A little help?

Someone has asked me what to expect as a pay range for a newscast associate producer/writer in market 155-160ish. Candidate is just out of school and this would be a first job.

I'm hazarding a guess that it might be around $25K. Low? High? I'm way outa my element here but I know there's someone here with more of a clue than I,

A federal judge has thrown out the only fine levied against a commercial drone user saying they are no different than model aircraft. Ruling could seriously limit the FAA's ability to regulate drone use without Congressional action.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/07...ll-drone-user/

I seem to recall having seen a software app from sony a couple of months ago that was supposed to allow somebody with multiple EX cards to see how many wright cycles etc were on their card library. The idea being that you could better manage turning them over as time goes by.

Now I had thought that I installed it at the time but can no longer find it to download does anybody here know the name or better yet where to find it on sonys site…. Is it possible that this has been rolled into content browser and I am just not looking in the right place?

NBC's Kerry Sanders was temporarily blinded due to burned corneas from a HMI light.

His "blog" post about the incident is here http://freepdfhosting.com/faca716079.pdf

I have a "@#%&*! I'm getting older" question.

My current main issue is that when I have my C300 mounted on my shoulder rig, the flip out viewfinder is a little too close for my eyes to focus well through my glasses. I can actually see better that close without glasses, but then my distance vision isn't great, and my stigmatism (though mild) kicks in. When the camera is on the shoulder rig, its a little high so that I'm looking up slightly at it.

I was thinking about getting bifocals just for shooting with the "reading" part near the top. My opthamologist said that some times car mechanics have the close up "reading" portion put in both the top, and bottom of their glasses. That way they can see the car parts they are working on when the car is above them on the lift, but also look for tools and read the instructions when they look down.

The guy who actually makes the glasses wasn't as enthusiastic. He said he once had a customer who was a pilot who wanted the "reading" portion on in the top side of the lenses so he could read the instruments that were on the ceiling of the cockpit. However, after wearing them for 10 minutes, he decided against it because they were too distracting to wear otherwise.

Right now I'm thinking I'll just pull the glasses down my nose a bit and make do with my naked eyes when I look up at the viewfinder. I doubt that's going to be optimal though.

Any insights or advice that you have would be welcome!

Well, it looks like video professionals aren't the only ones getting displaced and replaced by client cheapness and easy to use technology erosion.

An ABC News anchor said, do you know how you could make hundreds from your personal pictures?

Then I said outloud, well it certainly isn't from submitting them through ABC's, CNN's iReport, FNC's uReport, etc upload portals where it clearly says you will not be paid for your submission. Hahaha! But you do retain the rights to possibly make some money elsewhere.

If you're thinking about getting into the pro stills business, you may want to wait and see how image sharing platforms develop. ABC News aired the story at the link below demonstrating how ordinary people could make hundreds of dollars by selling their personal random stills when using a service called FOAP. You get $5 and they get $5 for each image. But for FOAP is that a flat rate or $5 times however many companies they represent to re-sell it on the backend? No matter what, they're counting on volume to supply their revenue stream and that's hard, if not impossible, to compete with if you're a lone freelancer.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have paid much attention because it sounded like yet another tech tip of the day but what did get my attention was what the reporter eventually said. After getting into it, he eventually said that big names in business were willing to pay ordinary people for their everyday randomly shot stills capturing unique moments and subjects in their lives to save money by not having to pay professional still shooters. The pictures appear in all types of advertising platforms. It is assumed the expense he was referring to is the typical ongoing licensing fees for stock images. I understand the reality of technology and competition but it is just irritating to hear that said so casually, especially by someone who works in an industry that is infested with that same mentality that may eventually affect his position in the future as well. Platforms like this should also cause serious concern for the NPPA and its members.

The anchor also mentioned that whoever takes a picture, no matter who's camera it is, they are the owner / copyright holder and not the actual owner of the capture device. So according to that, if a UFO lands or whatever and someone steps behind YOUR unattended camera on sticks, picks it up, or is handed it by you or whoever and shoots the exclusive video or stills of that event, then they can claim the content and all the future revenue. Hahaha!

What do you think about all this?

I don't know how paralleled the info is in the video and internet report so they may or may not differ because of editing.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technolo...instant-money/