September 2008 Archives

Good morning! If the Canon 5D Mark II press release doesn't get you revved up today, even without drinking your coffee, you might not have a pulse!

The press release claims: "Along with the ability to capture full HD video clips at 1920 x 1080 resolution, Canon's EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera features a 21.1-megapixel full frame 24 x 36mm CMOS sensor, DIGIC 4 imaging processor and significantly lower noise, with an expanded sensitivity range from ISO 50 to ISO 25,600."

Things that caught my attention: The expanded ISO range (how well will that high end really look? Could it be better than the new Nikons, which look amazing?), the multiple RAW sizes (three), and of course the HD video features.

The video features seem to be fairly well thought-out, unlike all the (premature, in my opinion) buzz around the Nikon D90's features. Where the D90 limits video to 720p and five minutes per recording (and a few other restrictions), the Canon 5D goes up to 1080p at 30 frames per second and either a 4-gigabyte recording size or a 30-minute duration, whichever comes first. I also particularly like that the Canon 5D uses MPEG-4 Quicktime and that the camera actually has a stereo microphone input! It would seem that Canon wasn't reacting to a possible Nikon advancement in this area, but to the RED HD video cameras taking the movie world by storm. The thing to check out will be how well does the Canon CMOS sensor handle video and the inherent skew and wobble of slow imaging chips (ie: "jelly vision" - see this clip of the D90's nasty motion).

There is plenty more to check out in the press release, so take a few minutes to read it and get your credit cards ready for November!

Hard Disk Warning!

OK, that caught my attention, and probably yours as well. So what gives? Why the alarm?

According to research and conversations with several hard drive experts conducted by Final Cut Pro whiz Larry Jordan, there is every reason to be more cognizant of your long-term offline drive storage. Your existing plan of backing up data to removable or external drives might not be so full of peace of mind as you thought. In his research with several disk companies he discovered that the magnetically-stored data of a disk is designed to be refreshed periodically. Your online drives perform this action automatically but your offline drives in your vault are at risk.

"According to what I've been told, the life-span of a magnetic signal on a hard disk is between a year and a year and a half..."

So, what is the solution? Put an automatic reminder on your calendar every year, or every six months if you want to be really safe, and spend that day hooking up your drives and doing a complete scan of the contents (Larry recommends TechTool Pro or Drive Genius). One day a year is a small price to pay for long-term viability of your valuable archives.

(Via Hard Disk Warning!, from Larry Jordan's Final Cut Pro Newsletter.)