The official Tron trailer came out, looks really strong, can’t wait to see what else they’ll put strips of colored neon on in the movie. I’m excited about this as I was Dark Knight and that became a definite favorite of mine when it comes to action films. I can see the storyboard not being the best but the vehicles i’m sure will make up for it.
I did it. I am now a very proud owner of the Canon 5DMKII. It took months (years) of deliberation (pretty much since Scott wrote this article) and I finally pulled the trigger. I know the rumors are swirling about Mark IIIs and the etc, but once I heard about the upcoming 24fps firmware update I decided it was time. No more waiting. I’ve been shooting on a Nikon D40 since I started school and it was definitely time for an upgrade. (Though I still love the SB 600 flash — took the photo above)
As soon as I pulled it out of the box I was in awe. People say that Canons feel cheaper due to the construction materials, but I disagree. This thing feels like it could level a small village if thrown at the proper angle. Pair the body with the kit lens (24-105) and you have one serious piece of machinery. I purchased through Adorama because they seemed to have the best package deal. Just about everyone sells the body for $2499 at the moment; Adorama throws in a shoulder bag and a 16GB card. (Update: Or at least they used to…it must have been a temporary special price because now that package is listed higher. Keep an eye out in case it comes around again.)
My shots so far have been decent. Honestly I’ve only had it for a few days and have yet to really take it for a photography spin. I’ve mainly been experimenting with the HD video feature (a large part of why I bought the camera). After numerous videos of my shoes and other random subjects I decided to test it out in a music video scenario. Nothing crazy, just a acoustic performance like I usually do on Youtube (till now I’ve been shooting on an embarrassingly old MiniDV camcorder that is almost twice the size of the Canon). You can view the result here.
An unexpected issue with the completion of that video was the post-production file format mess. Apparently Canon had no interest in making things easy on us (although that looks like it will change this month). I ended up following the steps outlined here on Vincent Laforet’s blog with great success. I imported to the desktop, converted H.264 to Apple Prores (tanked my drive space), imported to Final Cut, sent to Color and back, exported using Quicktime H.64 compression, then uploaded to Youtube. Kind of a long roundabout process, but things went smoothly. As is true for the still shots as well, you immediately notice how much more control you have over the image in editing mode. Edits that used to crunch up image quality or produce unwanted noise no longer do so at all. The picture is so clean that you can tweak away to your heart’s content without ever losing the integrity of the image.
As I said, I’m just getting my feet wet with this thing and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I field test it a lot more. I’ll be going to Japan in May and am looking at that trip as a great opportunity to take thousands and thousands of pictures and crash my hard drive with absurd amounts of footage. As I continue to experiment with this wonderful object I’ll put together a more complete review. In the meantime, for my sake, cross your fingers Canon *doesn’t* come out with any shiny new cameras anytime soon.
I’ve seen Deru play a few shows with Tycho, he always gets a crowd going with what some people might call IDM but it can’t be you know why because girls dance to Deru and girls don’t dance to IDM. This is definitely for fans of older Lusine but with a bit more noise, damage and darkness.
Osborne’s Afrika is a classic on Spectral Sound, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to take on a remix of it since its such a killer track originally. Recently though Bullion stepped up the challenge with luscious results.
Everyone probably has this Jose Gonzalez cover of The Knife’s Heartbeats, I just felt like the blog would be naked without it archived somewhere.
Animal Collective’s Panda Bear collabing with anyone seems like a good idea but after hearing him over a flat 4/4 it kind of makes me think not, I love both Panda Bear and Pantha Du Prince but this remix is just a wee bit off but the video has a nice treatment and is pretty entertaining.
After watching the Winter Olympics I found this History of Ski Aerial Acrobatics pretty amusing. The whole thing is basically just a bloopers reel of guys eating it off of jumps. Towards the end they start nailing the landings though and the super-8 style film is pure vintage goodness. Check the awesome lens flare at 3:24.
Video Link | Via Bruno Aeberli
I remember when Broken Social Scene came thru Detroit for the first time, I helped run their merch booth for them before they even got big[yeah yeah yeah music nerd phrase right there], I was geeked to do it, Kevin Drew even bought me a Heineken and I kept the bottle until someone told me that was taken it too far haha [there you all go, my most pathetic fan boy moment].
BSS is probably the only band I could watch live for more than 2.5 hours (yes even Radiohead, I could probably not handle Yorke for that long, it would ruin it for me), so i’m happy to hear their back on tour (below are the tour dates) and a new album is suppose to drop May 4th. Here is a link to the FREE single called World Sick. Enjoy!
Broken Social Scene tour:
03-14 Elkton, FL – Harvest of Hope
03-18 Austin, TX – Stubb’s BBQ
03-19 Austin, TX – The Parish
05-01 San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore
05-03 Los Angeles, CA – Henry Fonda Theatre
05-07 New York, NY – Webster Hall
05-13 London, England – Brixton Academy
05-14 Minehead, England – All Tomorrow’s Parties
05-17 London, England – Heaven
05-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg
05-19 Cologne, Germany – Burgerhaus Stollwerck
05-21 Paris, France – La Maroquinerie
05-23 Linz, Austria – LinzFest
05-24 Berlin, Germany – Kesselhaus
05-27 Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Festival
05-29 George, WA – Sasquatch
06-19 Toronto, Ontario – Toronto Island
If you’ve been following this whole lo-fi lazy summer meets surf rock movement with bands like Real Estate, Washed Out, The Young Friends,Small Black, etc. there is a whole range of tones and tempos. One band that needs more releases out is this Beach Fossils group which I think has some great guitar parts, i’ll keep you updated on new material by them since they sound pretty promising.
Sbtrkt is one of the guys that has hit me over email with tracks, I really love his production work, he has a line list of releases this year and one that really impressed my ears was his remix for Modeselektor, looking forward to the vinyl.
If you’ve read the blog for awhile now you know I love Lusine, I suggested him and Hatchback to remix Tycho awhile back for Coastal Brake. This single which came out this week shows off more of his new direction of using a lot more female vocals which is the perfect follow up the his Two Dots single.
Below is the new Jonsi(singer of Sigur Ros) music video, I like his direction, he definitely stays with his sound and is pretty fearless visually.
Jónsi – Go Do from Jónsi on Vimeo.
You may have seen this Carl Sagan video floating around which is a remix done by Colorpulse that Mux Mool shared with me awhile ago that I loved. Recently, Mux got parts and remixed the song with great results, below is his remix of the remix for the ISO50 blog, feel free to share it.
DOWNLOAD for FREE: Mux Mool remix / Colorpulse remix
From Square America — the same people who brought us the excellent “IBM Slides: 1975” — comes this set of images depicting what seems to be a Moose Lodge-sponsored neighborhood watch program of some sort. I love hand-set type like that; so perfectly imperfect.
Also love the name, reminds me of this.