Yesterday's finds

Downtown Munich produced a couple of interesting encounters. As I cut through a street where there are many art dealers I was confronted with the photo shown on the left in the window of a photography gallery. I learned that a limited selection of images by David Hamilton have been in the in the catalogue of the excellent Lumas Editions since 2009.

© David Hamilton, www.lumas.com

The photo shown pre-dates my time as David's manager but is certainly one images which in the early seventies established the photographer the reputation he enjoyed for the rest of the decade.

And so it was with 'visuals' on my mind that I continued my stroll through the city. And in an arcade near the central square, Marienplatz, I saw for the first time a Canon 7D HDSLR in the wild. I spent a good few minutes looking over the shoulder of the very friendly videographer, and marvelled at the definition on the seven-inch viewfinder attached to the camera.

Yes, I was as impressed as I had expected to be.

Then when I got home and could take the time to go through the new posts in Google Reader. And what I discovered then was CollabraCam.

What Collabracam means is that using an iPad one has the possibility of cutting between the image stream from up to four iPhones shooting hi-def video. It is not less than a PCR (Production Control Room) as an app! No cabling involved, the links use Wi-Fi. A quite astonishing development, one which is surely a huge leap forward in what I have always promoted under my motto DIYLBM (do-it-yourself low-budget-media). It will take a while before I have imagined the possibilites that CollabraCam, in spite of a few bugs it has, can deliver.

Oh yes, the wonders of progress. To close the topic for today there is, however, this. Today Cisco Systems announced that they are closing their their Flip cameras subsidiary. The Dvice website puts the news in perspective...

"But we knew the death of the Flip was coming. When Apple decided to add a video camera to the iPod Nano 5G, we said the Flip was dead. When Apple added video recording and then HD video recording to the iPhone, we said the Flip was dead. Then Apple added a camera to the iPod Touch, we said the Flip was dead. Nearly every smartphone now has a minimum of 720p HD video recording. There is no longer a reason for the Flip to exist. It had to die."

Progress? It's getting hard to keep up! Anyway, to close this post here's a video to consider.

Take it to full screen and think about it. I know that's what I am doing.