If any of you has wondered how you gain a foothold on this new technology, I’m here to give you a heads up.  REDucation is again starting up for 2010.  Unlike the previous three 7 day courses in downtown LA, the flow of the class has been revamped.  It’s changed from two separate classes (RED in production and RED in post), to one full course that provides both production and post for the RED.  It’s also been shortened to 6 days, and the next class will be in Las Vegas, set to coincide with NAB.  This is a great class to take, you learn so much, and the next class will include more info for the still photographer moving to motion.  In the last class of 46 students, there were 5 still photographers.  if you’d like more info, feel free to comment, or drop me a line at info@imagemechanics.com.

Von

As we’ve seen over the past few months, motion cameras have been involved on magazine covers. To date Esquire (photographer Greg Williams), W (photographer Steven Klein) and Time magazines have published images created with the RED camera. Esquire UK (April 2009) was the first to publish a cover image shot with the RED of Megan Fox, and this past December Time published the year ending cover shot with the RED (photographer Finlay MacKay).

While many shooters are hedging their bets, and shooting their covers with a Canon or a medium format digital back, others are breaking new ground and shooting their covers with the RED. RED when shot properly, will produce amazing images, and at 24 frames per second, you have so much content to chose from.

In a future installment, I will reveal some amazing RED still captures, and show prints over 16X20 that rival digital still, stay tuned.

Von

Technology is moving faster than most of us can learn it.  We raced to learn digital capture after a life of learning how to shoot and expose film.  In the past 12 months we’ve seen another big change in our industry.

Print advertising has scaled back, ad agencies have cut their workforce (some by half) and their need for what once was our bread and butter, the delivery of the still image.  They are looking at the new ways in which to capture the public attention.  The web, outdoor advertising, indoor advertising,  Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, Hulu and more are now outlets for advertising, movies, and television.

As we start to gaze into the crystal ball to look into the future we also see that 3D is making a strong push, and companies like Element Technica are developing equipment in which to help create content for this emerging technology.   Many of the  current movies in production are 3D.  All the major TV makers have 3D units (Phillips, Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic) and with broadcast starting to air 3D this summer (ESPN 3D Sports Network) the game is again changing.  No longer will we need to don our silly glasses in a theater, we will be wearing our designer 3D glasses at home.

Von

Recently Playboy hired Image Mechanics as digital capture and image archive for their upcoming series, Playboy Shootout.  Playboy TV’s newest reality series brings together 10 beautiful models and 10 talented photographers competing to win their own layout in Playboy magazine.  While our crew  of digital techs were able to monitor and organize the digital captured images, they were not allowed to advice or help the photographers, they were on their own.  In a real world situation Images Mechanics is your on set lab, assuring that all your captures are correct, safely backed up and delivered per your clients requirements.

As this year comes to a close, we at Image Mechanics are gearing up for the new year.  We’ve updated our business, added new digital gear for both still and motion capture, a new location vehicle, new services including studio rental, added new key personnel to begin 2010.

Beginning immediately we now offer the Hasselblad H3DII-50, with 50 mega pixels and one of the largests sensor in the business, twice the size of the DSLR sensors.  The coolest thing about the Hassy digital is that is has a Hassy on the front end, the new H3 series body.  Together with an impeccable array of lenses, this camera will allow you to have fun, and make beautiful pictures, Merry Xmas (and Happy Holidays).  Along with Canon, Leaf and Phase One we offer a complete line of digital gear to fulfill your shooting needs.

Add to that our new RED One Digital Cinema camera, it’s the camera everyone is talking about, it is the future.  At 24FPS (it actually shoots from 1FPS to 120FPS), you can shoot beautiful cinematic footage and pull gorgeous still frames that can be printed beautifully well over 20X30.  That means stills can be pulled for magazine print covers advertising, and more.  If you did not know this, RED has been used to film a few of the latests feature movies, Knowing, The Informant, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Avatar, Labor Pains, Gamer, and too many to list.  Fact is the RED is becoming a camera for both cinematic and still work, in part due to it’s RAW file workflow.  Call Von (RED / 5D MKII guru) at IM, he will get your motion project up and going.

IM has also introduced a host of new services including studio and strobe equipment rental.  As a SPECIAL, we are offering our slightly smaller than 1000 sq ft studio with a lite strobe package for $400 per 10 hour day.

With the giant shift in how advertising images are being delivered now and in the future, we have reorganized our business to fit that model.  Our feet are firmly planted in digital capture just as before, but we plant them in a forward direction toward motion, from production through to workflow.  We have acquired talent to help you our clients achieve their objective, and stay with or ahead of the technological curve.

Please feel free to comment and contribute, we welcome your input.

Image Mechanics / VT

Image Mechanics is proud to announce that we are again taking part in REDucation.  This is a 7 day all immersive RED training, given by HD Expo’s Creatasphere and RED Digital Cinema.  Von Thomas our resident RED Tech is one of the teachers for this event.  REDucation is a two part training consisting of 3 days of training on RED camera functions, exposure,  and how best to use it on production, and 3 days training of RED in post production, plus one day RED Expo (Community Day) on Monday December 7 at LA Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles.  This a must have course if you plan of working with RED and keeping it simple.  There are a lot of photographers seeking RED information, Image Mechanics is the one place in Los Angeles to get it, we are RED qualified.

You can register for Community Day for free, and check out all the great RED products all in  one place.

Image Mechanics