Recent content by Ben Longden

Still here. Drop by occasionally. Totally agree with Run& Gun... anyone who touches a camera is an instant expert.. Covid has knocked most of my business for six..

Memo to the police of the US, targetting TV crews. The world is watching. News camera operators and jounalists world wide stand shocked at the level of aggression shown to media during these riots. With any luck, once the dust settles, there will be a lot of police out of work and in jail. To...

Ive cut down a lot on the news side, especially as I moved on from a local broadcaster 18 months before mass sackings due to poor ratings. My old biggest client no longer needs a freelance, as they have a permanent one man band based 120km away... Funnily enough, it was the ratings caused by...

This has been brewing for at least two years. it is a disaster for journalism in the country. But first a background.. Australia has only THREE commercial TV channels, Seven, Nine, Ten, all hubbing out of Sydney, with delayed and live telecasts across the country. They are joined with the...

Im back. And back to stringing. I was successful in gaining full time employment with a local station, but the shenanigens of staff leave me in astonishment. One camera member sabotages equipment. That is, he would go out to YOUR truck and reset every button on the camera he could. Swap...

After working for years as a stringer, I have just been taken on as the rookie with WIN NEWS based in Shepparton, vic. XDCAM with GrassValley's Aurora software. Steep learning curve with the edit side of things... not at all a natural workflow..

The usual scenario. 250km from the office. News story in the can. an hour to deadline... How do you get your news vision back to the office? Up till now, Im using the Sky News Digital Video Network at all the racetracks here in Australia. These let me play out in real time from the...

Doing a story on PRISM, and looking for vision of a giant radio dish scanning the sky? Dont use this place. Its a radio telescope. NOT an eavesdropping thing. Some US Based news outlets have used vision of the Parkes Radio Telescope to illustrate the story. Its an ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY...

The scene; A multi vehicle high speed crash, with one car on its roof, multiple trapped, including a baby, and the rescue mob are astonished no one is killed. The players; the usual suspects at a high speed crash. Plods, fireys, ambos and rescue.. the local paper and me for the local news...

Anyone here know of a suitable IEEE1394/Firewire/iLink/DV to SDI converter? Its to connect the camera Using DV out to the patch panel at the satellite uplinks at local racetracks (to simsat the vision back to Melbourne) I have a Blackmagic Analogue to SDI converter that just does not cut the...

I had to send a story I had shot back to my client via the satellite using SDI. The vision went well, and the audio was recorded perfectly, BUT I have had to resend the files via FTP as the audio levels were too LOW to be usable. The SDI facility has audio in, which is taken directly from the...

With all the hoohaa going on about stills cameras and shutter noise... and flash at pressos, I wonder if the Barack Administration might follow the Queens lead? :rolleyes: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/people/queen-orders-ban-on-flash-photography-20110529-1farn.html

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/grubbs-story-privacy-news-and-the-strong-arm-of-the-law-20110518-1esn9.html It seems Queensland is not a good place to be if you are a journalist writing about cybercrime, and the revelation Facebook images can be 'stolen' from secure sites...

The Hasidic newspaper, Der Tzitung (The Time), photoshopped out two women who featured in the image released by the White House - Ms Clinton, the US Secretary of state, and counter-terrorism analyst Audrey Tomasen. The Brooklyn-based newspaper, which is written in Yiddish, is believed to have...

1. THE CALM Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated. 2. THE DIGNITY Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture. 3. THE ABILITY The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall. 4. THE...