Blog - Links to other blogs: February 2011 Archives

My students in my Queer Ethnographies course are wild:

EOSHD has a stellar comparison review of the Canon EOS 60D and the Panasonic Lumix GH2: http://www.eoshd.com/content/460-Canon-60D-versus-Panasonic-GH2-Full-Review-Part-1

... Then the surprise hits you just how far ahead in technological and image quality terms the GH2 is. Virtually the only thing better on the 60D for video is the high resolution LCD with fantastic colour reproduction....

Read more...

NikonRumors.com has an interesting post where they suggest that the D7000 licensing agreement says that the AVC codec used in video-recording can only be used for "personal and non-commercial use." Tons of discussion on the post by contributors.

I am not a lawyer but it seems that the "personal and non-commercial use" applies only to the second part of the restrictive clause ("decoding") and not to the first part ("encoding"). But if you use the camera to play back part of a clip that you recorded as a professional (i.e., during a for-profit film shoot), then you're in violation of the decoding restriction on playing for-profit material, even if the for-profit encoding was kosher. Right?

Can other people check the fine print / licensing agreements of their digicams or DSLRs to see if there are similar restrictions? What do you think of such end-runs around free use of our equipment?

One of my students told me about Jes Sachse:

and check out her collaboration with photographer Holly Noris in "American Able" - a spoof of American Apparel: http://hollynorris.ca/americanable#h39067524

Well, this picture of an exploded Pentax Spotmatic F is not quite the opposite, but you know what I mean (blowing up the camera instead of objects in front of the camera).

There's something about looking at this image that makes me feel both exhilarated and terrified at the same time. Exhilarated by the thought of all these pieces having been constructed, assembled, and working together to produce an image. And terrified by the incredible complexity of something that seems so simple, which is the closest I've come to a personal understanding of Kant's sublime. I can't imagine how it would feel if I had any intimate knowledge of this camera, rather than just a vague sense of its importance.