Justin

Across the country from Hollywood, and nestled amongst picturesque farms in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is the TC Shadowlight campus: a high-tech multimedia production house that rivals anything seen in Hollywood.

This post was written by Julia Rieger and originally appeared on Adobe blog on Apr. 24, 2023.

TC Shadowlight is a full-service creative company, working with GE, Chicco, and more of the world’s biggest brands to create video, photography, and CGI stills. Most impressively, the company does everything in-house. With a team of just 60 people and a 150,000 square foot main studio that includes an impressive 9,600 square foot soundstage, the company is able to plan, design, and construct sets, and shoot onsite.

Read More

It’s satire, but not a mockumentary. It was a short film, but with big risks. Now it’s the feature Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.

Adamma Ebo and Adanne Ebo are not only collaborators, they’re identical twins. Adanne Ebo began as a lawyer, and Adamma was a dreamer. But above all, they both loved story.

The Ebo sisters grew up with Southern Megachurches. On the one hand, they were community-building. On the other, they were eye-raising.

Writer/director Adamma Ebo had an idea for a satirical exploration of for-profit religion with this in mind.

However, it involved the interweaving of two different styles: cinematic and faux-documentary. She wasn’t completely sure it would work. So with Adanne as producer, they made a short to explore it. The film worked, got spotlighted by Issa Rae, and now the feature starring Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown just premiered at Sundance.

Adamma and Adanne Ebo spoke with No Film School after the film’s premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival to talk about their process of making Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.

Read More

I got my booster shot the other week and through the miracles of modern science I barely knew a needle was in me before the pharmacist told me it was over. (I also didn’t feel any after effects, but your mileage may vary.) I mention this because before needles, before injectable vaccines, there was something called variolation.

Since ancient times, smallpox had a habit of decimating populations, disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere for another outbreak. It killed rulers and peasants alike. Symptoms included fever, vomiting, and most abhorrent, a body covered with fluid-filled blisters. It could blind you, and it could kill you. In variolation, a physician would take the infectious fluid from from a blister or scab on an infected person and rub it into scratches or cuts on a healthy patient’s skin. This would lead to a mild—but still particularly unpleasant—case of smallpox, and inoculate them against the virus.

But one can also see how the practice of variolation—introducing a diluted version of the virus in order for the immune system to do its work—points towards the science of vaccines.

One supporter of variolation was Catherine the Great, as evidenced by a letter in her hand promoting it across Russia from 1787. The letter just sold for $1.3 million, alongside a portrait of the monarch by Dmitry Levitsky.

Addressed to a governor-general, Catherine the Great instructs him to make variolation available to everybody in his province.

“Among the other duties of the Welfare Boards in the Provinces entrusted to you,” she writes, “one of the most important should be the introduction of inoculation against smallpox, which, as we know, causes great harm, especially among the ordinary people.” She further orders inoculation centers be set up in convents and monasteries, funded by town revenues to pay doctors.

Catherine had a personal stake in all this. Her husband, Peter III caught the disease before he became emperor, and was left disfigured and scarred for life. When she got a chance to inoculate herself in 1768 she took it, calling in a Scottish doctor, Dr. Thomas Dimsdale, to perform the variolation. The procedure took place in secret, with a horse at the ready in case the procedure caused terrible side effects and he had to hot foot it out of Russia. That didn’t happen, and after a brief convalescence, Catherine revealed what she had done to her countrymen.

“My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger.”

Yet, despite her own bravery, 20 years later smallpox continued to rampage through Russia, hence the letter.

Nine years later in 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner found that the cowpox virus—which only caused mild, cold-like symptoms in humans—could inoculate humans against smallpox. Despite initial rejections from the scientific community, his discovery led to vaccination supplanting variolation. And it’s the reason we now use the word “vaccine”—it comes from the Latin word for cow.

Related Content:

How the World’s First Anti-Vax Movement Started with the First Vaccine for Smallpox in 1796, and Spread Fears of People Getting Turned into Half-Cow Babies

How Vaccines Improved Our World In One Graphic

The History of the Plague: Every Major Epidemic in an Animated Map

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the Notes from the Shed podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Catherine the Great of Russia Sends a Letter Urging Her Fellow Russians to Get Inoculated Against Smallpox (1787) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Hanging up a flat-screen television?

Putting up wall-mounted racks so you can organize your garage?

Installing shelves?

In each of these scenarios, you’ll need to know where the studs are in your wall so that you can mount this kind of stuff securely to it. 

Here’s a quick guide to how to find studs in a wall quickly and painlessly.

Using a Stud Finder

Studs are vertical wood 2x4s that make up the frame of most homes in the United States. Besides being used to provide structural support for your home, drywall is mounted to the studs to give your house its solid walls. 

After drywall is affixed to the framing of your home, you can, of course, no longer see a wall’s studs with the naked eye. But there are devices which can help you “look” into the wall to find them.

There are two different kinds of these stud finders which each help you locate studs in a different way:

Magnetic Stud Finders

The more rudimentary type of stud finder uses a magnet. 

Magnetic stud finders don’t actually locate studs. Instead, they locate metal fasteners (like nails and screws) that fasten the drywall onto the studs. As you slide the magnetic stud finder across the wall, its magnet will stick to the wall when you’ve come across a metal fastener; if there’s a metal fastener, there must be a stud that it’s fastened to. 

Any high-powered magnet can work as a magnetic stud finder. But there are ones made for the purpose like the StudBuddy, which you can pick up for $10 at most home improvement stores. Just run it back and forth across your wall in a zig-zag pattern. When the StudBuddy sticks to the wall, you’ve found your stud. You can leave the StudBuddy on the wall to act as your stud marker. No need to mark up your wall with pencil. 

The upside of a magnetic stud finder is that it’s cheap, easy to use, and accurate. 

Its downside is that you can spend a long time running it up and down and across the wall to find a metal fastener so that you can find the stud. This is the big reason why most people have upgraded to . . .

Electronic Stud Finders

Electronic stud finders use capacitance to help you locate a stud behind the drywall. If you’re interested in the details of how capacitance works, read this article. The short and dirty explanation is that an electronic stud finder can sense when there’s a density change behind your drywall. When it senses more density, thar be your stud, matey, and the stud finder will start lighting up to tell you so.

Below, I show you how to use an electronic stud finder. In the demo, I’m using a Zircon stud finder that locates the edges of studs. Zircon has stud finders that can pinpoint where the center of the stud is, but they’re more expensive.

1. Run the stud finder over your chest. Look at your wife and say, “Looks like there’s a stud right here.” After appreciating your well-executed dad joke, get down to business.

2. Place the stud finder on the wall. Press the button only after you’ve placed the stud finder on the wall. If you press it before doing so, you’ll get an erroneous reading. Slowly move the stud finder from left to right. Keep it level as you do.

3. When your stud finder lights up, make a faint mark with a pencil. This is the outside edge of your stud.

4. Place the stud finder a few inches to the right of your mark, and slowly move the stud finder left. If your stud finder lights up, make another faint mark. This is the opposite outside edge of your stud.

The middle of those two marks is the center of your stud. You can drive a nail or screw into your wall at that point, and it will be secure.

FYI, most studs are 2×4’s, but if you’ve read our primer on lumber, you know that a 2×4 isn’t actually 2 inches x 4 inches; it’s 1.5 inches x 3.5 inches. The way studs are placed in the wall, your markings on the wall should be 1.5 inches apart, so the center of the two markings will be at the .75 inch line.

Once you know where the middle of one stud is, you can easily find the center of the studs that are to the left or right of it.

Using your trusty tape measure, place the 0 line on the center of the stud you’ve marked off on the wall. Extend your tape measure out. See how the 16″ mark on your tape measure is surrounded by a red square? That indicates the standard (in the United States) 16-on-center spacing between studs. Bam! That’s where the center of your next stud is.

Most modern electronic stud finders are pretty reliable, but I’ve had issues with some. I’ve had instances where the electronic stud finder will give multiple readings of where a stud is located and all those readings were different from each other by a half inch, leaving me scratching my head wondering where the stud actually is. On the glitchy ones I’ve had problems with, I usually end up hammering a very small nail into the wall to verify that the stud finder did indeed find the stud.

If you’re looking for speed in finding a stud, go with an electronic stud finder; if you’re looking for consistent accuracy, go with with a magnetic one.

How to Find a Stud If You Don’t Have a Stud Finder

What if you don’t have a stud finder on hand? How can you find a stud behind drywall?

You’ll need to become a stud detective.

Flashlight method. Shine a flashlight at an angle against the wall. You may (the operative word here is may) be able to see a column of slight bumps. Those are the nails used to fasten the drywall to the stud, and that column of bumps indicates where the center of the stud is.

Again, this may or may not work depending on how deep the nails were driven into the drywall and the amount of paint or plaster you’ve got over your wall.

Check the baseboards for nail holes. Baseboards are usually (operative word usually) nailed to a stud. You’ll have to look really closely as the nails used to nail baseboards are really small. If you see a nail hole, there’s a good chance there’s a stud at that location. But maybe not. In my home, the nail holes in my floorboards weren’t near the studs.

Check the outlets and light switches. Outlets and electrical switches are typically mounted to the side of a stud. To figure out which side of the stud the outlet or switch is mounted to, remove the cover plate and then slide a business card along the outside of the outlet box to feel for which side the stud is on. If you hit some resistance, you’ve found the stud.

To find the center of the stud that the outlet or switch is attached to, just measure .75 inches from the outside of the outlet. Put a mark. Center of the stud. Now you can find the center of all the studs to the left or right of that stud.

Verify by driving a small nail into the wall. If you go with one of these methods, you’ll want to verify by driving a small nail into the wall. If the nail doesn’t hit wood, you’ve missed the stud. Try again slightly to the left or right.

The post How to Find Studs in a Wall appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and the COVID-19 pandemic has surged event cancellations across the country. Tech workforces have found ways to stay productive: back-to-back Zoom calls, work-from-home happy hours and more Twitter threads than anyone asked for.

But Jason Craparo, the founder of events platform Hio, wants to put organic, face-to-face networking back on your calendar — in a socially distant, yet compliant, way.

Today, Hio launched a virtual lounge and a Network Now feature to replicate by-proximity networking. Using your iPhone, you can use Hio to see professionals nearby that are currently ready to, wait for it, hit it off. Then you can slide to their profile, ask if they want to do a 1:1 video chat and share information.

“Work from home doesn’t mean your results stop,” Craparo said. “People are being held accountable. We wanted to get this out so that the salespeople, entrepreneurs, small business owners and the like can basically get out to events virtually connected with people and meet their sales quotas and still do business.”

Network Now is a premium feature for which Hio usually charges $10 a month, but in light of all the canceled conferences, Craparo says it is free for the next three months.

The company also rolled out a virtual lounge. It’s similar to Network Now, except it is specific to events that have gone remote. Think a focused lounge produced by event organizers to help event participants meet each other.

From diners and drive-ins to startupland

For Craparo, the intricacies of sales and small business ownership were a focus long before Hio.
The founder moved to San Diego to attend college, but he instead worked his way up to owner at Sonic Drive-Ins, a fast food chain. He then went to Juma Ventures, a company that employs inner city kids at concession stands at stadiums and did volunteer work across San Diego. He then earned his MBA from Babson, where he received a $275,000 check at a startup competition for his Hio prototype.

Hio initially launched as an app that allowed users to share their chosen social media handles with others. Today, it connects people to events and professionals nearby.

Users sign up and create a profile with their bio, interests and an elevator pitch in the form of a short video. The idea is that people can then attend a virtual event, and meet others through the app putting their profile foot forward. Beyond video chatting, users can send follow-up emails or direct messages. People also can set reminders to contact said individual once a week, month, quarter or never.

Craparo claims that Eventbrite isn’t a competitor, but instead a partner: Hio integrates with the ticket-selling and event registration company to provide independent organizers with a mobile app to go along with their events as an added networking tool.

Craparo also integrates with Meetup, which was acquired on Monday from WeWork by a group of investors, including AlleyCorp.

The novel coronavirus outbreak and health concerns have led to a rapid adoption of online-only groups. In fact, at the time of publication, Eventbrite’s front page touts online events.

Hio has the potential to serve Eventbrite and Meetup customers that are now in an online-only world and want an extra layer of communication between event participants. Of course, for now shelter in place and lockdowns are mandated by governments around the world. But, if Hio and other remote meetup services are seamless and friendly enough, virtual networking could stay part of our culture long after the pandemic is controlled.

Hio’s more direct competitors are services like Bumble for business, which is an offshoot of the popular dating app into a professional connection network. BumbleBizz lets you swipe through professionals near you. Hio wants to touch upon that same organic discovery process, but have control of more parts of the networking experience: from pre and post-communication to live networking opportunities and messaging.

Craparo says that dating isn’t a focus for Hio right now, but he noted that the lines between work and personal life feel blurry (especially these days). He won’t be surprised if some personal relationships develop.

Prior to this announcement, Hio already landed a few big clients, like New York Tech Meetup, a 200-person meetup that happens monthly.

“Ticket services only know how many tickets they sold,” Craparo said. “We can tell them how many people physically showed up or virtually showed up, how many connections were made, how many pieces of contact information were shared, what the most commonly shared item was, or on average how many people each person met.”

Hio originally took seven months to hit 1,000 events. In the past three weeks alone, Hio has helped with 1,200 events. The rapid change illustrates that Hio is filling a gap for professionals that want to be connected during a time of isolation.

Electric scooters are still unlawful to use on public roads and pavements in the UK, but that hasn’t stopped many consumers from using them anyway to get from A to B. Now, in an effort to wean people off the use of individual automobiles, the government may finally be coming around to bringing its rules up to speed with the times, moving one step closer to legally using e-scooters alongside other new mobility technology, such as drone deliveries for medical supplies, in the coming years.

The UK’s Department for Transport today announced a new consultation into exploring new transportation modes that include e-scooters and e-cargo bikes, as well as bringing the on-demand model (popularised by services like Uber) to buses and other public transport alternatives, and using drones for medical deliveries. Alongside this, it announced funding of £90 million ($112 million) for three new Future Transport Zones to trial these new services.

Some argue that the UK has lagged behind other European countries like France when it comes to bringing e-scooters to the wider market, with up to now the only legal services operating in closed “campus” environments.

Together, the moves are a signal of how the UK is trying to change that trend by jumping a little more proactively on innovation, a theme that was also highlighted as an investment focus in the UK budget delivered last week by the chancellor.

Although there have been small pockets with technology trials, little has changed in the way of legislation and so today’s moves represent some of the more significant headway that the UK has made in recent years to work with and consider what transportation will look like in the country in the years ahead, in particular as an alternative to consumers using private vehicles to move things and getting around.

“We are on the cusp of a transport revolution. Emerging technologies are ripping up the rulebook and changing the way people and goods move forever,” said Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, in a statement. “Our groundbreaking Future of Transport programme marks the biggest review of transport laws in a generation and will pave the way for exciting new transport technology to be tested, cementing the UK’s position as a world-leading innovator. This Review will ensure we understand the potential impacts of a wide range of new transport types such as e-scooters, helping to properly inform any decisions on legalisation. Funding these new Zones across the country will also help us safely test innovative ways to get around, creating a greener future transport system for us all.”

Generally speaking, the announcement is an overdue, but clear, vote of confidence in the idea of trying out new kinds of services and models. In particular, it’s significant because it comes in the wake of a number of previous efforts not living up to expectations.

Bird, for example, introduced an e-scooter trial in London two years ago, but with a very limited range and scope, in the Olympic Park campus in London, it’s had little exposure in the wider market. Citymapper last year, meanwhile, shut down its on-demand bus trials after finding they also didn’t work as the startup had hoped they would. And just last month, Five, the autonomous car startup that was the lynchpin of an autonomous driving service trial in London, folded up its ambitious plans to build full self-driving cars and pivoted to a B2B model selling aspects of the technology it had developed.

It’s also an interesting turn for the government, which took a hands-off approach to initial Uber’s roll out, only to see the company run into controversy; perhaps learning from that, it seems now to be more engaged in how new services and technologies roll out.

Considering all of the above, the news today essentially gives a lease of life to companies hoping to build businesses on these new technologies and services.

For example, in the case of scooters, the electric-powered versions are counted as motorised vehicles in the UK, and as such they are still illegal because regulations around insurance, traffic laws and driver requirements, have never been determined for them. That means that in order to test new services, the laws will need to be amended.

Now, the DfT is throwing that whole industry a big bone: local authorities will contract one or more e-scooter companies to run services, it said.

“This is great news for UK towns and cities, we’re delighted that the Government is exploring offering greener ways to travel,” said Alan Clarke, Director of UK Policy and Government Affairs at Lime, in a statement. (Lime currently offers bikes on demand in various locations, but has yet to bring its scooters to the UK market.) “Shared electric scooters are a safe, emission-free, affordable and convenient way of getting around. They help take cars off the road with around a quarter of e-scooter trips replacing a car journey — cutting congestion and reducing air pollution. Lime operates shared dockless e-scooter schemes in over 100 locations globally and in 50 cities across Europe. We look forward to contributing to the government’s call for evidence to develop clear rules and minimum safety standards to allow this environmentally friendly option to be made available and hope to participate in upcoming trials on UK streets.”

DfT is generally short on details around what the consultation will entail but did include some specifics on scooters, in what would be the government’s first concerted efforts to consider how what requirements would need to be introduced to legalise e-scooters, including traffic laws, minimum age and vehicle requirements, insurance requirements and parking rules (parking fees being a key revenue driver for local councils.

The new transport zones — in Portsmouth and Southampton, the West of England Combined Authority, and Derby and Nottingham — will be modelled on an existing region established in the West Midlands (covering Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull), which has been a testing ground for future transport policy and technology such as autonomous vehicles.

As with the existing Midlands effort, the new future transport regions will explore autonomous vehicle trials, as well as scooter pilots, bus schemes that operate on on-demand models, and multi-modal transportation apps. Portsmouth and Southampton will also look at last-mile deliveries using e-cargo bikes and medical supply drones. Derby and Nottingham have been granted £15 million to build mobility hubs to promote different public transportation options alongside bike hire, car clubs and electric vehicles. 

“The Zones will provide real-world testing for experts, allowing them to work with a range of local bodies such as councils, hospitals, airports and universities to test innovative ways to transport people and goods,” the DfT said in a statement.

B-roll is so important to your project as a whole, but what is it exactly?

Back in the day, editors used to use cast-off pieces of film to splice into the middle of scenes in order to either give it more depth or to help aid pacing. These pieces proved themselves to be useful.

Eventually, directors were shooting some extra things to cut in there if they needed it.

We call that stuff B-roll, but more on that later.

Today I want to talk about the general theory behind B-roll and the ways you can shoot it so it's exciting and cinematic.

So let's begin.

What is B-Roll and How Can You Make Yours Cinematic? B-roll definition

B-roll is the alternative footage to the principal photography—the main shots in your project—and is used to complement the A-roll. Sometimes, B-roll will be written as "B-roll footage, Broll, or B roll."

The difference between A-roll and B-roll

A-roll is usually focused on the characters and the main plot. B-roll is the footage that will work as insert shots, cutaways, and coverage among other things.

Read More

A California company has developed a “crate motor” to relatively simply (but not so cheaply) convert gasoline cars to modern electric engines.

We sat down with Joanie and Steve Wynn and Jeff Sandmann for some insight into making meaningful documentaries — and how to find motivation.

Are you considering a full frame camera? Here’s why one manufacturer is promising to ‘never go full frame’ and instead focusing on market diversity.

When looking at a crowded digital camera market, “full frame” is definitely a buzzword floating around in the camera-buying ether. Cameras like the Canon 5D and Sony A7s have built legacies on their full frame capabilities. Now new challengers like the Nikon Z7 (which you can check out reviews of here) and the Canon EOS R are entering the fray.

However, while most brands seem to be pushing to catch up with full frame offerings of their own, one manufacturer is making a bold step to set itself apart - and to help provide us videographers and filmmakers with a truly rich and diverse market.

The Myth of Full Frame

Read More

Yesterday was the SBJSA hearing before the City Council at City Hall. Thank you to everyone who showed up for the rally and the hearing itself, and thank you to Speaker Corey Johnson and the City Council for giving this the time and space it deserves.



At noon, a large crowd of about 100 SBJSA supporters gathered on the steps of City Hall for a rally and press conference. David Eisenbach, who is running for Public Advocate, led the rally at which several people spoke on behalf of the bill.

At the same time, supporters of REBNY, the powerful real estate lobby that opposes the bill, streamed in. At the gates they received blue baseball caps printed with a white slogan making the claim that the SBJSA is commercial rent control. (It is not.) The optics on this had an unsettling effect. Later in the day, SBJSA supporter James Klein said during his testimony, "If New Yorkers have learned anything over the last two years, we have learned that when a mob shows up in colored hats, New Yorkers lose."

As DJ Cashmere reported in his thorough account of the day at Bedford & Bowery, "Council member Mark Gjonaj, chair of the Committee on Small Business, asked whether the hats had been purchased from a local small business. Nope, came the reply from REBNY. They were purchased online."



The hearing, hosted by Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Member Mark Gjonaj, chair of the Council's small business committee, lasted until 9:00 at night, with a tremendous 200 people signed up to speak. For the first two hours, Small Business Services Commissioner Gregg Bishop represented Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, which does not support the bill.

Johnson repeatedly spoke passionately about the loss of the city's mom and pops--and he talked about it today on the Brian Lehrer show.

Next came panels both for and against the bill, including speakers Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, State Senator Brad Hoylman, David Eisenbach, and Ruth Messinger, the former Councilmember who first introduced the original SBJSA in 1986.

I testified on a panel of pro-SBJSA activists, including Harry Bubbins of GVHSP, Kirsten Theodos of TakeBackNYC, and Justin Levenson, who created Vacant New York to track high-rent blight.



It was a long day -- you can watch the whole 8 hours here -- the first big step in what will be a complicated and important process.

If you support this bill and want to see it come to a vote, write to the City Council. Here is a quick and easy guide to doing that.

And the fight to save small businesses in New York goes on.



For more coverage on the hearing:
AMNY
Commercial Observer
Real Deal
Curbed
Gothamist

Nikon may have the longest zoom in a compact model, but Sony has the smallest travel high zoom, not in a camera but two: the DSC-HX99 and DSC-HX95. Canon is in the middle, and for the first time with 4K.

One could consider 2018 as the year of the zoom for compact cameras. Nikon introduced the COOLPIX P1000, still the undisputed powerhouse of 4K superzooms, with a 24-3000mm optical zoom that magically doubles its coverage, and even goes beyond. Canon came next, with its, designed for travelers, PowerShot SX740 HS, more modest, with a 24-960mm, also able to double its range, with Canon’s ZoomPlus technology, and a first for Canon: 4K in a PowerShot camera. Now it’s time for Sony to show its solution, with not one but two cameras, the Cyber-shot DSC-HX99 and DSC-HX95, with an even more modest 24-720mm zoom.

Using a smaller zoom, Sony gets to claim its camera or cameras have the world’s smallest body, among fixed lens digital cameras with a built-in viewfinder and telephoto end 700mm or above (angle of view, 35mm format equivalent) lens. As of August 2018, based on Sony research, so you know. Now, while Nikon may claim with its camera you can see the International Space Station in flight, and Canon suggests the PowerShot SX740 HS offers a long zoom in a small package, the truth is that travelers will very much appreciate having a small camera, the smallest possible, and the zoom range on these new models is, I admit, more than enough for most of us. Anyways, there seems to be a “world’s first” for everyone…

The ZEISS Vario-Sonnar T* 24-720mm f/3.5-6.4 zoom lens used for both models has image stabilisation, controlled with Optical SteadyShot which effectively negates the camera shake blur that often occurs during handheld and telephoto shooting. The models are also equipped with a Zoom Assist function that allows the user to zoom out temporarily and displays a wider area when shooting a subject at the telephoto end.

Internally, the cameras feature the powerful BIONZ X image processing engine combined with a front-end LSI that delivers high-speed continuous shooting at up to 10 fps with a buffer limit of up to 155 images. Furthermore, says Sony, these new models present a fast AF speed of 0.09 seconds. Some newly added features are Eye AF technology from their Alpha siblings, RAW format image recording for photographers who prefer to enhance their photos with image editing software, touch focus/touch shutter function, and location data acquisition via Bluetooth.

The HX99 and HX95 can capture 4K UHD video footage with full pixel readout and no pixel binning. This means that fine details are beautifully rendered and ‘moiré’ and ‘jaggies’ are significantly reduced. The new models can shoot fast-moving subjects with high-frame rate HD recording at up to 100fps PAL or 120fps in NTSC to produce impressive slow-motion sequences during editing. One important note to remember for 4K UHD: continuous recording time is approximately 5 minutes, and may vary with recording environment.

Embracing feedback from users of the HX90 series, Sony has implemented Touch Focus and Touch Shutter functionality on the HX99 (apparently the only difference, with the Control Ring, to the HX95) so that the photographer can directly select their shooting subject and fire whilst also implementing a Touch Pad function for smooth focus point shifting while using the retractable OLED Tru-Finder. For those who wish to take command of their settings, the Control Ring of the HX99 can be customised with functions such as manual focus or step zooming and both HX99 and HX95 also offer My Menu personalisation for instant recall of up to 30 items and the ability to create custom menus.

A 180-degree tiltable LCD screen allows for easy framing of selfies and group shots whilst an upgraded grip offers a firm hold and greater stability during shooting. Location data acquisition via Bluetooth can collect and record location data from a mobile device (Location Information Link) and small size Proxy recording allows transfers to smartphones or uploading to websites for quick sharing.

The new Sony Cyber-shot HX99 and HX95 will ship in Europe from October 2018 (no information about North America launch, yet), priced at approximately €520  for HX99 and €500 for HX95. Does Sony believe anyone will choose the HX95, when the difference in price is so small? I wouldn’t!

The post Sony HX99 and HX95: world’s smallest travel high zoom cameras appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

VANISHING

Whenever I walk past it on Greenwich Avenue, I remember buying my first suit there in 1994, and I wonder how it can possibly still exist. The store, not the suit, which is long gone.


photo via International Traveller

On their Facebook page, Star Struck has announced:

"We would like to take a moment to let you know that after 38 years Star Struck Vintage in NYC will be closing. We will be forever grateful to all of our customers, for you have shown us the true meaning of loyalty. Many of you have become part of our family over the years; and although we will miss you all very much, we are looking forward to retirement. The store will be closing August 31st."

Ivanka gaslighting for her dad. This dynamic of providing cover for a serial abuser is clinical.

I’ve been running a month-long smartphone experiment. In a nutshell, I decided to see if a cheapish (£150) Android phone can do everything that an expensive (£1000) iPhone X does. So one month after putting my iPhone in a drawer, and beginning to use a Moto G4+ what have I discovered? Firstly, that the Android Operating System is much much better than it used to be. The Moto G4+ uses Android version 7.0 (aka Nougat as Google insist on using ridiculous names for version numbers) which is a huge leap forward compared to when I last used Android a few…

This story continues at The Next Web

 (Bloomberg) — More than eight years since the birth of bitcoin, central banks around the world are increasingly recognizing the potential upsides and downsides of digital currencies. The guardians of the global economy have two sets of issues to address. First is what to do, if anything, about the emergence and growth of the private cryptocurrencies that are grabbing more and more attention — with bitcoin now sitting above $16,000 and futures trading this week heralding a new level of mainstream acceptance. The second question is whether to issue official versions. Following is an overview of how the world’s largest central…

This story continues at The Next Web

The Moza Air is under $500 and capable of capturing great shots from a mirrorless camera.

The Moza Air 3-Axis Stabilizer, by Gudsen, is a gimbal that really targets the mirrorless and small DSLR camera space. While its tech specs and weight limit of 5.5lbs give the impression of being able to squeeze a bigger camera onto it, this gimbal is designed for the GH5, Sony A7S, and Fujfilm XT2 (or a 7D shooter looking for more stability in their footage).

While it might be tempting to stick a small C200 package onto the gimbal, it would lead to the camera body hitting the control arms. However, that level of specialization is a good thing, as you aren't paying for hardware designed to carry an Alexa 65 on jobs involving the flying of a mirrorless rig. And mirrorless rigs are getting some increasingly amazing footage.

Read More

Is your video lacking something? You don't always need to make big, dramatic changes to your edit. Sometimes, all it takes is a little adjustment.

It's crazy to think about how much an editor needs to know how to do, because guess what, it's not all about cutting clips and adding music. It's about animating text, adjusting audio levels, and making all of those images look as good as you possibly can, which, of course, requires a pretty well-rounded understanding of your editing tools.

lf you want to learn a few little tricks that will affect your edit in a big way, Justin Odisho shares five really great techniques that will help you not only save time while editing, but also add a little flair to your videos. Check out his tutorial below:

It's easy to get caught up in the massive scale of an editing project that you completely forget how impactful the little adjustments can be. Adding a slight gaussian blur to your video clip can make your text really pop. A simple keyboard shortcut can make quick work of audio ducking. A subtle vignette can bring the attention back to your subject.

Read More

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai formally announced his plan to kill net neutrality and other consumer protections today as he seeks to remove the classification of home and mobile internet service providers as utilities. Although we’ve been hearing about his intentions for months now, the announcement warrants a debunking of his reasoning for the move. Ahead of a vote that’s slated to take place on December 14, Pai noted that “broadband network investment dropped more than 5.6 percent—the first time a decline has happened outside of a recession.” He also pointed to the FCC’s onerous rules as being…

This story continues at The Next Web

VANISHING

Last night, word circulated on social media that HiFi Bar on Avenue A is closing.

HiFi was Brownie's from 1989 until 2002, when the concept changed a bit. The Voice called it "a quintessential neighborhood music staple in an era when any indie band with a guitar and a cheap band T-shirt to sell could get a record deal." Those bands included The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Strokes, and Death Cab for Cutie.


photo of Stuto by Robert Stolarik, for New York Times

The bar's co-owner Mike Stuto posted yesterday on his Facebook page:

"I (sorta) regret to inform you that my bar HiFi will be closing at the end of this calendar month, ending my 23 year tenure at 169 Avenue A. All parties booked before the end of the month will happen as planned. The story? Quite simply, the renovations we undertook a few years ago to reinvigorate the business were not successful in putting us back on a good financial footing. The generation of people who inhabit this neighborhood on weekends remain mostly indifferent to the place.... while I hoped that would help us have a broad appeal to the newbies, it turns out that it translated as utilitarian (aka boring) to their tastes."

He adds, "I want it to be clear that the building’s landlord is in no way to blame for this outcome." In this case, it wasn't the rent. It was the changing East Village.

In his memorial post last night, Alex Smith at Flaming Pablum noted, "the sting of [Stuto's] observation that the current denizens of the neighborhood are 'indifferent' to the character and legacy of HiFi/Brownie’s remains. Much like the Joe Strummer mural a few blocks to the south and a few other other fleeting signifiers, HiFi is ultimately a fading vestige of the sensibility of a vanished East Village."

As the Times put it in 2014, "Now that the East Village is filled with artisanal restaurants and upscale boutiques, HiFi is no longer just another dive but a tether to this neighborhood’s faded bohemia."

That tether has broken.


photo by Robert Stolarik, for New York Times

Back to the 2015 Voice article:

"Meanwhile, rents kept going up and the East Village continued to gentrify, and so the neighborhood clientele changed.

According to Stuto, the area went from bohemia and blue collar to something he never imagined would occur at his doorstep.

'You never saw someone with a jacket and a briefcase and tie coming out of an apartment in the morning when you were going to work. There were none of those,' Stuto said. 'I still remember the first time I saw one of those people in the neighborhood. The people who use the East Village as a destination today versus the people who used this neighborhood as a destination 20 years ago or more, they’re just different people.'"

It has been well-documented that popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum combined use more energy than Iceland, Syria and Jordan. The good news though, is that this is driving crypto-miners to use clean energy, lowering costs, helping the planet and even generating profit. Mining is the process by which new crypto coins are created. Unlike traditional money that is printed and distributed by the government, cryptocurrency doesn’t have a ‘central government’ per se. Instead, ‘miners’ use software to solve mathematical equations (known as hashes) which verify transactions. As an incentive, each miner receives a small amount of cryptocurrency in exchange;…

This story continues at The Next Web

Image by Carlos Delgado, via Wikimedia Commons

For the past 11 years, we've been busy rummaging around the internet and adding courses to an ever-growing list of Free Online Courses, which now features 1,300 courses from top universities. Let's give you the quick overview: The list lets you download audio & video lectures from schools like Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford and Harvard. Generally, the courses can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or university web sites, and you can listen to the lectures anytime, anywhere, on your computer or smart phone. We haven't done a precise calculation, but there's about 45,000 hours of free audio & video lectures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time.

Right now you’ll find 173 free philosophy courses, 92 free history courses, 128 free computer science courses, 81 free physics courses and 55 Free Literature Courses in the collection, and that’s just beginning to scratch the surface. You can peruse sections covering Astronomy, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Math, Political Science, Psychology and Religion.

Here are some highlights from the complete list of Free Online Courses. We've added a few unconventional/vintage courses in the mix just to keep things interesting.

• A History of Philosophy in 81 Video Lectures: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times - Free Online Video - Arthur Holmes, Wheaton College
• A Romp Through Ethics for Complete Beginners - Various Formats – Marianne Talbot, Oxford University
• Against All Odds: Inside Statistics – Free Online Video – Pardis Sabeti, Harvard
• Ancient Greek History - Free Online Video - Free iTunes Audio - Free iTunes Video - Course Materials - Donald Kagan, Yale
• Creative Reading and Writing by William S. Burroughs - Free Online Audio - Naropa University
• Critical Reasoning for Beginners - Free iTunes Video – Free iTunes Audio – Free Online Video & Audio – Marianne Talbot, Oxford
• Deep Learning - Free Online Video - Vincent Vanhoucke, Google
• Developing iOS 10 Apps with Swift - Free iTunes Video - Paul Hegarty, Stanford
• Edible Education 101 – Free Online Video – Michael Pollan, UC Berkeley
• Financial Markets - Free Online Video - Free iTunes Audio - Free iTunes Video - Course Materials - Robert Shiller, Yale
• Growing Up in the Universe – Free Online Video – Richard Dawkins, Oxford
• The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science – Free Online Video - Harvard/Smithsonian
• Harvard's Introductory Computer Science Course - Free Online Course - David Malan, Harvard
• Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner – Various Formats – Wai Chee Dimock, Yale
• Heidegger’s Being & Time – Free Online Audio - Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• How to Listen to Music - Various Formats - Craig Wright, Yale
• Human Behavioral Biology – Various Formats – Robert Sapolsky, Stanford
• Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) – Free Online Video - Christine Hayes, Yale.
• Invitation to World Literature – Free Online Video - David Damrosch, Harvard
• Lectures on Digital Photography - Free Online Video - Marc Levoy, Stanford/Google
• Philosophy of Language – Free Online Audio – John Searle, UC Berkeley
• Physics for Future Presidents – Free Online Video – Richard Muller, UC Berkeley
• Quantum Electrodynamics – Free Online Video - Richard Feynman, Presented at University of Auckland
• Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter - Free Online Video - Free iTunes Video - Course Info - Team taught, Harvard
• Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays – Free Online Video – Marjorie Garber, Harvard
• Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full - Various Formats - MIT, Dr. Paola Rebusco
• The American Novel Since 1945 – Various Formats – Amy Hungerford, Yale
• The Central Philosophy of Tibet - Free Online Audio – Robert Thurman, Columbia University
• The Character of Physical Law (1964) - Free Online Video - Richard Feynman, Cornell
• The Hobbit – Free iTunes Video – More – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• The Tempest - Free Online Audio - Allen Ginsberg, Naropa
• Walter Kaufmann Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre - Free Online Audio

The complete list of courses can be accessed here: 1,300 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

Related Content:

900 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices.

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc..

Learn 48 Languages Online for Free: Spanish, Chinese, English & More.

A Master List of 1,300 Free Courses From Top Universities: 45,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

 Apple announced the latest iPhone yesterday. It’s thinner, faster and has a better screen than the previous model. But of course it does. That’s how these things go. But the phone also lacks things I consider part of my daily life. I’m lost. This iPhone is not for me. Without these two features, I’ll stick with the boring and passé iPhone 8. The iPhone X follows a… Read More

For an increasing number of creators of all levels, the cameras we carry in our pockets are a source of practice, inspiration and networking with other like-minded creators. These days, we are all mobile videographers, mobile photographers and there have never been better or more powerful tools at our fingertips. In my case, my smartphone has been my primary creative tool for the past year. Here are my 9 must-have photo and video apps.

These are not just randomly chosen photo and video apps that make a good clickbait listicle. These are apps I use and rely on every day to create high-quality stills and video consistently with just a smartphone.

1. LumaFusion
2. FiLMiC Pro
3. Pro Camera
4. Lenka
5. Adobe Lightroom Mobile
6. Snapseed
7. VSCO
8. Carbon
9. TPE

Improving Your Skills With Photo and Video Apps

Why spend so much time on a smartphone when you’ve got “proper” cameras? There’s one simple reason why these photo and video apps can make you a better cinematographer and photographer: your smartphone is always within reach. All it takes is a second to take out your phone and act on a moment of inspiration. The ability to edit images and experiment with color and tone quickly and create professional polished results opens up ideas and inspiration. It’s also a lot of fun.

Let’s take a closer look at these photo and video apps.

LumaFusion (iOS)

What it’s good for: Multitrack video editing on your iPhone and iPad. Very active development, features expanding quickly.

LumaFusion is the only app on this list that I’ve been using for less than six months. Just as FiLMiC Pro opened my eyes to mobile video, LumaFusion has opened my eyes to the possibility of a real post-production workflow on a tablet or smartphone. Just as with FiLMiC, it turned my skepticism around completely.

LumaFusion is a full-featured multi-track video editor for mobile journalists, mobile filmmakers and producers on the go. They are updating it with useful new features and capabilities on a regular basis, really pushing what is possible on a mobile platform.

Some Highlights:

Editing

• 3 video/audio tracks for photos, videos, titles and graphics.
• 3 additional audio tracks for narration, music and sound effects.
• Insert and overwrite editing and trimming.
• Professional editing features including slip-trim and anchored clips help keep your project in perfect sync, and make B-rolls, PIPs and split-screens easier than ever.
• Dozens of transitions including dissolves, slides, pushes, wipes and specialty transitions like flash and zoom blur.
• Select different UI layouts to focus on editing, media management and playback at any time.

Media Library

• Quickly import multiple media files from Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive.
• Download media stored in iCloud Photo Library directly to the app.
• View detailed information and metadata about your media.
• Rename, add notes, color-tag and pre-trim clips in the library.

LumaFusion has a fully-featured titler and effects. You can see a full list of features on the LumaFusion website. I am told that XML import and export will be coming in July.

It’s worth also mentioning LumaFX and LumaClip. LumaFX gives you some basic layer based compositing and color correction on your iOS device. LumaClip allows you to retime, reverse, and edit the size, position, rotation, and aspect ratio of your video clips. I haven’t played with these at all, but if they are anything like LumaFusion, they are worth checking out.

Available from App Store for $19.99

FiLMiC Pro (iOS & Android)

What it’s good for: Shooting things with your smartphone that will put many pro video cameras to shame.

This is an app that needs no introduction from me, so I won’t go into it in a huge amount of detail. I’ve been writing about it and shooting with it for almost a year. FiLMiC Pro single-handedly converted me from a high-end RED / ARRI snob and mobile video skeptic into a mobile video believer. I’m still a bit of a RED / ARRI snob, but the difference is now I only see untapped potential when I consider where professional video on mobile platforms is heading.

There are others: Mavis is another popular pro video camera app, but FiLMiC has been the one that’s stuck with me.

There’s plenty to read about FiLMiC Pro below.

Shooting Cinematic iPhone Footage with Filmic Pro

10 Tips To Shoot Cinematic Smartphone Video

Smartphone Video Essentials | Filmic Pro Tutorial

FiLMiC Pro Log Shooting on iPhone | Hands-On Review

FiLMiC Pro V6 is Here – World | First Log Capability for iPhone Now Available

Get FiLMiC Pro from the App Store and Google Play for $14.99, and the Cinematographer Kit (custom gamma profiles on iPhone 7 and 7 Plus only) for an additional $9.99.

Pro Camera (iOS)

What it’s good for: As the name suggests, pro camera gives you lots of control for great-looking photos from your smartphone.

Pro Camera is the first app I ever bought from the Apple App Store. I had just unboxed my first ever iPhone 5 (which I still have, still working fine) and while I knew from playing with video recording that video was a total write-off on this phone (for me at least), I was impressed with the photos I could shoot. Pro Camera gave me all the manual control I wanted when shooting stills with the iPhone. It’s still one of the best, and has stuck with me through the iPhone SE, and now 7 Plus.

www.procamera-app.com

Get Pro Camera from the App Store for $4.99

Lenka (iOS & Android)

What it’s good for: Instant monochrome beauty shots, no editing needed.

If you’ve got a love for black and white imagery, you will love Lenka. It’s a dedicated monochrome camera app which also seems to use more of the image sensor than the default iPhone camera app (not sure about Android devices), giving you a slightly wider than normal field of view. It’s great for architectural photos, urban exploration and street photography, especially where there’s a lot of contrast in the scene or particularly moody lighting.

Lenka is a simple and straightforward camera app with a minimalistic approach to creating great-looking monochrome images with a pleasing tonal range that is beyond simply desaturating a color image. No presets or post editing tools, just great black and white at the click of a button. When you can’t be bothered to edit, and just want a great looking instant monochrome shot, you can’t get better than Lenka.

www.getlenka.com

Available from App Store and Google Play for free.

Adobe Lightroom (iOS & Android)

What it’s good for: Great mobile workflow tool if you use Lightroom on your desktop and have an active Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Very useful even if you don’t.

If you use Lightroom on desktop, it’s a no brainer to have it on your tablet or phone. Available for iPhone, iPad and iPad Pro as well as Android devices, the mobile version provides a surprising amount of functionality. It won’t replace or match Lightroom on your PC or Mac, but does give you some core tools for editing and manipulation on the go. It’s most useful when connected to your Adobe Creative Cloud account allowing you to automatically sync your images with other devices and Lightroom on your desktop.

Once you have imported images, you can flag and rate them just as you would in Lightroom on desktop and all metadata syncs with the images over the cloud. You can crop, rotate and straighten your images, apply presets, and edit a wide range of image parameters.

Some of the more advanced features include curves for highlights, lights, darks and shadows, vignette, split toning, dehaze and lens corrections. Selective editing using radial or linear selections takes things further but is only available if you’re signed into Creative Cloud with an active subscription.

Get Lightroom for mobile from the App Store and Google Play for free.

Snapseed (iOS & Android)

What it’s good for: All-round full-featured free image editing. Beginner or pro, everyone needs Snapseed.

Snapseed is Google’s free mobile image editing platform. It offers up a wide range of editing tools, most of which you’ll find in other apps such as Lightroom for mobile and VSCO. However, you don’t have anything restricted behind a subscription. There’s really nothing missing from Snapseed when it comes to fundamental image editing and it’s free: this is Snapseed’s strength and I see it on the phone of every mobile photography enthusiast I meet.

Snapseed includes a range of filters, each with editable parameters. Some are more subtle than others and you can be as subtle or extreme as you’d like. I prefer VSCO for applying and controlling looks, but you may want to check out what Snapseed includes by default.

Get Snapseed from the App Store and Google Play for free.

VSCO (iOS & Android)

What it’s good for: Serious mobile photography, an artist’s tool. Well worth the annual subscription to the new VSCO X studio.

VSCO has enjoyed the appreciation of a more professional breed of mobile photographers. VSCO has gone further than just developing an app; it has created a community of artists. VSCO has managed to make the idea of preset filters more palatable (and actually useful) to photographers by developing a very wide range of high-quality editable looks which are not gimmicky and tasteless like many others. Many are accurate simulations of much-loved film stocks and chemical processing techniques, and not simply gaudy, over saturated Instagram filters.

VSCO presents its toolset in a elegant package which is enjoyable to use and spend the kind of time necessary to create an image to a professional standard.

Of course it’s not all about simulating film stocks and adding film grain. VSCO also provides the same image editing tools that you’d expect including exposure, contrast, crop and rotate, X and Y skew, sharpening, clarity, saturation, highlight and shadow control, temperature, tint, skin tones, vignette, grain, fade, and both shadow and highlight tint.

VSCO X Studio

VSCO X is an annual subscription giving you access to all VSCO presets as well as various member-only presets and tools. It goes without saying that these are some of the best presets to have. If you want to dial in a perfect Kodak Ektar 100 or Ilford HP5 Plus look, the subscription is well worth it.

VSCO X Exclusive Member Film X Presets:

• Kodak Portra 160 (KP1)
• Kodak Portra 400 (KP4)
• Kodak Tri-X (KX4)
• Fuji Pro 400H (FP4)
• Kodak Portra 800 (KP8)
• Fuji Pro 800Z (FP8)
• Kodak Ektar 100 (KE1)
• Ilford HP5 Plus (IH5)
• Fuji 160C (FP1)
• Fuji 160S (FP2)
• Kodak TMAX 3200 (Coming Soon)

Film X includes new interactive tools which model the effects of exposure and scanning to analog film, taking things way further than any other image editing app.

Altogether, VSCO is a comprehensive studio for creating beautiful images. Many times I’ve seen images on Instagram that I thought for sure were scanned from 35mm negative, which were actually just digital images processed in VSCO.

If you love the film look, VSCO is the tool for you, and when done well, you’re hard pressed to tell. Shoot, edit, print and you’re ready for the walls of any fine art gallery.

Get VSCO from the App Store and Google Play for free. VSCO X subscription is $19.99 per year.

Carbon B&W Studio (iOS)

What it’s good for: Black and white for snobs. Seriously though, a full and comprehensive monochrome studio capable of respectable high-end results.

Carbon B&W Studio is a well-featured dedicated black and white image editing app which is clothed in a beautiful but perhaps slightly pretentious and self-adulating façade. I don’t know, it appeals to me, but opening the app I do feel the need to work in revered silence as if I’m alone in some marble-floored Italian gallery.

The toolset is really good and reminds me a little of VSCO in terms of workflow within the app, but with more hand holding. Once you have imported a image, Carbon guides you to first crop your image before hitting “next”, which takes you into the editor. The tools are divided into four tabs which comprise editing tools, filters, texture and borders. Editing tools are your standard brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, warmth, exposure, vignette, tilt-shift, highlights and shadows, gamma and hue.

Carbon’s filters are where things get quite interesting. There are a huge number of black and white presets, each named after a major world city, which helps you to remember your favorites. There are no bad choices here, but different presets suit different types of image, especially in terms of contrast ratio and tone of the source image. There are also duotone presets, and old photo presets.

A nice feature of Carbon is a collection of light leaks which can be found under the texture tab. Not to be overused, but there are both color and black and white light leaks which can really add some interest and character to an image. There is grain and dust, grunge, bokeh and color fog. I won’t touch much of this, as I draw certain lines personally when it comes to image manipulation, but each to his (or her) own. The light leaks I found to be surprisingly fun, and the film grain is similar to that in VSCO, but I can’t imagine using the bokeh effects (I like my real bokeh… call me a bokeh snob, I don’t care), and I’ll never use the color fog effects either.

If you’ve bought the unlimited package, you’ll have everything unlocked, otherwise you can purchase various filter packages in the app. One criticism I’ve read about Carbon is that the app annoyingly prompts you to buy these packages every time you attempt to click on something which is not enabled. The easy solution is just to pay up from the beginning and unlock everything. This also automatically gives you all future packs, and no annoying prompts to buy anything else.

A couple of annoying things with Carbon is you can’t layer effects. I can’t apply grain from the grain and dust collection, and then also a light leak, I have to choose one or the other. Also when you first import an image, you are prompted to crop, but there is no rotate to straighten an image. Maybe one of the developers reads this and that changes in a future update.

Get Carbon from the App Store for free. Filter packs are $3.99 each or $19.99 to unlock all filter packs.

TPE (iOS & Android)

What it’s good for: Knowing where the sun and moon will be before you mission to a location to shoot.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris may be a mouthful to say, but it’s a must-have app for anyone who plans their outdoor natural light shoots in specific locations. Valuable to photographers and cinematographers alike, TPE provides all the information you could wish for and more.

TPE is a map-centric sun and moon calculator which lets you see exactly how light will fall on land, day or night, for any location on Earth on any date. There is a free web-based version with the free desktop web app.

Advanced features include visual sun and moon search, automatic time zone and elevation detection, correction for atmospheric refraction and height above the horizon. You can also determine when the sun or moon will be visible behind hills and mountains.

www.photoephemeris.com

Get TPE from the App Store and Google Play for $8.99

These are nine of my most used photo and video apps to create great-looking moving and still images on my phone. What other apps do you use? Let us know in the comments below.

The post 9 Must-Have Photo and Video Apps For The Mobile Creator appeared first on cinema5D.

In this letter to the editor, a reader from California, Kathleen Streeter, questions whether or not young people are learning the skills they need through our public education system to become informed and engaged voters. To answer her, we reached out to Alex Robins, a social science high school teacher in San Rafael, California to get his perspective.

To the Editor,

I am a 75-year-old retired banker. I have always tried to be informed and have never failed to vote in an election, local or national. When I went to school there was something called the “Constitution test” that we had to pass in the eighth grade or you didn’t advance. I learned about our history and how our democracy was formed and how precious it is. It was made very clear to me that being informed and voting is critical to the survival of our our way of life and our country.

MORE ON Letters to the Editor

Last night I listened to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) give a speech at the Brookings Institution, and he covered the whole current political “disaster” eloquently. One thing stood out for me: Schiff made the point that civics should be a part of our children’s education from kindergarten through high school.

How can we expect to be a population that lives up to the responsibility of living in a democracy if more than 70 percent of our population cannot name the three branches of government, to say nothing of what they are for?

We are in real trouble with Betsy DeVos in charge of education. If we are going to have an impact, we need to have a free and effective public education system that reaches all of our children and teaches them how critical it is to be an informed and consistent voter.

— Kathleen Streeter, Livermore, California

 

---

 

Dear Kathleen:

The state of political and civic life in our country certainly feels quite tenuous at the moment. You bring up many cogent points about education, engagement and democratic norms.

I am a government, world history and English teacher in San Rafael, California, and I can tell you that despite this, the will and determination of much of our youth is strong. It may be hard to tell at times due to the little space they are given in the public sphere. Certainly there is some general apathy in young people today, but I would argue no more than in previous generations.

What can seem like inaction on the surface (voting numbers, political presence, government knowledge) doesn’t take into account the intellect, experience and bravery these kids show in understanding alternative perspectives, conversing about deeper political topics and standing up for injustice locally and around the country. Much of this engagement goes on in the classroom and in the wilds of the internet: on Reddit threads, Instagram posts and Twitter replies.

I watch students engage with politics and civic life every day. They constantly debate topics ranging from the relevance of the Electoral College (Lose it! Undemocratic!) to police brutality (Accountability? Body cameras?) and from constitutional slavery to the merits of originalism versus “living constitutionalism” for our Supreme Court justices. They use a variety of sources as well as personal experiences to relate these hefty concepts and topics to their own lives and the world around them.

In drafting an answer to your letter, I thought their input and reflection on the issues you present would be informative and help you understand some student perspectives on these pressing topics. I asked three students their thoughts on why young people might struggle to engage in civic life. Here are some of their responses:

• “So many students feel that voters (and older people generally) only think of themselves and their interests rather than considering the impact their decisions have on others.”
• “The larger systems in this country don’t seem to focus on young people’s issues as they have less monetary and political capital.”
• “People of color don’t tend to vote or pay attention to civic life because the system has ignored and belittled their experiences throughout our country’s history.”

Along with my students’ concerns, I believe there are some important ways to engage with young people that can help our society become more empathetic, engaged and civil.

First, we can give all people the benefit of the doubt. Different voices are valuable in a democracy, yet our partisan politics have created an “us versus them” mentality. By giving legitimacy to differing perspectives (on both sides of the aisle), we can start to find empathy in the many different American experiences of our citizens.

Second, we can focus on positive change. As an educator, it can be easy to fall into a “doom and gloom” attitude about inaction in politics or the rigidity of history. However, there are so many ways in which grass-roots organizations and movements have created incremental change in our country. Democracy is slow but effective. By focusing on the means rather than the ends, we encourage student buy-in.

Finally, we can be more inclusive in our conversations about young people. They know that society thinks they don’t care; this doesn’t make them want to care. We need to talk about issues they are affected by. If we want them to engage in discussions on expanded Medicare and tax reform, we need to talk about student loans and Affirmative Action. By offering them a seat at the table, they will be willing to sit.

Regarding your point on the future of public education, it is certainly at a crossroads. Here in California, we have an immense teacher shortage. Yet teachers and critical thinking are essential parts of how we must look ahead to the future. With accessibility to information through new technology, there is a belief that teaching will become easier; just grab an iPad and learning is at your fingertips. However without a facilitator to guide students on their paths to learning, fake news and misinformation can seep into students’ answers and understanding of the world. We need great, highly valued teachers to take up the cause and fight for our students.

A more free-thinking, thoughtful and skeptical population will lead to a truer democracy and a more civil society.

— Alex Robins, San Rafael, California

 
If you’re a serious reader of our website and have something you would like to say, Bill would like to hear from you. We’ll choose letters on an occasional basis as they seem relevant to an issue we have been following. Please keep your letter to a reasonable length. Email us at yourturn [at] billmoyers [dot] com.

The post Are Young People Getting the Education They Need to Engage in Political Life? appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

In a 50-to-48 vote along party lines, the U.S. Senate decided to kill FCC rules blocking your ISP from selling your browsing history to the advertising industry without permission. Should the change pass the House, as is expected, the likes of Comcast and Verizon will be able to make money disclosing what you buy, where you browse, and what you search from your own home, all without asking permission.

In an immediate signal that the vote will only benefit monied corporate interests and not the roughly 70 percent of Americans with a home broadband connection, the Internet & Television Association trade group gloated over their congressional victory:

The post Senate Republicans Just Sold You Out to Advertisers appeared first on The Intercept.

If in fact Trump Tower was wiretapped during the 2016 presidential campaign, as President Trump claimed in several tweets Saturday morning, he can do much more than say so on twitter: Presidents have the power to declassify anything at any time, so Trump could immediately make public any government records of such surveillance.

What Trump is saying seems to be a garbled version of previous reporting by the BBC, among other news outlets.

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

According to a report in the BBC, citing unnamed sources, a joint government task force was formed in spring of 2016 to look into an intelligence report from a foreign government that Russian money was somehow coming into the U.S. presidential race. In June the Department of Justice, part of the task force, asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for a warrant to intercept electronic communications by two Russian banks.

However, the BBC’s report says, the FISA court turned the application down.. The Justice Department then asked again in July with a more narrowly drawn request, which was again turned down. Justice then made a third request for a warrant on October 15, which was granted.

None of this involves wiretapping Trump Tower. However, it is possible that Trump picked that up from a Breitbart article that in turn relied on a Heat Street piece that claimed the warrant was issued because of evidence of links between a “private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower” and a Russian bank. In fact, the server in question, set up by a marketing company hired by Trump, was physically located in Philadelphia.

Barack Obama’s spokesman responded to Trump’s tweets by saying that “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.” Notably, this statement does not deny that someone in the Obama administration ordered surveillance of Trump Tower, simply that the White House did not – which isn’t meaningful, since in a properly functioning executive branch the Justice Department would make that decision on its own without White House interference.

So what does all this mean?

The most likely explanation is that there was never any wiretapping of Trump Tower – or as Trump put it in another tweet, “my phones” — but the FISA court did allow surveillance of the Philadelphia server and the Justice Department ultimately decided there was nothing to it.

Or perhaps the Justice Department decided there was something to it and is still investigating it.

Or perhaps there were FISA court warrants but for surveillance of people around Trump that had nothing to do with the Philadelphia server and the Russian bank.

Or perhaps Trump never read the Breitbart article but instead learned there was significant surveillance of Trump Tower in the way you’d expect a president would, from the massive intelligence apparatus he commands.

Or perhaps Trump has simply gotten all of this wrong.

Whatever the case, Trump has the power to clarify it and everything else about the Russia story right now by declassifying whatever surveillance records exist of contacts between people in his orbit and Russia. If he and his associates did nothing wrong, he has every incentive to do so as soon as possible.

The White House press office did not immediately respond to requests to comment on whether Trump will use his declassification power regarding his tweeted claims. It’s previously ignored repeated questions about whether he will use it regarding the general issue of contacts between Russia and his campaign.

Interestingly, there has in fact been significant government surveillance involving a presidential campaign in the past, although it’s unlikely Trump will want to remind America of it.

During the 1968 contest between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, President Lyndon Johnson was attempting to negotiate a peace deal to end the Vietnam War.

Nixon was worried that if this happened just before the election it would help Humphrey, who was Johnson’s vice president. Recently discovered notes by one of Nixon’s top campaign aides show that Nixon asked him to “monkey wrench” the peace talks. Via Anna Chennault, a top Republican fundraiser, the Nixon campaign sent messages to the government of South Vietnam not to go along with Johnson’s plans.

Johnson knew that this was happening at the time, and believed that it constituted “treason.” He ordered the FBI to wiretap the embassy of South Vietnam in Washington, which picked up Ambassador Bui Diem communicating with Chennault. (Presidents could and did directly order wiretaps prior to the establishment of the FISA court in 1978 to prevent executive branch abuses of its surveillance power.) The FBI also began conducting general surveillance of Chennault.

Johnson and several top officials, including Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, struggled with what to do in a fascinating phone call on November 4, 1968, the day before the election.

Johnson speaks of not wanting to be “a McCarthy” and worries about the certainty that “we’ll be charged with trying to interfere with the election.”

Rusk also equivocates, telling Johnson that “I do not believe that any president can make any use of interceptions or telephone taps in any way that would involve politics. The moment we cross over that divide we are in a different kind of society. … We get a lot of information through these special channels that we don’t make public. For example, some of the malfeasances of senators and congressmen and other people. … I think that we must continue to respect the classification of that kind of material.”

Clifford chimes in with another concern: that Americans just couldn’t endure learning how the world actually works. “I think,” Clifford frets, “that some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story, and then possibly to have a certain individual elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubts that I would think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

In the end, Johnson decided not to reveal what he knew about Nixon’s shocking subterfuge.

The next day Nixon narrowly beat Humphrey. During Nixon’s time in office, 20,000 more U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died before the war finally ended.

The fact that Nixon did ally with a foreign government for advantage in a presidential election certainly doesn’t mean that Trump did the same. However, it does mean that U.S. politicians are capable of doing that – and that past presidents have used wiretaps to track the actions of their political adversaries.

Top photo: U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he walks on the South Lawn after he returned to the White House March 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. President Trump has returned from his trip to visit the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in Newport News, Virginia.

The post If Trump Tower Was Wiretapped, Trump Can Declassify That Right Now appeared first on The Intercept.

“Both of us are widowers. We met last year at a dance for seniors. He treats me so much better than my husband ever did. My husband treated me like a stray dog. He used to beat me. He’d get angry, and yell, and break things. He’d always say that I’d never meet someone else. But this man is different. He always tells me that he loves me. He always wants to be with me. He makes me feel like a princess.”

(São Paulo, Brazil)

“My first tattoo said: “I Hate.” I tattooed over it a long time ago. I was twenty-one when I got it. It was a very self-destructive period of my life. I’d dropped out of college. My girlfriend had just left me for an older guy. I’d gotten a Mohawk and was doing a lot of slam dancing. I felt like everyone in the family was disappointed with me. My dad was a very successful attorney. My brother was a diplomat. So I rebelled against everything and decided that I was going to live the whole ‘poetry lifestyle.’ I lived in the desert for a couple years. Then I came to New York and tried to survive as a poet. I ended up working as a freak in the Coney Island Side Show. But after fifteen years, even that became like any other job. It was the exact same thing every day. Only the audience changed. I still haven’t figured out what I was trying to escape. There’s no such thing as a true outsider. We all have to breathe. We all have to eat. We all have to work. I wanted to run away from everything but I ran into myself. I’m still a middle class, intellectual kid from the suburbs.”

The end of the year is a time for reflection. We all have ups and downs, but a recent study suggests you’ll be happier if you keep your walk down memory lane focused on a few specific types of memories.

Read more...