A good friend and colleague of mine tosses me links to the latest technologies and rumors in camera tech all the time, and after seeing this one, I decided to share it on here-
a. Its Nerdy
b. It Film related
c. This one (as geeky and awesome as it is) pisses me off in particular.
Today he sent me an article that describes a camera lens system that makes it so you can choose your focal length AFTER you’ve captured the image. Yes. I am not making that up…
Read the short article and watch the demo over at Engadget and see what I mean.
So why is this incredible invention a source of pent up aggravation and possible frustration? You see… I work as an independent contractor for Video/Film production, my job is to produce commercials, infomercials, industrial video, etc. for a wide base of clientele. Being independent comes with its price, most of the time- that price is actually money, and the cost of finding work.
More often than not- a corporate fat cat will say to his or herself “you know, I’d like video for our website, or a television commercial for the TV… but I have NO DESIRE WHATSOEVER to pay money to get a finished product…” (its strange how, marketing is SO important to a business, but nobody ever wants to pay for it) So, that’s when they come to someone like me to get ideas… bait the hook with the promise of cash… then ‘decide’ last minute that their nephew has a camera and a computer with windows movie maker on it, and they’ll justget him to do it for free. This invention is going to be just one more (HUGE) nail in the coffin.
We live in a world where literally anyone who owns a cell phone can make a HIGH DEFINITION movie! Until recently- the only thing that really seperated ‘professionals’ from the nephews of the world was the fact that we had made an investment in the required equipment that it took to make a video have that ‘professional’ look. My frustration is that the release of each new tech is that once its released- these corporate philibusters are going to have one more reason to not shell out a little bit of money for a high quality product… and the pattern of new tech is that its getting more and more affordable for the regular consumer- that line between prosumer, and regular joe is fading fast.
On the other side of the coin though- is the new release of tech like this, makes it cheaper for ‘professionals’ to produce, thus making it so they can ask for less money- for a higher quality product. A lot of us independents are one man shows- because we can’t afford to hire crews and rent equipment, so, the release of this kind of tech is potentially another way for me to speed up the turn around on production, which is beneficial to everyone involved from client to workforce.