Meeting Recap 11.05.2008

Hey everybody! We had a great meeting this past Wednesday. If you haven’t attended the last few months of MIVA, you’ve really missed out. This time, Prem Mukherjee from Arising Images shared awesome secrets from his business, and Panasonic and ROSCOR spent the remainder of the evening giving us the low down on their HD cameras.

First off, don’t forget to plan for the Christmas Part at Deluca’s (Warren and Inkster) on December 2, 2008. Members of MIVA are free and their (1) guest/spouse is $13 (Like a really great dinner for the cost of a Subway Sub!). More details to follow, keep checking the site.

Next, we were honored by the presence of Prem Mukherjee of Arising Images Photography. If you haven’t met Prem, you should. He’s one of the top netting photographers in the country (~$11,000/wedding) and a super nice guy. He shoots with his wife, Cheridy using Canon camera bodies.

There is no way we can cover all Prem talked about. It was a very valuable discussion about his business like: how he shoots, what he shoots, and how he makes his images pop in post. One of the secrets of his success is attending group meetings like MIVA on the Photography side, and making sure you attend conferences and training seminars to keep you at the top of your specialty.

He’s also a montage creator. He showed us one of his montages with an array of cool pics he’s done over the years. So, we probably won’t get much business from Prem in the slideshow biz, oh well. But, it was a great production. He recommended a great place to get royalty free music at: Triple Scoop Music.

Here, you go, another one of his secrets: Be Yourself! Prem gets high end clients by driving a Jaguar? Nope, a Chevy. He and Cheridy are people of faith and like to use their money for more important causes than expensive clothes and things. Basically, just be who you are and figure out how to get your product to where it needs to be. You don’t need all the expensive gadgets out there to be successful, be passionate and love what you do.

There is a lot more to share about Prem’s time with us, but it’s just not going to happen in a recap. If you want more, leave a comment and we might do another post. Make sure you attend every meeting if possible, because they are great!

Panasonic finished our three month exploration of the HD/HDV cameras produced by Sony, Canon, and Panasonic. Shawn Watts from ROSCOR helped to coordinate our presenters. Our main presenter was Michael Caporale who is an independent consultant from Cincinnati (E-mail: varicap@mac.com). Tom Parrish represented Panasonic and is the Midwest Sales Account Manager (E-mail: parrisht@us.panasonic.com). Any technical questions about Panasonic cameras could be directed to Michael, and any sales questions could be sent to Tom. As with all manufacturers, leasing and purchasing info can be obtained through ROSCOR.

Michael spoke about the differences between the Panasonic AJ-HPX2700, AG- HPX170, and AG-HMC150… And there are a bunch. These are great cameras and can record in a whole slew of different codecs.

Here is a breakdown:

AJ-HPX2700 New Varicam
Can shoot in: DVCProHD, AVCI 50, AVCI 100 (Roughly D5 equivalent- 10bit recording)– Only looks within the frame to determine compression (Intraframe)

(~$4800) AG-HPX170 shoots in: DVCPro, DVCPro50, DVCProHD

($3400) AG-HMC150 shoots in AVC (MPEG-4) Cam which uses Interframe compression- references other frames to determine compression. This is the same compression used for Bluray players. The one downside is that you have to transcode before editing (FCP users).

They all store the date on P2 cards. There are currently card capacities up to 64Gb and it is capable of data transfer rates up to 800 Mbps.

New Features of the HPX170

*Smaller lighter no tape transport/5 year warranty
*Wider lens
*Higher resolution LCD window/finder
*Focus/iris ring switch
*ND Filters 1/4 1/16, 1/64
*3 user buttons– delete last clip, increment framerates
*Waveform/Vectorscope
*Dynamic Range Stretching DRS 60i only
*Navigation Controls
*HDSDI Out
*SD Card slot moved to be with P2 slots
*Focus assists: Histogram, Zoom, EVF Detail, line graph and manual assist
*11 more variable frame rates than in 200a
*Can write metadata to SD card from camera
*Computer locking slot
*Better low light performance and lower noise levels than 200
*Downloadable scene files

Please search on-line for information regarding the HPX2700. It’s a really awesome camera, and you’ll have lots of friends if you’re able to pick one of these up.

Please join us in January when we are planning to have a night of color grading. Specialized experts will be able to walk us through the process no matter what platform or editing software you currently own. Keep checking back to the website for more information.

Have a great November, and Happy Thanksgiving. Peace and safety to you and your families.