The mediageek’s World Toy Camera Day adventure

Today was the 2011 edition of World Toy Camera Day, an annual celebration of plastic cameras that were never intended for serious use. But in this era of powerful digital cameras and endless Photoshopping, many people, like myself, have embraced the imperfection and random chance introduced by toy cameras that refuse to let you control their functions like a good SLR would. To me WTCD is not anti-SLR or a jeremiad against careful, well-planned and executed photography. Rather, is a day to embrace that there are many approaches to photography and art, and sometimes focusing only on what’s in the viewfinder without any ability to adjust exposure, zoom or even focus, can be refreshing and fun.

I’ve celebrated WTCD in some form for about five years now. I have only a small stable of toy cameras. While I greatly enjoy them, I don’t need to have too many, because it’s a rare toy that performs that differently than the others. Unfortunately, as I packed up for today’s WTCD excursion I found that one of my planned companions, my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, was a little broken. It’s take up reel seemed not to be moving in tandem with the thumbwheel, meaning I would be hard pressed to exposure more than one shot. The Viv is much beloved by toy camera enthusiasts because it has a unique combination of utter plastic crappiness combined with a very wide 22mm lens that flares like hell when the sun is anywhere near it. I bought mine for a buck at a thrift store. I believe its previous owner probably got it for free as a freebie gift with a magazine subscription.

The UW&S became a cult item after Vivitar quit making them, driving up used and old-stock prices above $30, which is absurd for a camera that has the build quality of a gumball machine toy. Now there are Japanese knockoffs available in cute colors for about $30, but I’m not sure I’m willing to drop that kind of coin. I may attempt a fix of my UW&S, but this afternoon wasn’t the time.

I went looking for a couple of other toys and found neither of them was functioning correctly either. My Paul Frank Julius the Monkey camera actually has a motor wind mechanism and fresh batteries didn’t seem to make it run. A friend gave me a version of the famous Time Magazine camera last year. I had yet to put film through it and found this afternoon that it was good for only one shutter fire. Maybe it just needs some WD-40. But again, time was awasting, so I put it back in the box.

Luckily the wonderful Blackbird, Fly 35mm TLR my wife gave me last year is still in fine functioning condition. So I loaded her up with film and was ready to go.

However, I do like to have at least two cameras on me for World Toy Camera Day. That’s because some shots need a different focal length or sometimes I keep different film in the different cameras, sometimes loading up one with black and white an another with color. The Blackbird, Fly takes photos in a portrait angle, unlike the landscape position of most 35mm cameras. It has a moderately wide lens at 33mm, which means you need to get close to your subject.

Without another film toy camera at my disposal I decided that this would be the first year I’d allow myself a digital camera. Luckily I have a digital camera that pretty much fits the bill as a toy. My Aiptek Pencam SD has long been out of production, sporting just 1.3 megapixels of resolution, but conveniently recording photos to an SD card, making it easier to transfer to a computer. It’s lens is tiny and plastic, and it was never marketed as a serious camera. Instead it was a cheap drugstore alternative to much more expensive digital cameras back when it was new in the early 2000s.

Now equipped with my Blackbird, Fly loaded with 400 speed Walgreen’s film and my Pencam SD I headed out to North Lincoln Ave in Chicago to celebrate WTCD with a few hours of photowalking. I truly enjoy having the time to just walk and take photos of interesting things I find. As I focus on locating subjects and then composing pictures all my other thoughts and worries melt away. It’s very relaxing and satisfying.

I have to take my film in to get processed, but my Pencam SD photos are already edited. In the spirit of not Photoshopping, these pics are unedited. In particular, I did no cropping whatsoever. The viewfinder of the Pencam is only sorta accurate, but to crop later would for me spoil the spirit of WTCD, which is to embrace the lack of complete control. You can check out my growing set of WTCD 2011 photos at flickr.

Should lecture capture be used to relieve classroom over crowding?

This is my newest column for the October-November issue of Streaming Media Magazine:
At the beginning of this school year, Echo360 Inc. CEO Fred Singer wrote an editorial for The Huffington Post extolling the virtues of lecture capture. He observed that the lean economy “won’t allow institutions to simply erect new buildings and hire qualified staff to meet rising needs” but that lecture capture can assist because it’s “like DVR’ing class with full playback functionality.” Singer went on to argue that “lecture capture addresses overcrowding by freeing seats,” permitting students who prefer to view an online lecture to skip class.

He also cited studies that pointed to higher student achievement and even better classroom attendance resulting from students reviewing video materials outside of the classroom.

Nevertheless, my interest was piqued by Singer’s argument that lecture capture can substitute for the in-class experience for a student who prefers watching online. It’s not something I often hear in the promotion of lecture capture. While companies list distance learning as a core use case, they take care not to imply that recordings of classes in on-the-ground curricula should substitute for attendance.

Justified or not, the relationship between attendance and lecture recording is a sensitive issue. When there’s resistance to adopting lecture capture, the risk of encouraging would-be slackers to cut class is a prime objection. Thus, I was surprised that Singer would be so blunt.
Read the rest at StreamingMedia.com

trashcanland – screen caps from your 80s childhood

Those of who enjoy the retro video curation of Network Awesome or the VHS mining of Everything Is Terrible, but don’t want to commit whole minutes to watching whole clips might like a tumblr I just stumbed on to, trashcanland, which strips minds the impacted VHS landscape to unearth the best 1/30 of the second.

The site is the work of DJ Daniel J. Cashman who seems to acquire a lot of VHS tapes. Then he takes screenshots and posts them to his tumblr. Sounds simple, but the secret is in the editing. Just you see, when you’re on page 48 and you’re still clicking to dig deeper, you’ll know you’re stuck.

Not everything is a still VHS screen cap. Some are also animated GIFs, and other found detritus.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Behind Network Awesome – An interview with Jason Forrest

As I mentioned the other day, Network Awesome creator Jason Forrest dropped me a nice “thank you” email after I wrote about finding and enjoying his video curation site and channel. I asked him for an interview to learn more about NA, and much to my luck, he agreed. So here is our email exchange where he tells me more about the creation and raison d’être of Network Awesome.

Mediageek: How did Network Awesome start and how long has it been online?

Jason Forrest: I had the basic idea for Network Awesome last year in the summer of 2010. After working out the idea for a few months I reached out to Greg Sadetsky to program it. After an intense few days we began work on the site and 6 weeks later it went live on Jan 1, 2011.

Jason Forrest

JF: I started N.A. because I realized that there was a hole in the programming provided by the TV networks. I dislike current TV trends and wanted to watch more interesting content – most if it vintage. I also became frustrated by the uneven quality of video on YouTube and realized that a curatorial voice was missing in the landscape.

Mg: How many people are contributing to or working on NA?

JF: That’s the crazy part- we have 91 volunteers involved from all over. Most of them are writers for our magazine (60+) but we also have 20 video curators and then video producers, PR people and a few more biz dev advisers, etc. One of our most recent gang members is Isaac who is running our Tumblr site and doing a phenomenal job at it! We get 2-5 more volunteers every day!

Mg: How did you recruit so many people to work on Network Awesome in such a short amount of time?

JF: Because we program content that’s both appealing and unique it has been met with excitement by a certain type of person who sees this as an opportunity to share something they are passionate about. We’ve been able to build a great team largely by answering our emails and actually giving a damn about people! haha! The writers we work with want to get involved because they like the idea of writing about such interesting content. The video curators get to share what they love and everyone else gets involved because they think it’s cool. Also it’s just fun!

Mg: The approach of NA reminds me of eclectic video programs from the 80s, like the much missed Night Flight on USA network or the Z Channel cable network in LA. Were these an inspiration?

JF: Massively so! In fact we actually began Network Awesome Magazine as a direct homage to the Z Channel Magazine!

I’d say that the birth of the cable networks was and is massively influential on how we program our content and branding. If anything I think the current era of broadcast companies have lost that spirit and could use a touch of finding it again. (Maybe it’s already happening with MTV and Nickelodeon bringing back shows from the 90s?)

Mg: Were you influenced by other retro video sites, such as Everything Is Terrible, even though your approach is different?

JF: Not really. To be honest much of what we designed N.A. in reaction too was YouTube itself. We never considered ourselves to be a blog or even “just a website” but always as a TV channel. We think the main concept of N.A. is in the curatorial vision of our programming, and that can scale to pretty much any format.

Mg: Network Awesome’s organizing principle seems a lot like a broadcast schedule, or a DJ set, especially since the videos play in sequence. Why did you choose this format?

JF: Well, it’s amazing that you say DJ set, as I’m a professional musician / DJ and have been for many years. I actually never had considered it that way before – but of course you’re right!

We try to look at our site from the users perspective first and foremost. We try to present the most basic and clear way to deliver our content to our viewers and we’re always trying to improve. There are MANY improvements coming soon!

But to answer your question, I think traditional broadcast got many things right in concern to who people want to watch video and that online video changed these habits. We consider Network Awesome to be between the two and the trends in our viewership point to its relative success!

Mg: Why do you think someone would come to a site like Network Awesome instead of just go browse YouTube?

JF: We get asked this often and we fully agree that anyone can find anything on YouTube just as we have. But the problem is the time to find it and also the process of discovery can be annoying. With our channel you get all the correct links in the correct order plus information on the show and possibly even a article explaining it.

Beyond that you also watch the combined curatorial power of 20 people. When we focus on a subject we’re able to find a staggering array of amazing material – most of which one might never even know they were looking for it. This is sort of a major point, because we realize every day that the content we’re broadcasting has been largely abandoned by broadcast TV but it remains powerful, relevant, and even popular!

Mg: Who creates your retro-tastic video bumpers and IDs? How are they created?

JF: Joey Mansfield and myself [create the bumpers and IDs]. I established the basic branding but Joey is reinventing it all. I’m actually excited to see his emails because it means he probably made something that’s gonna make me jump up and down! haha!

The bumpers are a crucial part of the concept of N.A. because while people dislike commercials, they don’t mind the interruption or pause in the programming.

Mg: Network Awesome seems to rely a lot on content that other folks have uploaded to YouTube. Do you worry that some of it might disappear, either because the person who uploaded it takes it down, or because the copyright owner issues a takedown notice?

No! We think that’s GREAT! It acts as a natural erosion for us to keep our archive as manageable as possible. A take-down also means that the rights holder doesn’t want it there and we only want to point to video that people want online. Our archive is constantly evolving and we like the life it gives the site.

Mg: What are the criteria for videos to be featured on NA?

JF: They have to be interesting.

Mg: Is there anything you’d like to feature, but can’t find?

JF: Tons of stuff, but at the same time YouTube is literally an ocean of content. We have over 17,000 videos curated in our system, but that’s absolutely nothing in comparison to what is uploaded every hour.

Mg: What’s your most favorite video that’s been featured on Network Awesome so far?

JF: Wow, there’s so many, but it the moment it’s these 3:

Mg: What’s your favorite TV show from when you were a kid?

JF: Ultraman! And amazingly enough – it’s not on YouTube… haha!

A big thanks go to Jason both for putting so much effort into starting Network Awesome, and for taking some time for this interview. I’m looking forward to seeing NA develop.

Admiring Sony’s new NEX-7 but easily resisting the urge

Sony announced a pile of new digital cameras yesterday. I was quite pleased to hear about them, despite the fact that I have no immediate plans to buy one. As I’ve shared here, I’m very happy with my Sony NEX-5 compact interchangeable lens camera. I like having a cam that’s the size of an advanced point-and-shoot, but with a dSLR-sized sensor that delivers better overall quality, and much better low light performance without a flash.

Sony announced a high-end NEX camera, a “prosumer” version if you will, called the NEX-7. I must admit that I do have a little bit of camera lust because it sports a very high resolution 25 megapixel sensor, along with an actual electronic viewfinder, inside a body a little bit bigger than my NEX-5. However, I don’t really know what I’d do with 25 megapixels, since that kind of resolution is mostly useful for very large prints, which I don’t make.

More importantly, I just don’t need a new camera, and I’m resistant to the perpetual upgrade mentality that our contemporary consumer electronics culture perpetuates. Not a single thing about my NEX-5 has changed since Tuesday, the day before the NEX-7 was announced. Like all tools, there are little niggles that bug me about the NEX-5 that might be better on the NEX-7. But I honestly can’t think of one concrete way in which my photography would improve if I only replaced my NEX-5 with the NEX-7.

There’s a oft-repeated adage in photography that “it’s the photographer, not the camera.” (Or as photography blogger & gadfly Ken Rockwell puts it, “it’s not about your camera.”) In general terms, I most certainly agree. An experienced photographer knows a camera well enough to know how to get the picture he needs from it. Many great cameras have been used to take crappy, or just mundane, photos.

An experienced photographer also knows when a particular tool is not right for the job. But this caveat has more to do with significant differences than minor upgrades. For instance, a 110 film camera is likely an inferior choice to shoot a photo for a billboard as compared to a medium-format camera with a much larger negative. That’s a fairly extreme example, but the idea should be clear.

Looking at the NEX-7, even though there seem to be operational improvements–like the addition of two customizable control dials–that may make it easier to control the camera, I can’t say that will necessarily result in better photographs than what I’m taking now. Just because I might want it doesn’t necessarily mean I need it, or that it will even be that much of a real improvement in my actual photography. My photography will improve more if I just go out and thoughtfully shoot more photos than if I save up for or buy a new camera instead.

So then, why do I care about the NEX-7? Frankly, I’m glad to know that Sony seems to be committed to further developing the NEX line of cameras. Along with the 7 Sony also announced three new E-mount lenses that fit the NEXes. Despite the fact that many photographers upgrade cameras with every change of season, for me a digital camera is not an insignificant purchase. I like a camera body to last me years, not months. Therefore I would prefer not to feel like someone who purchased a brand new $500 HP Touchpad a month ago, only to see the whole product line now discontinued and clearance priced at 99 bucks.

Even if Sony did abandon the NEX line it wouldn’t be the end of the world. My camera and lenses would still work, and I don’t really need to buy that many more lenses or accessories. Nevertheless, I am glad to know that there’s a good chance that in five years or more Sony will have an up-to-date NEX model camera available should I need to replace mine or upgrade.

I will continue shooting with my NEX-5, feeling just a little more secure that my favorite little camera isn’t an orphan.

Speaking of my NEX-5, I recently purchased a cheap and fun little lens that easily adapts to the NEX, and that won’t work with a bigger dSLR. That will be the subject of my next photography post.

Blogs still rule

After publishing my post on Network Awesome I received a nice “thank you” email from the site’s founder, Jason Forrest. Jason is an electronic musician who has also worked under the name “Donna Summer” and has held down an on-air shift at the legendary freeform station WFMU.

He agreed to do an email interview with me and so I sent along my questions. I hope to hear back from him soon so I can share his responses.

Sometimes I forget how blogging can help connect people with similar interests. Sure, I might have heard from Jason if I’d only tweeted about Network Awesome (and I did), or posted on facebook (yep, that too) or posted on a discussion forum (nope, didn’t do that). But a blog post still wields a bit more weight. First off, it’s less ephemeral than a tweet, which is mostly lost after a week or two. Furthermore, a blog is longer-form, so you can more fully develop an idea, with richer examples and links than 140 characters or a facebook status update permit.

Twenty years ago folks into retro TV shows might have been able to meet via zines, but it would certainly take longer, with correspondence happening over snail mail. With a blog someone can find you with a simple Google search. Or if you’re writing about someone else’s website, they might find you by checking their referral logs, which list all the sites that referred readers to a site.

In any event, this nice little happenstance further encourages me to keep up with my blogging resumption here at mediageek.

Network Awesome – Curating YouTube for the video geek

Man, I could lose days browsing this site, Network Awesome. The site editors pour through YouTube finding the best retro videos that bring me back to my prime video viewing years as a teenager and young adult in the 1980s and early 90s.

Home video and cable television were just becoming mainstream in those days. Cable-only channels were a relatively new phenomenon, as were premium channels like HBO and Showtime. Commercial basic cable channels were low-budget affairs, desperate to fill a 24-hour programming grid in the days before infomercials became the default late night program stream. The boom in home video also meant that video stores were similarly desperate to fill their shelves with content to supplement limited supplies of expensive Hollywood blockbusters.

What this all added up to was a goldmine of b-, c-, d- and f-movie grade schlock pushed onto our screens. The kind of stuff a teenager with a VCR and cable just eats up. But also amid all the low budget dreck was the truly experimental and weird. To programmers and buyers it kind of didn’t matter as long as it was cheap.

Thanks to the widespread bending of copyright laws and YouTube much of these riches have been mined and uploaded to the interwebs. The problems for middle-aged geeks like me is sorting through the videos of cats, backyard wrestling and other truly low-effort detritus to find the real gems. That’s where a good curator like Network Awesome comes in.

Copping an early 80s aesthetic for its bumpers, “station IDs” and title intros, Network Awesome feels like watching Night Flight or late night HBO in 1982. The short programs, culled from YouTube, feature everything from old Space Ghost Coast to Coast episodes to trailers for awesomely bad and weird movies.

Going to the site is truly like tuning in a fantastic underground cable channel, because the videos just start up in a program stream, just as if you’d tuned in a TV channel. Nothing is started in progress, and you can jump around. But it’s better to experience it as a video mix tape, enjoying the short Network Awesome teasers, promos and bumpers sprinkled interstitially.

Complementing the TV channel is a magazine that I’ve only started to check out, featuring essays considering the programs and themes found on the video stream. Network Awesome is definitely one of those sites that is so well conceived and executed that I really wished I’d thought of it first.

Video and the power of connection

This is my latest column for Streaming Media Magazine:

These days we all do it. We meet someone new in person or online and then we do a search of his or her name on Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Perhaps we want to stay in touch, or maybe we’re interested in learning more about what that person does. But I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only person who is a little disappointed when I don’t find a profile picture. We don’t just want to read about someone; we are naturally drawn to photographs and want to know what someone looks like. It helps us build a connection.

Obviously—at least to us video producers— video amplifies that connection by allowing us to see a person speak and act; it’s more like if we were in the same room together. This is the same reason why videoconferencing and video chatting have become popular technologies among both business users and consumers.

Read the rest at Streaming Media…

Surprised to enjoy my Panasonic ZS6 travel-zoom camera

Most serious photographers like having a pocket point-and-shoot camera to throw in their bag or keep in a pocket, so that they’re rarely without a camera. It’s the idea behind the adage, the best camera is the one you have with you.

However, if you are serious about photography you tend to like to have some manual control over your camera and the potential to obtain technically good pictures in a variety of conditions. My first digital camera was a point-in-shoot, Olympus Stylus 300, which I bought in 2003. It had no manual controls, but I wasn’t very good at using manual controls then anyway. I upgraded in 2005 to another Olympus, the Stylus 800, which jumped me to 8 megapixels, better ability to take low light pictures without a flash and manual controls. Then in 2008 I bought an Olympus 830 on eBay. It had a longer 5x zoom lens, but no manual controls. I gave the 800 to my wife, but it felt like the 830 was a step down in picture quality and control from the 800.

There are several models of point-and-shoot camera that offer that combo of compactness, manual control and good picture quality, but they’re also on the expensive end of the spectrum. And I’m cheap. But earlier this summer I found a camera deal that I’ve been quite satisfied with.

At the daily deal site woot.com I bought a Panasonic DMC-ZS6 for about $130. I was drawn to the camera’s long 12x zoom lens, combined with real manual controls, like aperture and shutter priority. It was a clearance because it’s a year-old model, and one that was primarily sold at warehouse stores like Costco. While the zoom is long, the widest point is a very nice 24mm equivalent. The camera is a member of what has come to be called the “travel zoom” class of cameras, offering long lenses in a compact package. However, the lens is not particularly fast, with a maximum aperture of f/3.3 at the widest, but a relatively fast f/4.9 at the full 12x zoom, which is better than the f/5.6 or f/6.3 you might find in other cameras.

The camera is little bigger than the most compact point-and-shoots, but I’ve found it to be no big deal to have in a bag. It’s not great for a pocket, but few cameras are. It’s still very compact for having such a long zoom. The optical image stabilization is also very effective, letting me take still sharp photos at the maximum zoom range.

A nice feature Panasonic has added to it’s travel-zoom cameras is the ability to extend the zoom range by reducing the pixel count. While many cameras offer a so-called “digital zoom” which really just blows up the picture like in Photoshop, Panasonic actually let’s you take a picture from patches of the center part of the sensor. The camera’s normal resolution is 12 megapixels, but you can take photos at 8 MP with a zoom of 14.7x, 5 MP at 18.8x or 3 MP at 23.4x. The effect is the same as cropping the photo later in your editing app, but in the field it’s nice to be able to just shoot it that way, seeing accurately on the screen what you’re going to get, without having to edit later. The quality is much better than a digital zoom if you don’t mind the smaller pixel count. For 4×6 prints or the web 8 MP or even 5 MP have plenty of resolution, and are good for even 5×7 or 8×10 prints.

I think the camera performs very well up to 400 ISO, and is quite acceptable even at 800 or 1600 ISO, provided you don’t underexpose. When it comes to exposure I find that the camera is pretty spot-on, requiring me to compensate only when exposure is typically challenging.

I’ve even used the camera to shoot a rock concert in a small theater and managed pretty reasonable results shooting from the middle of the place. Being able to set the exposure manually–fixing both the shutter and aperture–allowed me to get many more decent shots under low light and lots of action than if I had to rely on the camera to meter for each one.

I expected I would like the camera, but also thought that the compromises in terms of lens speed and size would keep it from being a constant companion. So I was surprised to find that it has become my grab and go camera, especially when I don’t want to think about selecting lenses or packing a kit.

Still, if I’m going to be more serious about my picture taking on an outing or trip I choose my Sony NEX-5, which is a bit bigger with a lens, but a much better performer until almost all conditions. But sometimes even the NEX is more camera than I want to carry, or I’m going somewhere I don’t want to worry about having a more expensive camera. In that case I don’t hesitate to bring my Panasonic ZS6.

Although it’s a 2010 model camera, you can still find the ZS6 online. You might not find it for as cheap as I got mine, but it does pop up at Woot and other deal sites with some regularity. Although I haven’t tried them, the Panasonic DMC-ZS5 and ZS7 are very similar cameras that ought to offer the same performance. Also, if you want a current model-year camera the Panasonic ZS8 and ZS10 should perform at least as well.

It is a great time to be cheap-skate photographer.

Benign neglect and recoverIng that feeling

Hello, blog. It’s been a while.

It’s a periodic thing where I neglect you for a while. We’ve been together for a decade, and had our ups and downs. I don’t mean to leave you all by your lonesome… But then… Excuses, excuses…. I do.

I do most of my writing these days over at Radio Survivor! generally twice a week. At RS you also get to enjoy the research, wisdom and insights of my co-bloggers Jennifer Waits and Matthew Lasar. Then every other month I poop out some wisdom for Streaming Media magazine. Finally, there’s the twitter. Unfortunately the trusty old media geek blog gets lost in that.

I would love to get back to the feeling I had when I first found blogging in 2000. Then I’d whip out blog posts in a few minutes, quick and snappy. Now I belabor them like mini theses. Instead of open up the browser and posting a quick link or thought, I feel like I have to write a super-useful, fully formed essay. And that attitude is kind of anti-blogging to begin with.

I want to lose this self-defeating attitude and get back to carefree blogging, both herenand at Radio Survivor.

However, this is not a promise. It is a desire. Writing this post on my shiny new iPad after eating my lunch is a first step. Otherwise my typical approach would have been to think about the post as I chew and swallow, making a mental note to write the post later when I’m at my computer, after work…. After I’ve washed the dishes and read some other blogs…. You get the point. The lack of activity here since freaking March is evidence for how that goes.

So, maybe this is a step forward, or maybe you won’t hear from me for another 5 months. Make your bets now.