Just before the turn of the calendar year, Panasonic released the much-anticipated AF100 camcorder, featuring a large 4/3″ 3MOS image sensor, interchangeable lenses, plus all of the pro-video features that come standard on Panasonic professional camcorders. Many heralded the arrival of the AF100 as an answer to those DSLR enthusiasts who bemoaned the various issues associated with DSLR shooting — image wobbling due to the rolling shutter, moire effects, no support for critical audio controls and monitoring, etc. Digital cinematographers wanted the beautiful images and sexy shallow depth of field that the DSLRs offered, but they missed actual professional video features too.

Last Wednesday, VCAM staff and other video pros in the area were treated to a demonstration of the AF100 here in the VCAM studio. Bill Kennedy, Panasonic’s New England sales manager, kindly brought the camera up from Albany to show off for us. So what did we think? Is it a “DSLR killer?”

Well, no. Not really. But maybe sort of, depending on the sort of work you’re doing. Let’s break it down:

Image sensor: the micro 4/3″ image sensor on the AF100 is larger than image sensors you’ll find on other Panasonic video cameras (like VCAM’s HMC150 and HVX200) and there is a corresponding ease with getting a shallow depth of field, as you’d expect. But a 4/3″ sensor is only about 50% of the size of the full-frame 35mm sensor on the Canon 5DmkII, resulting in a 2x crop factor where lens focal lengths are concerned (by contrast, the Canon T2i’s APS-C image sensor yields a 1.6x crop factor). So a 50mm lens on the 5D will act like 100mm lens on the AF100. That’s a pretty big jump. And getting a shallow depth of field (if that’s your bag) out of the AF100 is easier than it is on, say, the HMC150, but it’s not the crazy-beautiful shallow focus of the 5D.

Lenses: Of course, depth of field isn’t just about the image sensor size — f-stop and lens focal length have a lot to do with it too, so being able to swap lenses is a really important feature on any camera that’s going to be used for cinema-style shooting. The lens mount on the AF100 is a “micro 4/3″ mount (I know, I’d never heard of it before either). The bad news is that there are at present, precious few micro 4/3 lenses out there on the market. The good news is that lens manufacturers are selling adapters for just about any kind of lens you might already have. We have a lovely set of Carl Zeiss f-mount primes that go with our HVX200/Letus adapter rig and we were able to throw those onto the AF100 on Wednesday (using the f-mount adapter that Bill K. brought up with him) and they looked great. Bill had brought a Lumix 14-140mm micro 4/3 zoom with him as a basic lens for the camera, but it was slow and didn’t really show off the camera’s ability to produce nice images. Once we threw our Zeiss lenses on, the camera really started to shine.

Here’s the tricky part for people who own their own glass and are considering the AF100: lots of basic video camera features, like iris control, auto-focus, optical image stabilization, etc., require a data connection between the lens and the camera. Unless the lens was made with the AF100 specifically in mind, that data connection won’t exist and all of those things will have to be handled manually. That’s not such a big surprise, but if you want to use, for example, your Canon EOS lenses, you’re in trouble. EOS lenses don’t have manually-adjustable aperture controls on the lens. You can put the lens on the AF100 (with the proper lens adapter), but you won’t be able to change your f-stop.

Other stuff: as video camera functionality goes, the AF100 is pretty great — XLR audio inputs, built-in waveform monitor and vectorscope, ND filters, adjustable shutter speeds, various focus assist gizmos, adjustable ISO/gain, a host of progressive and interlaced frame rates and the important ability to take a video feed straight off the chip set via an SDI-out on the back of the camera (for those who want to avoid compressing via the AVCHD video codec on the SD cards). This is a professional tool that offers the user a lot of manual control.

Conclusions: Don’t think of the AF100 as a “DSLR killer.” Think of it as a halfway point between a DSLR and an HMC150. It tries to give you the best of both those worlds and it actually comes pretty close. Right now, if I have to go out and shoot a spot for VCAM (like this Access 101 piece or this Fit & Healthy Kids PSA, for example — both shot by me on these cameras), I bring both the 5D and the HMC150 to give me a wide range of shooting options. Perhaps with the AF100, I could just bring the one camera and get everything I need.

In terms of depth of field, I actually want a middle ground. For years I shot with the DVX100, HVX200 and HMC150 and constantly stayed at the longest end of the lens and wide open on the aperture in order to force the camera to give me some shallow focus. With the 5D I have the opposite problem. Sometimes I need to have more focus options other than “super shallow,” and I don’t want to have to travel around with a 5-ton grip truck to get the shots I want. The AF100 might just be the Goldilocks camera I’ve been waiting for.

It’s that time of year again — time for the public to vote on which panel proposals should get included in next year’s South by Southwest Interactive, Film & Music conference in Austin, Texas. VCAM has a history with SXSW, having sent (or having helped send) Production Manager Bill Simmon to the conference four times, including last year where he gave a presentation at the conference on community media. Bill has a panel proposal in for next year’s conference as well. It’s all about how to teach video skills to people who have zero experience with video. Here’s Bill’s pitch:

Video is becoming nearly as ubiquitous as text on the web. Web tools for uploading and sharing video are free and easy to use, but still the vast majority of content producers don’t really understand how to communicate effectively in the video medium. It turns out communicating well with video is just as complex as communicating well with language, and teaching those skills to the uninitiated can be daunting. This panel is designed to help those who already have a decent mastery of video production teach those skills to others. It’s a how-to-how-to, if you will.

We obviously encourage you to vote for Bill’s proposal. You have to register at the site in order to vote, but it’s quick and painless and you won’t get spammed or anything for doing it.

But Bill isn’t the only one pitching a community media-related panel. Software developer and community media activist, Kevin Reynen, who is himself proposing a panel on the Open Media Project, has identified several community media-related proposals in the this year’s list (of more than 2,300 panel proposals!). Here’s Kevin’s list; please vote for these panels and help get community media on the south-by radar!

Panels being proposed by PEG center staffers:
channelAustin Open Media Project: Giving Community Control of Television
VCAM – Shooting Noobs: Teaching Video to the Video Illiterate
BAVC – Sexy Dirty Data: Making Your Metrics Matter
BAVC – Virtually Augmented 3.0 Reality: New Tools for Filmmakers

Other Public Media related sessions:
Offline America, Why We Have A Digital Divide – Rural librarian and Internet folk hero, Jessamyn West (a Vermonter!)
Open Wide: New Models for Public Media – Jacquie Jones from the National Black Programming Consortium has a much more inclusive view of Public Media 2.0
Wordpress 3.0: The TV Series Publishing Platform – It’s not Drupal, but it is open source
Cost-Collaboration: Professionals, Policy & Open-Information Practices Eric Steuer from Creative Commons has helped explain Creative Commons licensing at channelAustin and BAVC.
Our Media: Building An API For Public Media – Nothing wrong with API’s and standards that are truly open. Not sure if this one is, but at least leaves the door open for folks outside the CPB by including “NPR, PBS and others are thinking even bigger.”

General Television and VOD sessions:
YouTube vs. the Telly: Changing Viewing Habits
Taking The Onion’s Web Series to Television
500 People in Your Living Room: Emerging SocialTV
It’s Not Tv, It’s Social Tv
Second Screen: TV Meets The Web Backchannel
This is Our Generation: WeOwnTV Sierra Leone

Other sessions that could have something to do with open, public media:
Too Small, Too Open: Correcting Wikipedia’s Local Failure
Journalism Collaborations: Recreating News for the Digital Age
Content Is No Longer King: Curation Is King!
The Rebirth of Radio Thanks to Social Media

Thanks for your vote!

Next week is the big 2010 Alliance for Community Media conference and people from access centers all over the country will be converging on Pittsburgh to network with one another and discuss community media, PEG TV and all the possibilities the future affords. Attendees will be able to choose from six different tracks this year including:

- Citizen Journalism & Social Media
- Community Media Center Management, HR & Board Development
- Fundraising & Collaborations
- Engineering, Broadband, Network management & Related Issues
- Media & Telecom Policy
- Community Engagement, Training & Marketing/Outreach

Our good friend Colin Rhinesmith from CCTV in Cambridge Massachusetts has been charged with leading the Citizen Journalism and Social Media track and I was lucky enough to have been asked to present on the “Using Social Media to Serve the PEG Community and NonProfit Organizations” panel on July 9th. I will be joining Colin, Lee Webster the iYouth Director at channelAustin and Jason Daniels the Executive Director at ECAT in North Easton, MA to discuss the way our centers utilize social networking to inform our communities and strengthen our alliances with NonProfit Organizations.

We were each asked to develop a short presentation on how our own social media strategies have proven to be successful. I have chosen to focus on how VCAM has used social networking in an attempt to build an online identity that is faithful to the values and spirit in our mission. The following are some of the bullet points that I have started putting together for the panel discussion:

Social networking is sharing culture:
- Social media, unlike the “dreaded” newsletter, we don’t have to think of everything to share with our audience.
- We frequently share news items (blog posts, tweets, photos, video – any content shared via social networking) from sources that aren’t directly related to our organization but are related to the spirit and values of our mission. Net neutrality, rural broadband, copyright and creative commons, media access, fair use, free speech etc.
- It is all part of illustrating a larger context and sharing the greater culture around our organization.
- Sharing is key: The power of the retweet or “share” functions: sharing content that originated outside oour center (news from a partner nonprofit org partner for example) = speed skating relay (i.e. teamwork, partnerships)
- By sharing information that others in our social media network have created, we are helping push information further and to more people than the originator of the content could do alone.
- Not only are we indicating to our own network of followers that we value the information we are retweeting, we’re also telling the creator of the content that we appreciate what they have to offer and are willing to help their cause.
- Why do nonprofits come to VCAM? A fundamental principle of ours: We’re here to help others get important information out to their community. Social media is an extension of that commitment.

Strategy around content created by our staff:
- We try to distribute all of our own news throughout our network, link to blog posts and newsletter (constant contact) via Twitter and Facebook, Tweet “round-ups” on the blog etc.
- Redundancy is OK in fact has proven quite useful for us.
- If we shoot a short PSA we’re going to put it on our channel, upload it to blip.tv & YouTube > embed the video in our blog > link to the blog post via Twitter > and share a link to the blogpost on our FB wall.
- Cast a wide net.

Direct benefits of developing our network:
- It has enabled us to offer more effective social media workshops to our nonprofit partners.
- More and more people are listing our social media network as how they heard about our organization and/or know about our workshops.
- Through discussions with many of our members we are noticing a growing familiarity with the larger context of community media (i.e. legislation and policy, challenges associated with evolving technology in relation to our funding structure, why advocacy is essential etc.) and many people have credited our Facebook page and Twitter feed for keeping up to date with important issues facing PEG.

Tips:

- These are things that have worked for VCAM and every center is different..so listen to your community, find out what tools they are using and shape your social media strategy around where they are interacting.
- When developing your social media network remember the phrase “Redundancy is a plus….consistency is a must”
- Lastly, for those folks just starting to develop their social media network and online identity: There are thousands of social media experts out there – feel free to ignore them all. (Just have fun with it)

I hope to update this blog post as the list develops……

Note: Post was updated on 7/9/10 in preperation for panel discussion.

VCAM is preparing to send it’s delegation to Pittsburgh, PA for the Alliance for Community Media’s national conference. The conference is taking place from July 7-11th at the Hilton in Pittsburgh. I (Rob Chapman) will be making the over-ten-hour drive, with Operations Director Seth Mobley and Production Technician Jim Kelty in the car. Scott Campitelli and Drew Frazier from RETN will also help with the driving duties.  The conference happens every year in July.  Over 400 people will attend the conference, including access center staff, access producers, board members and vendors. It’s an opportunity to network with community media minded people, to learn about the latest communication technologies and to develop strategies  for defending against threats to PEG access — whether it’s some piece of legislation, some regulatory changes or negotiation tactics for franchises. It’s also a great opportunity to see what PEG access looks like in other areas of the country and to bring our own skills to our fellow access providers. We’re very excited that our own Seth Mobley will be serving on a panel that deals with developing outreach strategies associated with social media. We’ll let you know what we find out.