Custom ringtone by @yuxhuang
Before running off to Toronto, friend and officemate Felix recorded this custom ringtone for me. I cherish it dearly.
Before running off to Toronto, friend and officemate Felix recorded this custom ringtone for me. I cherish it dearly.
Original video on Vimeo.
I had a lot of fun with "Charlottetown at Night," which I shot one night last fall, and knew I wanted to do it again. So, I got my hands on a Canon 7D and hit the streets again. I went out on Islander Day, a provincial holiday, so the streets are relatively bare. The snow was a little more wet and was falling a little faster than I would have liked, but it was relatively mild, which made for comfortable shooting. Shooting with the 7D is tricky, to say the least. It's a pain to get the exposure and focus right, and the fixed LCD ends up causing trouble when you're shooting from a low angle. On more than one occasion, I ended up adjusting the shutter speed rather than the aperture by accident (you can see the jittery snow in the shots at the Confederation Centre). Overall though, the 7D is a lot of fun to shoot with, and it's obvious that it takes time to master. Once again, I borrowed the camera from photographer and pal Jason MacLean. The music in this video is "Piano Lessons" from Keegan Dewitt's fantastic score for Quiet City. You can see more of Keegan's work (and even download the entire Quiet City score) at keegandewitt.com. You can see the trailer for Quiet City on YouTube.Original video on Vimeo.
After we got home that night, I needed to try the 7D outside, since it's known for its low-light capabilities. So I fitted my Tamron 28-75mm F/2.8 to the 7D and hit the streets of Charlottetown. I walked about, dodging dodgy characters, getting whatever I thought might look cool. Then I made this:Original video on Vimeo.
While the 7D is built for photographers first and can be a pain to shoot video on, it is a fantastic camera. The ability to swap lenses and the fact that it shoots full 1080p at 30 and 24 fps, (and can do up to 60fps at 720p) rivals some professional videos cameras that cost five times as much. I'm looking forward to trying it out during the day so I can shoot as a more reasonable ISO and really see what this bad boy is capable of.Original video on Vimeo.
ReelDirector was pretty easy and intuitive to use. It lets you add clips to the timeline by going into your camera roll, selecting the clip you want, trimming it (as you would with the iPhone's default video app), and tapping "Choose" to pop it in. Once your clips are in the timeline, you can rearrange them (similar to the old school iMovie's clip viewer) and add transitions. You can add opening and closing titles in a variety of styles, and when you're finished editing, the video saves back to your camera roll. [gallery link="file" columns="4" orderby="ID"] That said, ReelDirector lacked some of the features I assumed it would have (and I don't think I had really lofty expectations). For starters, you can't access the camera from within the app, and therefore, have to do all your shooting before you launch it. Not a big thing, but surprising. There is no way to edit audio. Even something as simple as being able to select a song from your music library is a feature I'm surprised to find absent. Also, while you can add titles to the beginning and end of the video, the app doesn't let you place titles anywhere else in the video. There is one major bug with ReelDirector: it does not intelligently rotate your clips. The app assume that all your clips were shot with the iPhone tilted on its left side. Any clips shot the opposite way will result in the clip being upside down in the timeline, and there is no option to rotate it yourself. Bizarre, yes, but true ("coffee time" actually had a whole section that I had to turn right side up after downloading it from my phone). In the end, you have to ask if the app is worth the price. ReelDirector costs $7.99, but seeing as though it's currently the only video editing application for iPhone, I'm surprised it doesn't cost more. If you're looking for something to stitch video clips together, it works (save for the clip orientation bug mentioned above). If you're looking for an iMovie Lite, however, you won't find it here.