F.R. “Fritz” Nordengren (beta)

Tom Burton and I are back from Venezuela. The medical team is home and the children are safe. If you read last month’s column about the virtual mission web documentary project, or followed parts of it live, you got a chance to see what we were doing. 

I write this month to share two things–both have to do with control.

The first is: the equipment and formats we used give up some of the traditional control over levels and adjustments. With lower price equipment, there is compromise.

The second is: the tools and the execution can give you, as producer and photojournalist, full control over your story and content.

Our project had its share of challenges ­ both technical and executional. All in all, it was a great chance to test the concept, workflow issues and new gear.

Ever hear the joke: don’t try this at home, Hess a trained professional? Well, usually, most “trained professionals” wouldn’t do what we did with equipment. It is almost never a good practice to start a new job, new project, or travel a great distance from support with brand new equipment. But we did. We were lucky ­ and as we discussed last month. Our backup plan was to publish when we returned, which we didn’t have to do.

The Nikon D-1 had fewer than a dozen frames shot on it, and had been out of the box less than a week when we arrived in Caracas. The Powerbooks, donated by Apple Computer, had been in our hands less than two weeks, and the GL-1 had been out of the shipping box from Videosmith for only a few days.

To the credit of the equipment manufacturers, there were no real problems with any of the gear, but the risk factor was high. We were prepared for the worst ­ everything worked and the project was a success in the eyes of the mission sponsor, Operation Rainbow.

In my mind, on a 1 ­10 scale, our project was a strong 6.5 or 7. All things considered, that’s a success. We were able to produce new content every day ­ 3 times each day. The other side is, a few times, we were able to post only parts of our package ­ which resulted in bad pages, broken links and un-proofed versions being “live” for several hours before we could re-connect and correct what was wrong. Okay, maybe some might think that gives the site an edginess ­ but you can’t get away with that for long.

Here’s what we learned about the gear ­ and first off, let me say, some of our “problems” may be attributed to human operator error and a lack of experience with a particular piece of gear. Don’t consider this article a fair “review,” but rather, a field test with some insight as to what you might explore or look for when using these items.

	Hallways become edit booths during a break in the shooting in the hallway just ouside the operating rooms on the 4th floor of the hospital. Fritz Nordengren uses a PowerBook to review photos from the day’s shoot. Photo by Tom Burton.
Volunteers working with Operation Rainbow look over Tom Burton’s shoulder as he writes and edits for the web documentary project. The challenge of such a project is maintaining a level of objectivity when your audience can see what you write as you write it. Photo by F.R. “Frtiz” Nordengren.
	Editing locations were in the recovery area. This young boy was undergoing a cast change. His tears of fear and the high pitched whine of the cast saw made it impossible to edit video and audio, the best thing to do was hold his hand and try and ease his fear. Photo by Tom Burton.

Okay, I wrote before that I’ve heard mixed reviews on this wireless mic setup. Probably both extremes are correct, and it is truly a matter of perception.

Let’s be fair about our expectations. No, this wireless setup does not perform like a Sony or Lectrosonics wireless set. However, it can give a good sound for under $500. I recommend it. But, listen to your audio with good headphones as you record, and if you need more quality invest in a better system.

Both the transmitter and receiver run on 9V batteries, and the unit is SMALL, which is nice. It mounts easily to the bottom of the GL-1 with Velcro and also clips easily to your subject. Its small size allows them to quickly forget they are wearing a mic, and that leads to more natural sound bites. The housing of the receiver and the transmitter are plastic and after time, won’t hold up the way a metal case will. Also, it’s unlikely the housings will stand up to being dropped much.

Digital audio is not forgiving like analog audio. So, the makers of the Samson unit allow some control over the signal leaving the receiver and going into the camera. It does have variable audio output levels of ­10dBv ­20dBv and ­30dBv. Right away, this points out a potential problem when used with the GL-1. Its inputs are ­55dBv or ­35dBv (with the attenuation on). This means you start with a hot audio signal coming into the camera. Then, since the camera has an automatic gain control circuit, the level gets compressed to avoid distortion. There is no way to switch off the AGC, and it is an AGC and not a “peak limiter” which introduces the second issue.

A peak limiter allows manual control of audio until it gets too loud ­ then the peak limiter takes over and compresses the signal to prevent distortion.

An AGC does this AND also raises the levels to the same consistent level throughout. The circuit seeks out a soft signal and boots it to full. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of an add-on mixer like a Beachtek or StudioOne box.

At the last minute, we added a Beachtek box to the GL-1. It is a must for getting XLR inputs into the GL-1, and it does allow you to lower the overall level coming into the camera ­ which will reduce the amount of compression you’ll hear in the audio. It was very easy to overdrive the audio and get too hot a signal coming into the system. Good news: it isn’t distorted; bad news: it’s compressed and sounds it on the tapes.

Another important point to consider with a Beachtek or similar adapter is that the AGC circuit will “average” the left and right channels coming into the camera. If you have only one mic recording, I would leave the unused mic potentiometer up full, and I would also record to both channels ­ giving an equal signal to left and right, to get a more accurate audio track.

In our setup, I left the Sennheiser on the camera hot even when using the wireless, to provide a backup audio track and to try and keep the AGC balanced.

(Note: Baffled by audio? Pick up Joe Rose’s book: Producing Great Sound for Digital Video, published by Miller Freeman books as part of the DV expert’s series)
“I want it now” control: The Nikon D-1

We had great success with this camera. Being new to it, much of the shooting was done in auto mode, and we were very pleased with the results. There were some white balance issues we encountered, along with some frame-to-frame inconsistency with color balance, especially in multi-frame shooting. However, both Tom and I felt it was more attributable to user error than any particular camera failing.

Like most D-1 users, we found batteries went quicker than normal because we liked to look at the previews for instant gratification. More experienced D-1 shooters assure us that as time goes on, battery life “increases” because the LCD screen is left off more. I would guess that is true.

The big surprise ­ as a personal note ­ once I got used to seeing that instant gratification of photos, my motivation to shoot film dropped. I shot almost no film for the entire trip. I’m not bashing film, or saying that digital will replace film. But, I was amazed at the change in my motivation.
The production control: All in a PowerBook

At the center of our ability to produce content and edit was the G3 PowerBook from Apple. We had two identical systems, and then two dial-up connections to the state university, with a 256 link from there to the Internet. Our Internet connection did go down several times. Fortunately, AOL has a dial-up access point in Caracas, and using an AOL connection, we were able to connect and upload pages when our main connection was down. It was, though, a slow dial-up connection, which made it nearly impossible to post high-bandwidth video and audio to our server in the states.

But we were able to create it on-scene.

In addition to Photoshop, we also used FotoStation 4.0 as a digital light table to sort and manipulate photos. FotoStation seems more versatile than Extensis Portfolio, and facilitates cataloging and archiving a shoot such as this project.
Final thoughts: now you’re in control

This project was a great prototype to test workflow. In general, the concept of producing event-based websites is a market with will grow and offers huge opportunities for photojournalists. As a one-person show, or a two-person team, this formula can transfer to trade shows, traveling exhibits, rock and roll tours ­ any event where people come together for a focused activity.

You can control most every element from concept up to and including publication. With these tools, you can capture, create, edit and publish anywhere to the Web. We’ve done it from Venezuela, and I’ll do it later this year from both Mexico and Vietnam.

This is a great time to be a storyteller.