Recent content by plnelson

I was in Barcelona on vacation in June and I was shooting for myself in an obscure part of the waterfront where the fishing boats tie up and I stumbled across a shoot Unit 9 was doing with some experimental VR camera of theirs. I grabbed a quick picture of it with my D800. They yelled at me...

One of the most popular questions on photography and video forums is "when do I need a signed release?" I know the rules for the still photography I do: for my figure and glamour work (pnArt.com) the answer is "always", but when I used to shoot for newspapers, covering demonstrations, riots...

Last summer I was shooting a street scene that was partly in shadow and partly in sunlight to evaluate the dynamic range of my D800. The lens was a Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8. A woman walked into the scene wearing a long grey dress with narrow stripes. In the video she enters from the right wearing...

(if this is the wrong forum for this question feel free to suggest the right one) In recent years it's become impossible to avoid the hyperbolic sound effects used to amp up the drama in practically everything in the movies and on video. Thunderous booms, crashes, swooshes, etc, are used for...

I've been considering the XA20/25 for a couple of projects. It has the advantage of being really cheap and also very small and light with pretty good IS so you can shoot handheld without a tripod or some sort of rig. It has the disadvantage of being really cheap so I'm trying to decide if I...

How do people learn documentary filmmaking? I think documentary filmmaking presents many unique challenges compared to other kinds of filmmaking - there are technical and lighting challenges, legal issues, getting permissions to use certain archival or copyrighted footage, how to do (or even...

I'm an experienced still photographer with years of doing studio model photography and local newspaper photography under my belt and I want to up my game with video. I had an old HV20 which died recently and I've also shot video with my D800, and I'll be buying a new higher-end camcorder...