My New Camera - The Sony EX-3

I finally made the leap - the leap into HD. I just got my EX3 and I have to say...it's pretty awesome.

For those of you who know me, I've been shopping for a camera for some time now. I narrowed my search down to two cameras - the Panasonic HPX-300 and the Sony EX-3. Both are great cameras, and the decision was a tough one to make. But after spending time with both cameras, and thinking about what would be the smartest buy for me and 100 Acre Films, the Sony EX-3 was the winner.

Both cameras have some great features and some drawbacks. Both use CMOS sensors, which is a blessing and a curse, and both are tapeless (good) using expensive media to record on (bad). The HPX-300 has a 1/3" sensor, but the camera can record AVC-I which is a great codec. The Sony has a 1/2" sensor, but it records with an interframe MPEG codec - good, but not as good as AVC-I.

No camera is perfect. They all have things that can sometimes drive us nuts. I think that when you decide to buy a camera you really have to look at your needs, your workflow, and your budget. All of these should be primary factors in your purchase decision. For me, both cameras fit into my budget, both fit perfectly into my workflow, and for what I do - they are exactly what I need. But I felt that the Sony would serve me better then the Panasonic.

If you'd like to know more about the cameras, or you'd like to know more about how I made my decision, let me know and I'll share what I know and learned about both cameras.

Here's a short video I put together with footage shot with my new camera. There's some color-correction in a few shots (I didn't adjust the white balance on some shots), and but overall I left the footage as-is.

A Day at the Park from Eric Addison on Vimeo.

Some Interesting Articles...

The ProVideo Coalition website is a wealth of information. If you don't have it bookmarked, you should. There are some really smart people that post great articles there.

I came across a few articles that I thought I would pass along to you all. The first article is about using both Premiere Pro and Avid for editing, and using the speech transcription tool in Premiere Pro along with ScriptSync in Avid. While the writer, Steve Hullfish, prefers to finish his edit in Avid, I would stick with Premiere Pro for the entire edit. But I think the article highlights something that Adobe has going for it - it works well with others. Someone correct if I'm wrong, but outside using an EDL, I don't know another NLE that allows you to open up project files from a different NLE, and let you save out a project file that you can open in another NLE (just for Avid at the moment). "Big deal, Addison!" you might say. "Why would I ever want to take my project out of ___?" Well, here's one such example.

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/shullfish/story/speech_search_meets_scriptsync

Another great article is about shooting greenscreen. Alex Lindsay has wrirten two great posts on the subject, and if you do any greenscreen work, you should definitely give them a read.

part 1
http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/alindsay/story/greenscreen_primer_part_1/

part 2

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/alindsay/story/greenscreen_primer_part_2/

I hope these help out some of you. Let me know if you see something great out there, and I'll try and post it here for everyone to read.

San Diego Premiere Pro User Group

With all the Final Cut Pro editors having user groups, I felt like it was about time for those of us who edit with something different (and dare I say...better?) to have a group.

With that in mind, I'm putting together the San Diego Premiere Pro User Group. I've received the blessing from Adobe, and I've set up a site you can visit to join and get updated information - http://groups.adobe.com/groups/370282e160/summary

My goal for the group is to expand the knowledge of we Premiere Pro editors, as well as form a network where we can all call on each other when we need help. I have to be honest - there aren't as many of us PPro editors out there, and we should do all we can to help each other out.

One thing I want to try and do every meeting is have a member show something they created, and talk about how they did it - show the workflow they used, how they used Premiere Pro (and After Effects, Photoshop, whatever...) to create their video. I've learned so much by listening to others talk about how they did things, how their creative process works, and how they efficiently used their tools.

So, for those of you who edit with Premiere Pro and live in the SoCal area, I hope you can make it. It should be a lot of fun, and I hope you can walk away from the meeting with some good tips for making your work better. And who knows - you may make some new friends.

The first meeting will be on October 29th at 7pm. For more information you can check the website, or just contact me. If you want to attend, please let me know so I can get an accurate head count. See you then!