5DMKII, 16-35mm, f/3.2 @ 1/20, ISO 6400.

I was feeling a bit down about the Olympics being over and then this happened. I guess there still is a bit of awesome left in Vancouver.

From this I learnt two valuable lessons:

1. Don’t despair. You might run into a storm trooper outside your apartment; and
2. Never leave home without a camera.

A lot of people are asking me what I am using to record my most recent videos covering the Olympics, so I thought I’d share my set-up with you.

It’s nothing super fancy, except for the 5DMKII :) For lenses I’ve been primarily using the 35mm because it’s the widest lens I’ve got. Plus, my 50mm f/1.4 had a small accident and is currently in the Canon’s hospital for sick camera lenses. I rented the 16-35mm f/2.8 this weekend and absolutely fell in love with it shooting the crowd scenes in the Ignite your Dream video.

I’ve experimented with longer lenses, my 85mm f/1.8 used in the stadium during the victory ceremony video and the 70-200mm IS f/2.8, but found it impossible to keep steady while shooting hand-held and possibly clapping or screaming which seems to be a requirement during the games. Also, tripods and huge swarms of people don’t seem to mix well. I tried it once during the games and nearly punctured someone’s liver.

I’m using the RØDE VideoMic (Directional Video Condenser Microphone) for sound which has worked out alright. It’s obviously not ideal to shoot in noisy crowds like this video I shot in a crowd of enthusiastic hockey fans. But it’s a great, low priced mic that I’ve used in many video projects. You can tell the difference in using the VidMic compared to the on-camera mic at the end of this video.

For extra lighting in night scenes or in door shooting, I’m using a Litepanels Micro LED light. This small LED light panel runs on 4 AA batteries and has an integrated dimmer dial that allows you to control your lighting output. You can also put coloured gels in the flip-down filter holder to correct any white balancing issues.
The mic and the litepanel are connected to my camera’s hotshoe using the Cool-Lux MD300 light and sound bracket.

This is my first time shooting with the 5DMKII and it has absolutely blown my mind how crisp and vibrant the footage looks even at ISO6400. Well, that is when it’s in focus! It is definitely a challenge to grab focus in night time shoots, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it.

Any questions or comments?

It’s Thanksgiving up here in the frozen North, so I thought I’d do a little Photojojo book giveaway to say thank you to all my followers. I have 3 awesome Photojojo books to give away. This is a great book for inspiration, DIY projects & tips.

Here’s how to win

Simply ReTweet the following phrase & follow me (@mostlylisa) on twitter:

“Win a copy of @photojojo’s New DIY Photography Book from @mostlylisa. (Details via http://shak.in/1m )”

Dear Twitter,

My Twitter page @mostlylisa has been hacked and deleted. It’s GONE!!! I am currently catatonic. Please help me restore my account, it’s like, my meaning in life.

Much love to whom ever helps me!

PS. If you miss me like I miss you, you can always be my Friend OR Fan on Facebook. I know it’s not the same, but it’s all I have now. *hold me*

Geekin’ out on the DSi with Blackbox’s M14 ANR headphones.

Back to School doesn’t have to be the end of fun! Well, in all honesty it does, but at least you can soften the blow of returning to the grind by treating yourself to some great geeky gadgets.

1. Neverlate 7-day Alarm Clock ($34 + shipping thinkgeek.com)
After a few months of enjoying blissful afternoon sleep-ins, that first week of 7am wake ups are going to smart. To make sure you aren’t late for your first semester of classes like I was in 3rd year University, you might want to invest in a serious alarm clock.

This alarm clock allows you to set 7 independent daily alarms for each day, so you don’t have the nightly annoyance of setting your alarm. You can also customize your snooze time from one to 30 minutes and set a midday nap alarm with the push of a button.

2. Canon SD960 IS Digital Elph Camera ($299)
So you’ve managed to drag yourself out of bed and grab some caffeine and Coco Pops. You should really capture this pivotal moment. Why not snap a picture with the new Canon SD960 IS Digital Elph camera. The slick, pocket-sized point and shoot comes in four colours (blue, pink, silver & gold).

It’s packed with a 12.1 megapixel sensor that takes crisp, vibrant images and stunning HD (1280×720, 30fps) movies. This little camera has the best looking video I’ve seen from a point and shoot in a long time.

3. Space Invaders Messenger Bag ($49 USD + shipping 16BIT.etsy.com)

I guess it’s time to head to school or all that hard work getting out of bed will be for nothing. You definitely need a sweet bag to match your Converse sneakers and ironic tee. 16-Bit has some amazing, handcrafted retro gaming messenger bags that will store your laptop and all your school essentials. From Super Mario to Donkey Kong to Space Invaders, these limited edition bags are as funky as they are functional.

(more…)

The new Mario Bros is so awesome. And my favourite character, Yoshi is back! Wii!

I also picked up a sweet new blue DSi and instantly got hooked on the musical game, Rhythm Heaven. It is the silliest game I’ve played since WarioWare Smooth Moves for the Wii, which is definitely cool in my books. As you may have guessed, I’m a wee bit strange. 8-P

Last week I visited Nintendo Canada & Mario at their Vancouver offices to check out some of the new games and gear that they announced at 2009’s E3 conference. It was loads of fun. Especially when I beat Nintendo game guru, Matt Ryan at Swordplay. Ha! Well… he may have won best 2 out of 3, but I gave him a run for his money!

Also, my arms were so stiff the next day that I could hardly type. The new Wii Sports Resorts kinda kicked my butt a little. *starts to head to gym… grabs a donut instead :P*

Stay tuned for Part 2. Even more embarrassing moments playing the new Wii Fit Plus & Super Mario Bros and an inside look at the new DS games! Oh boy!

PS I’m actually pretty ace at frisbee. It was that darn Wii Mii dog that couldn’t get his act together.

Here’s the video. Every single second of it :S

I’m actually really proud of this show and everyone involved. It was my first time producing a show this big, technologically challenging, & live! I lost about 5 pounds in sweat, literally. There were moments when I just wanted to crawl into the fetal position a cry. But we had such an amazing team who pulled several all-nighters to get this show up and running.

I was so grateful that my Redpilot partner, Ryland Haggis, came down to help oversee some of the technical aspects, including running all over San Francicso looking for 8 core Mac Pros, graphics cards, mics, & every possible cable imaginable. And thanks to GDC09 for only finding one firewire PCI Express card in entire city of San Francisco.

Huge props to the Boinx guys, Bastian & Tino, AKA “Ze Germans”. Their ability to deal with a plethora of audio, video, live streaming, green screens, & graphics was flawless. I also quite enjoyed Tino’s Austrian Governator accent. “Come with me if you want to live!”

My co-hosts, Veronica & Crazy Chris Pirillo, were awesome as always with their mix of professionalism and jocularity!

I just arrived in San Fran after an awesome, snow filled, American snack attack, couple of days in Portland.

I’m in lovely SF for the most anticipated live show of the year! The MacHeist 3 Bundle Reveal show is this Tuesday night at 8pm EDT (5pm for west coasters). We’ll be broadcasting the show from San Francisco at Pixel Corps studios.

Hosting the show will be: Veronica Belmont, cat lover & host of Tekzilla on Revision3 and Qore on PSN. Chris Pirillo, media-friendly geek and Tech Expert for CNN.com. & Me, host of living room puppet shows, Zombie Impersonations: The Podcast & creator of SockGobblins.net

Chris, Veronica & I at Pixel Corps for rehearsal.

Be sure to tune in! I may even ask my evil Russian spy twin to pop by. But, you know Sophia… Always in the middle of conjuring up some sort of devious plan.

I’m producing the show so I’ll be in panic mode until the whole thing has finished and is successful. Keep your fingers crossed…

I interview Glenn Purkis, product manager of XBOX live & try out some family friendly XBOX 360 games at the Best March Break Ever XBOX 360 event and make a complete fool out of myself as per usual.

Hiyah!

I saw the premiere of Watchmen at midnight on the IMAX screen and holy smokes was it ever awesome. My experience of watching the film was similar to the first time that I saw The Matrix. The action was spectacular, the characters were layered, and it actually made you think. Only with Watchmen I didn’t have to spend a week getting Keanu’s annoying voice out of my head. This time it was something else that distracted me… what was it again… oh yes the #bigbluedong. Looks like even Dr. Manhattan has something to prove. Ah, but who can blame him with lil Miss Lady Latex getting all snuggly with Mr. Horny Beak up in the fiery sex pod.

Go see Watchmen and then read the graphic novel. I’m half way through and it is equally, if not more entertaining than the movie.

Thoughts on Watchmen, comics, & superheroes? 

I apologize for my lousy blogging lately. Macworld has been insane for me. I was on my feet from 7am – 3am, running around the expo doing Macbreak interviews, being a guest on Macbreak Weekly, recording TWiP, and looting booths for schwag (the most important thing at MW), and attending a few shindigs.

I plan on writing a detailed post on my reflections of Macworld and my top picks of the Expo in a few days. Before I give you my thoughts on the keynote, I’d like to hear yours.

Were you disappointed with this year’s Macworld keynote?

Like say the fact that they didn’t even mention Snow Leopard or release a new mini or iMac or, like announce something cool other than the ability to DRM-free your previously bought itunes music for $0.30 a pop? 30 x 14GB of music = I don’t know, you do the math.

There is a super awesome prize for the person who makes the best comment. So breathe in and let it all out. Please don’t make Steve cry too much. Think about his hormone imbalance. Please.

Photo by Scott Meizner’s slick Canon 5D Mark II.

It’s just after midnight, the day before Macworld keynote ‘09. I can see the glow of the Moscone Center from my hotel room. I can’t quite see the line o’fanboys, but if I crane my neck a wee bit, I can see the twinkle of their MBP and a glint in their eyes. They miss Jobs. Ahh, don’t we all.

For those of you not able to come to Macworld, I’ll be covering all of its geeky goodness with the MacBreak crew. So I want to ask you:

What Macworld inside scoop would you like hear about? If you think of person, company, or Mac-related product you’d like to learn about, fire a comment here or @lisabettany on twitter or squint your eyes, distort the Space-Time continuum, and leave me a scroll somewhere near the Moscone Center. No guarantees that I’ll get it, but good effort, none-the-less.

For the holidays, The Vancouver Province is rolling out a special insert called “The Holiday Survival Guide”. It’s my job to pick the Top 5 Gadget Gifts. It’s basically a dream come true. The only downside is that there are so many awesome gadgets, which five do I pick? I have scoured gadget web sites, magazines, and my own apartment to find the best gadget gifts to recommend and I’m just not feeling my current list.

This is where I need your help!

What are your favourite gadgets of 2008?

What do gadgets do you want? Anything from a camera to a games console to a gorilla pod. I don’t want all the gadgets I recommend to be really expensive so that no one can afford them. I’m sure we’d all love the new Canon 5D Mark II or a brand new MacBook Pro, but those just aren’t feasible holiday “gifts”… unless your Facebook profile states “in a relationship with Kanye West”.

My first time shooting the stars was a memorable event. I’ve always been facinated by stars. My childhood room was plastered with constellation, galaxy and astronomy posters. I even had the main constellations replicated in glow-n-the-dark stars on the slanted ceiling above my bed. I was seriously into stars. So much so, that I only alloted a small 6×6″ piece of wall for Matt Damon.

On the last day of the Aperture Nature Photography Workshop, I was elated when Scott Stulberg suggested that we decided to stay long into the night to capture some astronomical pictures. We did have to forgo dinner and general warmth, but it was well worth it.

The group was lead by Scott Stulberg & Martin Gisbourne, an experienced astrophotographer who guided us through the sky and found a perfect spot right below the Milky Way for us to set up our gear.

It’s really important to set up your tripod and camera and find your frame and focus point before it gets dark, because when it’s dark, you can’t see a whole lot through your view finder. I learnt my lesson by finding the edge of a huge tree in a lot of my star pictures after the fact. I think the tree decided to move in my frame just to spite me. Jerk.

Also, if you don’t have a headlamp flashlight, get one. They are essential for early morning or night shoots. Trust me, mounting a camera on a tripod or changing a CF card in the dark is not a good idea. Also, the iPhone flashlight app does not give sufficient light for finding anything really. Tried. Tested. And true. And dress warm, like a Michelin man amount, as it gets a wee bit chilly waiting for those 30s exposures.

As soon as the sky was dark, the group started shooting. It was really tough to get the stars in focus and the photos weren’t coming out the way we wanted. Scott Stulberg and I ended up breaking from the group to do some crazy light painting of the Mormon barns which I”ll talk about in another post. When we came back we ran into legendary Nikon photographer, Dave Black, and his pals shooting some spectacular shots of the stars in a completely different position in the sky. We asked them how they were getting such clear shots. He said that the trick is to set your focus to manual, on infiinite focus, positioning the cursor right in the middle of the ∞. Then we had the magic formula:

Aperture at f/2.8,
Shutter speed at 25-30s,
Manual focus set to infinite focus,
ISO cranked to 3200 to 6400 (for those of us with Nikon D3s).

The only problem was, Scotty’s camera was outta juice and he forgot his spare battery (tsk, tsk) and my lil Xti couldn’t hack it, so Richard generously loaned us his Canon 1D Mark III to get this magical shot.

Most of us were shooting with wide-angle lenses, as wide as a 14mm fisheye, to get in as much sky as possible. But if you’ve got zoom, use it, especially if the moon is out and aboot.

I hope this has given you the inspiration to go out and take your own star shots. If you get any good ones be sure to link them in the comments!

Published in The Province.

At some point during the last 10 years of this computer age, spelling and grammatical accuracy got tossed, phrases got shortened to two-finger tappables like “CU l8r”, and a whole new lexicon of ever-expanding nerd words like “w00t”, “l337″, “n00b” moved from underground Internet forums to mainstream media and your e-mail inbox.

More and more we see the Internet shaping the way we communicate with each other. The language of the Internet is fast-paced, constantly changing, and rich with cynicism and rebellion. After all, the age group developing and propagating this new iSpeak is Internet savvy teenagers belonging to Gen Z or the “Google Generation.” These kids grew up on the web, texting their friends in kindergarten, pirating mp3s for their iPods before puberty and coding complex websites during high-school geography class.

Gen Z is not afraid of breaking rules or experimenting with language. Just look at the plethora of fabulous spellings for the frequently used teen phrase “this sucks” in Internet slang, or LeetSpeak. There is “teh suxs” for everyday usage, “suxx0rz” for really bad suckage, or “suxxaga” when things just can’t suck any worse.

At first it may seem like there is no rhyme nor reason to these derivations, but like any linguistic code, it has a pattern. Once you know the pattern, it oesn’t-day, uck-say. What? No one remembers Pig Latin? Even if you are a complete n00b (“newbie”) on the Internet you will have run into your fair share of LOLs and emoticons, like this smiley, winking guy, ; ).

Whether you know the exact translation as “laugh out loud” or not, the meaning of LOL is universal. No matter where you are in the world, LOL means “I’m laughing”, while :( means “I’m sad.” This guy “:P” will get you out of a lot of trouble if you have the tendency to make snarky remarks that easily offend people — but I wouldn’t know anything about that.

The days of ruthlessly guarded spelling and grammar rules of our parents’ generation are slowly slipping away. With that being said, I am a bit of a stickler for grammar, and I’ll admit to a 50-per-cent increase in pulse rate when I see a beautifully crafted sentence like this one written on my Facebook wall: “i love your photo’s, their really good.” That was actually written by a high-school English teacher, so go figure. I’ve just had to let my Nancy Know-It-All tendencies slide a little and embrace the positives in this linguistic evolution.

So, for better or worse, the Internet is dramatically changing the landscape of human communication.

I see the evolution of language on the web as progress, rather than a slap in the face of steadfast English grammar rules. After all, we are a global community now. It’s time we start to think laterally in terms of language and communication. Plus, I never wuz a gr8 spellr anyway.

What do you think? Is our growing Internet language helping or hindering global communication?

And now for something completely different…

Blog World hi-jinks with my bff Amanda Coolong (TechZulu), Pete Cashmore (Mashable), Snaps (the Kangaroo), USB HubMan/kid, a Zannel squooshie schwag yoyo & a lone pigeon.

Powered by my sweet Mostly Lisa Viddler Tees, 2 hours of sleep, 3 chocolate chip cookies, a large scoop of vanilla ice cream, Yahoo mints, some nuclear green coloured caffeinated drink and Las Vegas.

I’ll be the first to admit it. This video is pretty weird, but it oddly enough captures the essence of a Blogging/Tech/2.0 conference very well. That essence smelling something like a mixture of day-old deodorant, guacamole, gasoline, melting plastic, glue, warm cookies, and dusty carpet. *sigh* I guess you just had to be there.

At least this time I didn’t dive bomb a geek with a USendit airplane or lose a whole bunch of dough with Rosie O’Donnell.

Thanks to rocknrollgeek for filming, the MindTouch girl that gave Snaps a special button, and Pete $more for just lookin’ fly.

PS. I think Amanda really needs to work on her interviewing skills if she’s ever going to be considered, like a serious reporter or whatever.