Outbreak Preview

Swine Flu, H1N1, SARS, TB and a plethora of other contagious diseases are not in the news cycle too much these days. The economy and the upcoming elections seem to be dominating, but that doesn't mean that we should not be concerned with the spread of disease.

Last year we produced a video entitled "OUTBREAK: What Every Employee Should Know" with our friend Jan Decker of Crisis Management Consulting year as a response to the increasing threat of the spread of contagious disease because of bad hygiene and personal practices in the workplace.

At about 15 minutes in length, this video is a must for all employers and can be viewed in staff and employee meetings. You can purchase on-line at our collaborative website High Note Video. $39.95. Call directly for volume discounts 253-539-3438 (McKenna Video) or 253-261-2704 (Jan Decker) or to arrange an on-line viewing session.

Blessings,

Chris

Hearts for Zambia

We recently completed a small edit/subtitle/voiceover project for Hearts for Zambia. We were drawn to their mission and the children that this great charity helps. We encourage you to visit their site and learn more about what they do. Please consider how you might support their mission if you are touched as much as we were.

http://www.heartsforzambia.org/

Blessings,

Chris.

Chris McKenna Photography New Site

Many of you know that besides doing all that I do with video, I am also a professional photographer. I love photography just as much as I do video, but for very different reasons. I shoot weddings, portraits, sports, boudoir, etc.--just about anything with a willing subject.

For the last couple of years I have had 2 different websites. One of those websites was one that I was "renting" (at a very high annual rate I might add) and the other was one that I coded and was maintaining myself. Neither of those sites were working very well for us so we made the decision last year to scrap them both and get a new one live by February 1 of this year.

We had decided that we would hire a "professional" developer to take over the design and development since I have actual work to do, that is working for you. We had been working with another developer on our High Note Video site, but he had dropped the ball midway through that process so we looked for another. In December, I was approached by another fellow and since his rates were reasonable and his promises were high, we decided to go with him.

Well, sad to say that he dropped the ball, and dropped in big time. He kept making promise after promise after promise and he broke them all and missed all 7 of his self-imposed deadlines. So once again, I was forced to take over the design and development myself.

So after much adieu, I am pleased to announce that the new Chris McKenna Photography website is live and ready for business. I would encourage you to visit it, check out our galleries, comment on some of the more recent entries, and let us know if there is anything that we can do to help you out.

Blessings,

Chris

P.S. We are contemplating moving this blog over to the McKenna Video Services site. What do you think about that?

My Review of the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX9V

One of the newest point-and-shoot cameras to hit the market is the Sony Cybershot DSC-HX9V. It was so new, in fact, that the first 2 stores I went to to get it didn’t have any except the floor model-even though those stores were advertising it and said they had it in stock (what they wanted to do was get me into the store to buy it with a promise to deliver-that doesn’t fly in my book). Anyway, I am not going to bore you with the a lot of the the mundane technical details regarding the camera, because 1) if you are reading MY blog you probably wouldn’t care about all those details and 2) if you did understand them you may not care. You might be just interested in weather this is a good camera or not. Read on for my conclusion.

So, first of all this is not Sony’s flagship camera despite its price tag of $350. That honor is reserved for the Cybershot DSC-HX100V, but this camera is the highest-end camera Sony is releasing in its traditional all-in-one body. The HX9V is powered by en Exmor R CMOS sensor chip and boasts an impressive 16.2 megapixel resolution.

Sony claims that the camera has a 16X optical zoom. In my test, this was plenty for the everyday snapshot, but failed to offer sufficient zoom in my sports test. I felt that the zoom was very sluggish but from what I understand Sony will fix this with a firmware update.

The LCD screen in the back measured 3 inches-sufficient for most shooters. I used the camera in bright sunlight and found that the resolution and brightness to be wonderfully sufficient to see what I was doing (there is no viewfinder on this camera). The LCD is not a touch screen so all changes must be managed through the click wheel on the back.

One nice feature that this camera offers is the “panoramic” function which gives shooters the ability to capture almost a 180-degree field of view without having to work about stitching them together in Photoshop or other imaging program-the camera did that automatically! A couple photographs that I took with this camera are at the bottom of the post.

I found that the various picture settings were easy to navigate through and the camera provided good jpeg (JPG) image all around if you let the camera focus before you take the photograph (being a sports shooter I am always trying wanting to snap the camera before it was ready-my problem not the cameras). The scene settings were very easy to understand and dial in. But like with everything else, read the manual before trying to change the settings to something you don’t fully understand. And for the more advanced shooters, there is enough manual control to keep you happy.

One of the primary reasons I wanted to try this camera out was for the video function and in a word: adequate. Keep in mind that I am also a professional video shooter and editor so I was primarily interested in exporting the video out of the camera so I can edit it and then export my edited videos to DVD or other formats. So, let me rephrase with a couple more words: great for the everyday shooter. But use a tripod or your video will be as shaky as my examples below.

This camera shoots at 1920×1080 and smaller formats so the picture is crisp and clear. The colors were bright and vibrant and the audio was good. Sony’s website claims the video format at MP4, but it really shoots AVCHD. That allows for greater compression, thus saving memory space on the card and allowing for more photo’s and/or video. However, AVCHD minimizes what the user can do with it.

I was able to pull the video right off the memory card and upload it to Youtube (Test 1 below) and Facebook without any problems whatsoever. I was also able to use the software that Sony provides with the camera to upload directly to Youtube (test 2) but the software truncated the clip and did not upload it in its entirety (the girl wearing the #6 black shirt actually scores at the end of the clip).

In using the software that comes with the camera I was able to burn my clips directly to a DVD from a Windows based PC, but that function does not exist on a Mac (Sony may address this in future updates). In fact, I couldn’t do anything with the clips on my Mac. I couldn’t play them, I couldn’t convert them to a more usable format, import them into my video editor-nothing. I did not try any of that on my PC as I was so frustrated with the lack of Mac functionality with the video that I gave up. And as a sidenote, on the DVD I could hear the lens motor working every time I either pulled the zoom in or out. That was annoying and would be completely unacceptable if the video was something more meaningful than a soccer game.

And for what its worth, I did not use one of Sony’s propriety memory cards that the clerk was pushing on me. I purchased a high-speed 8 gigabyte SD card as an alternative and saved myself a few bucks. I didn’t have any problems with the SD card, but would have loved to run a comparison nonetheless.

So in conclusion, I thought that this was a decent point-and-shoot camera and offered shooters a lot of flexibility to take some very nice photographs without having to step into the DSLR world. It may be a little bit on the pricey side but certainly worth the extra few dollars to get the extra functions. Don’t buy the camera for video function and if you don’t need Sony’s bundled software to transfer your photographs to your computer then don’t use it.

TEST VIDEO 1

TEST VIDEO 2

McKenna Video and Photo Wedding Commercial

This video is a quick introduction to our wedding website that we put together last week. In it, we ask our visitors to explore the site and view the information and we encourage them to call us for more information.

For more information on our wedding services, please visit MVS Weddings. For more information on corporate video production, please visit McKenna Video.

Filmed with EX1R, with greenscreen.

Blessings,

Chris

Outtakes from a Recent Video Shoot

We had been planning to shoot our own promotional video for our wedding services for some time and I thought that Lynette would be great at it-a natural since she looks good on camera and since she is part of our business she knows it inside and out. Well, as I found out sometimes we "the professionals" are our own worst spokespersons.

So here are some outtakes from that shoot. Keep in mind that our goal was to get about a minute worth of content.

Enjoy the goofs. And thanks, Lynette, for being such a good sport! Complete video coming soon.

Blessings,

Chris.

Laurel Creek Manor Promotional Video

I know that I am a little bit late in posting this video here on my blog, but the holidays and a busy work schedule prevented me from posting it earlier. So today, we are presenting a promotional video that we put together for Laurel Creek Manor of Sumner, WA. This video is centered around the wedding of Rachel & Tony who were married last summer.

Laurel Creek Manor is a wonderful wedding venue and corporate event center nestled in the Puyallup Valley and they offer a wonderful place for any couple looking for a great place to tie the knot. I would encourage you to contact Kirsten at kcabodi@hotmail.com for more information about their wedding or corporate event services.

I shot this video in HD using a Sony PMW-EX1R camera.

If you have any questions about our wedding videos, please visit our MVS Weddings website or send me an email at info@mvsweddings.com.

Enjoy and blessings,

Chris.