, create better sites, and improve your bottom line, just by letting yourself get curious.

  A veteran web designer, Lauren co-founded Raised Eyebrow Web Studio with Emira Mears, her all-around right-hand woman (with whom she also wrote The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business). The two have been in business together for ten years, and during that time have developed a reputation for helping clients in the nonprofit, government and progressive business sectors use online tools more effectively.

  Lauren started her design career during the web’s infancy; more than a dozen years later, she remains passionate about facilitating online communication and helping people connect heart-to-heart through technology.

Colin Ligertwood

Designing for WordPress
@brainbitsca

  In 1995, Colin made his first webpage and fell in love with the web. Since then, he has made a career of creating fun and professional websites and web applications of all kinds. When not working, Colin enjoys watching the sunset from a picturesque grassy knoll, indulging in fine wine over candlelit conversations on French film, and long walks on the beach.

  Colin will be speaking about how to make sure your website designs work well as WordPress themes. He will discuss several tips and techniques that he uses as a web developer that you should have in mind as a web designer beginning to design for WordPress. Colin will also try to point out some common challenges designers may run into when designing for WordPress.

Amye Scavarda

WordPress and Drupal: Deciding between content management systems for your projects
@msamye

  Amye Scavarda is a project management person for open source content management systems based out of Portland, OR. She works to make websites that hurt less with teams that like to work with each other. She runs a consulting company called Function, and she’s on twitter as @msamye.

  WordPress works fabulously for a wide variety of websites. With the growth in development, even more websites will be able to use WordPress. But what happens when it’s just a little bigger than WordPress can handle, and how do you make the decisions about when to use Drupal? This is also a talk about cross-pollination between open source projects and how it helps grow both communities.

Tris Hussey & Catherine Winters

WordPress 3.0 and Parent/Child Themes
@trishussey @catherineomega

  Tris Hussey is a long-time technologist, blogger, and writer, after picking up blogging on a whim in 2004, he quickly became both a professional blogger and a leading expert in business blogging. He has been a part of several Web 2.0 startups from blogging software to blogging agencies and continues to write, blog, teach, and consult. In addition to giving workshops and speaking at conferences, Tris also teaches social media, blogging, podcasting, and WordPress at UBC, BCIT, and elsewhere. His first book Creating Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Blogging Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro was published January, 2010 and his second book, Using WordPress, is due out July, 2010.

  Using parent-child themes and theme frameworks isn’t new in WordPress 3.0, but there are more options available. Tris will be discussing what those options are, as well giving a brief look into the shiny new WordPress 3.0.

  As a longtime blogger and WordPress user, Catherine is looking forward the exciting changes coming in WordPress 3.0. As an long-time advocate for usability and open standards, she recommends WordPress users everywhere update old themes, throw out old code, and listen to her talk at great length about how happy she is to use
get_template_part().

  At WordCamp Vancouver, Catherine will tell you why you should be using a child theme after you upgrade to WordPress 3.0 , as well as how you might go about doing so.

  In the past, Catherine’s worked in social media, as a Second Life developer, and technical writer. Today, her interests include cycling, sushi, and sans-serif typography.

Mark McLaren

Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business: 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress
@mcbuzz

  Right out of the box, WordPress makes websites and blogs that are highly optimized for search engines as compared to traditional HTML and content management system (CMS) websites. Learn how, with a little extra time and effort, you can take your WordPress site to the next level of search engine optimization. In this elementary-level presentation, Mark will show you the basics of keyword research and five essential techniques to optimize your WordPress pages and posts for better search engine rankings.

  Mark was a speaker at the first WordCamp Seattle (2009) and presents regularly to Seattle business groups on search engine optimization and social media marketing. He is the President of Seattle search engine optimization and online marketing firm McBuzz Communications. Mark offers free WordPress tutorials and support on his blog, Business Blogging 101.

Dave Olson

Art and Technology are Old Pals
@uncleweed

  Dave Olson is well known personality in the Vancouver technology scene, and is currently a technology evangelist at HootSuite, the company behind one of the #1 web-based   Twitter clients. Dave is a passionate and well-traveled speaker, and closed out WordCamp Whistler with his talk “Are you Worthy?” last year.

  By exploring technological innovations from tubed oil paints and graphite pencils to telegraphs and mountain bikes, Dave will explain how scientific innovation spurs the creative process and how to balance the cranial hemispheres to foster the seemingly opposed disciplines of both building a publishing platform and producing compelling content using WordPress.

  A couple months ago we had the opportunity to film the second annual F5 Expo in Vancouver featuring Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, & What the Dog Saw. Apart from Malcolm being the big draw to the conference, many people in the audience thought that Tod Maffin spoke just as well and with just as much passion. Here is a clip from Tod’s keynote address.

(Profile of Tod Maffin, courtesy of F5 Expo)

  During the web 1.0 craze, Tod Maffin was a top-flying CEO of a technology company. Worth millions on paper, he led a frantic life that included running his publicly traded artificial intelligence firm while at the same time hosting a national radio show on CBC Radio One about technology. He was working 16-hour days, non-stop.

  And then, everything crashed. Tod was crippled with a devastating depression and addiction which all but destroyed him — all the while, struggling to appear to be managerial to employees and colleagues, and happy and healthy to his friends and family.

  Today, Tod is an inspirational example of fighting back, recovery in action, and learning how to live sanely in our busy techno-driven life. In the summer of 2009, Tod was featured in Esperanza Mental Health Magazine as an “Everyday Hero.”

  Tod’s story is emotional — at once funny and poignant, sad and hopeful.

  He’ll show attendees how to be “strategically crazy” — managing teams with insight and vision, without letting the business life run their “real” life. It will speak to each person in the room who feels they’re overworked, they’re doing it to themselves, and they don’t know how to stop.

(photo courtesy of Jeremy Lim)

  Tonight we were able to film this months “Third Tuesday” meetup which featured Rebecca Bolwitt, John Biehler and Kris Krug. It was another great meetup that covered how bloggers (and users of social media) were treated during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and what can be changed for 2012.

Taken from the Third Tuesday meetup site:

Rebecca Bolwitt is:
co-author of the new book, “Blogging to Drive Business”. She has been blogging about Vancouver since 2004 on Miss604.com, and podcasting since 2005. In 2008 she co-founded sixty4media, offering social media consulting services from custom WordPress themes, audio serivces for podcasts, video screencast production, as well as event liveblogging and blogging tutorials.

John Biehler is:
an E-Business analyst, a technologist, a consultant, conference speaker, a trainer, a photographer among many other things. He also has a mega-awesome voicemail greeting. Along side Kris Krug and others, John spearheaded True North Media House initiative – a media collaboration campaign to encourage social coverage of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Kris Krug is:
a fashion, music, and portraits photographer, technologist and author based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is currently working on several projects including photography, teaching, and consulting about new media and the internet. With John Biehler and others, Kris spearheaded True North Media House initiative – a media collaboration campaign to encourage social coverage of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

  Well, this is what you’ve all been waiting for. THIS is what’s taking place instead of our boring old “let’s get together for drinks” meetup. Rob Imbs, Benjamin Eckstein and Carlson Media have been planning a Charity Poker Tournament for a little bit now and I must admit, it’s going to be INSANELY good! Let me give you a little run down on what’s going to be happening.

  We’ve got a giant room booked at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas which can hold up to 150 people for the night. (And fyi, we are expecting it to pack out) The buy-in will cost $60 and will include free drinks. But wait, that’s not all… We also have some celebrity film makers coming as well. Philip Bloom, Rodney Charters ASC, Shane Hurlbut ASC, and Kevin Shahinian who will each be hosting a poker table. And just when you thought that wasn’t enough… we have HUGE prizes.

  Apart from the thousands of $$$ that can be won at the event, you can also win prizes if you ‘knock out’ a celeb, Rob, Ben or myself. And these prizes aren’t just something simple like a gift certificate to Starbucks… but we’re talking real film gear! Like new SmallHD Monitors that will be launched at NAB, Zacuto Z-Finders, Steadicam Merlin, Glidetrack, Jag35 DSLR Cage + Follow Focus … the list keeps growing and YOU keep benefiting.

  But your not the only one getting a piece of this action. We’ll be donating 1/2 the proceeds of this event to the American Red Cross Haitian Earthquake Relief Fund. So apart from the great time you’ll be having at this event, you’ll be helping some real people in need at the same time. And it’s this reason why we’ve been able to get so many amazing sponsors to donate their products for this event. Everyone wants to be able to help in anyway they can. So to all the sponsors who have graciously donated their products for this event… a huge thank you to you as well!

  So, how can you get involved. Easy. Just send an email to signup@ALLINfilm.org (or just fill out the form below) and we’ll reserve a spot for you at the tournament. You can also read about the event here: www.allinfilm.org

Details:
  Where: Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Poker Lounge (4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas)
  When: Monday, April 12 @ 8pm
  Buy in: $60, this includes free drinks
  Prizes: Case & Film gear will be awarded to the top finishers. Knockout prizes will be awarded throughout the tournament to players who knockout our headliners or table leaders.

Prize List: … so far. It’s growing everyday!
          Zacuto Z-Finder ($400 value)
          (x2) Zacuto iPhone Shooter ($600 value)
          Jag35 DSLR Cage ($149 value)
          Jag35 Follow Focus ($135 value)
          GlideTrack HD (1 Meter Long) ($500 value)
          (x4) SmallHD Monitors (New model being released at NAB) ($3200 value)
          Schneider Optics 4×4 Kit (with 5 filters) ($550 value)
          (x15) Schneider Optics Lens cleaning kits (Cloth + Spray) ($400 value)
          Kessler Crane CineSlider ($1000 value)
          Tiffen Steadicam Merlin ($800 value)
          Letus Mantis Support Rod System ($1200)
          Redrock Micro Ultraport DSLR Bundle ($440)
          Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro ($200)
          Cinevate Uno DSLR Rig ($875)
          F-Stop Academy, x15 training DVD’s ($1,500)
          AJA IO Express ($1,000)
          Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 ($1,200)
          (x2) Lite Panel MicroPros ($900)
          Red Giant Software Trapcode Suite ($900)
          Redrock Micro MicroShoeClamp & Rails ($200)
          (x2) Zacuto Point & Shoot ($180)
          (x15) Lens Pro to Go Gift Cards ($750)
          (x15) CRAM Compressor Pluggins ($600)
          Philip Bloom Training ($500)

Total amount of prizes donated by our sponsors so far: $18,264.00

  Hope to see you there!

  Last year we were hired to film at an orphanage in Guatemala for a church (CLA) that supports them from Langley, BC. What was suppose to be a shoot that spanned over a few days was drastically cut short when the airlines shipped our gear to Brasil by mistake. By the time it finally arrived at my hotel, we were left with one full day to film and 7 hours of driving to get to the different locations we needed to reach. Needless to say, it was a busy day.

  The finished project is a 35 minute look at the orphanage (Shadow of his Wings) and speaks to the people who run it as well as some of the girls who have been taken in and attend the school. But below is a short overview that we put together last night of what the project is all about.

  To get more involved or to donate to this project, you can do so here!

It seems to me that when most videographers choose what type of SLR glass they’re going to put in front of the camera/35mm adapter, they typically spend more time on trying to achieve that shallow depth of field (faster lens) and forget that there are other factors that come into play when placing a still camera lens on a video camera. (color, focus, contrast, breathing, manual control, chromatic aberration) So when it came time to purchase my Letus adapter, I spent a lot of time researching what brand of glass I was going to buy along with it.

I typically go by the motto you get what you pay for and I apply that in just about everything I do in business. So by that rule of thumb, I ended up disregarding a lot of manufacturers and just began looking at what I would call the top tier. At the same time I had to pick a lens that would attach to my Letus using one of the many mounting options that they have. In doing so, I narrowed my choices down to Canon, Nikon, and Zeiss glass. So now the real research begins.

I do a lot of traveling for my shoots so I wanted to have something that would be easy to use no matter where I am, so full manual control isn’t really a question but a necessity. And in looking at all the different options, it seemed that Canon glass wasn’t going to work for me at all. This is because Canon (on their newer lenses) doesn’t have manual aperture control. Sure, I could get around it. But who really wants to take their lens, stick it on a SLR body, set the mode to aperture priority and dial in the setting, hit the DOF preview button while removing the lens? It’s cumbersome to say the least.

So really it came down to Nikon & Ziess. This was good news for me as I relied heavily on a video that Dennis Wood (Cinevate) shot comparing the image of the two lenses on a Sony EX1. (Even though I shoot on a EX3, they use the same internal components so the image you get of each camera is identical.) I’ve included the video below:
http://www.cinevate.com/website/flash/zeiss.flv

So after talking to Dennis for a little bit at NAB last year, I decided to purchase a full set of Zeiss lenses (28, 35, 50, 85, 100mm macro) through Cinevate. (Also because they offered a 10% discount on any order if you visited their NAB booth) And I’ve never regretted that purchase. They’re such a rock solid, top performing piece of glass. The focus ring is nicely dampened as well as hard stops so you’re not endlessly pulling focus to infinity. There are etched markings on the barrel for distance and aperture that are easy to read. And when I attach my Zacuto Zip Gears to them, pulling focus is very smooth and accurate.

The only downside I would have to say about them is that there is quite a bit of breathing going on. This isn’t really that big of an issue unless you’re using a mattebox. And even in that case, you’ll just have to adjust your doughnut to allow for a lot of movement so it won’t pop off. So it’s not quite the end of the world.

If there’s any demand for it, I can post some sample images of my lenes at different focal lengths? Just let me know if this is of intrest to you.

  The problem with travelling around the world with your gear is always safety. Is it going to get lost, stollen, will it break or get damaged? And at least for the last point, I don’t worry to much about that anymore since I received my foam inserts from

  Despite the look of there website, they make an excellent product. I took me a little bit to decide whether or not I even wanted to place the order with them. I had heard a few good things about them but the comments were few and far between. And even when I wanted to dive a little bit more into the software they have for designing a case, I had to have a Windows PC in order to even load it. So that sucked!

  But I’m glad I did. Once you learn the basics of there free software (which only takes a good 30 minutes) it went by pretty quick. I ended up designing two custom foam inserts for two Pelican 1560 hardcase shells I have… and I’ll be designing another one this week.

  They’re not all that cheap (roughly $180 for my 1560 inserts) but the quality and precision cutting is bang on.

  I feel so much more confident when shipping my equipment around with me now as I know that it’ll be well taken care of.

  The nice thing about this too is that it’s about 3 times denser than the standart ‘pick-n-pull’ foam that comes with a Pelican case. Which I really appreciate as I’ve already mangled two ‘pick-n-pull’ foam inserts with general travel usage.

  I’ll have a better idea of how they handle this April as I head off on a 4 week film shoot in Africa (Zambia & Kenya). But so far, I’m recommending to to everyone with a Pelican case.

Its not very often that I write a company to talk about there level of service. And in fact, I think I might have only done it once. But when a business goes completely out of there way to help you with no immediate monetary gain for itself, it completely impresses me. One such company like this is SmallHD.

SmallHD makes a portable field monitor called the DP1 that I use in just about every single shoot I do. And why? Because it’s so crisp! It’s the smallest 720p HD monitor on the market today. And when all I ever shoot is HD, I want to make sure the images is at it’s sharpest at all times. And that’s where the DP1 shines.

But since I purchased my monitor, there’s been one issues that keeps getting worse and worse… the battery life! As good of a product the DP1 is, the batteries I initially received with my monitor were not. Sometimes they would refuse to charge, and other times after hours of charging they would be completely dead. Is was so unpredictable that I had to use a DC adapter every time I used the monitor… so every shoot!

So I did what most people who are on facebook, twitter, linkedin, flickr, would do… I tweeted about it. This is what I wrote:

justin_carlson
12:02pm, Mar 01
The problem is that I’ve had 4 SmallHD batteries, 3 have died and the 4th only lasts 20 min now. Great monitor, shoddy batteries.

But what happened next was completely unexpected. I had stepped away from my computer for about 30 minutes, and when I came back I had a new email and voicemail. So I picked up my phone to see who called… it was SmallHD. Someone at the company had read my post, found my contact info from me first order and gave me a call to apologize for my experience. He also went on to say that the first shipment of batteries they received from their supplier were faulty and that he’d be shipping 2 more batteries out to me today. Wow.

Next, I checked my email. And there it was. My email notification from UPS showing that I had a package coming from North Carolina and that I would receive it in 2 days. Double Wow! Especially considering that I live in Vancouver, Canada and there’s extra charges associated with shipping something that fast across the border.

So in the end, SmallHD really never made that much money off of me considering all the extra running around they did in order to correct my battery issues. But as for a long term investment in me as a customer? I’m hooked. They will definitely be getting my business again and again… especially if they come out with a HDSDI monitor that accepts a D-Tap!

A couple weeks ago Julian Carlson asked us to make a short overview video of the product his company (iON Security) sells; the iON Micra & iON Plunger. This is one of the product overview video’s we made for him that day.