Cameraphones

INLANDNEWS

Well-known member
Anyone see the commercial MSNBC is running about the cameraphones? They are telling viewers to grab their cameraphones and handycams and start shooting whenever they see breaking news and email them to pix@MSNBC.com This comes right after all the cameraphone video that was aired on the London Bombings. Wonder how much MSNBC plans to pay people for their "amateur" footage. Anybody have any thoughts on this topic?


--Shaun
 

Natural Born Stringer

Well-known member
Originally posted by INLANDNEWS:
Wonder how much MSNBC plans to pay people for their "amateur" footage.
Wonder no more.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6348977/

"For materials you post or otherwise provide to MSNBC (a "Submission"), you grant MSNBC permission to (1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSNBC Web Site, and (2) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. MSNBC will not pay you for your Submission. MSNBC may remove your Submission at any time. For each Submission, you represent that you have all rights necessary for you to make the grants in this section."

Think I'll send them this:

 

RichVid

Well-known member
It's everywhere...ABC7 "Eyewitless News" has a big graphic they're showing at the end of every other segment telling folks with the camphones to "See it Shoot it Send it" to ABC7... The inside thought is that they're trying to keep it FUN and not let the usual Tom/Dick/Harry know that they could potentially make money off their choppy footage. Of course if they get someone who has knowledge of how the system works and has something that's decent, they'll belly up and pay the $$$... Good luck cellphone shooters! Does this mean my GL2 compared to a Samsung phone is like comparing my GL2 to a DNW-9? ;)
 

INLANDNEWS

Well-known member
Funny thing about the ABC 7 Shoot it campaign is that they are running still photos shot by cameraphones 5 and 6 days after the actual news story happened!
 

Sharp Shooter

Active member
I haven't seen any of these pics but what is the quality like? I know that when you zoom in on something in post production the quality is garbage!
Personally I don't think we have anything to worry about.
S.S.
 
Well if they are gonna use Camera Phones for news then they ought to improve the optics for them. At least make them look as good as Sat Video Phones. Also I'd like to see rain jackets for them and extra memory slots. Maybe even a steady cam device.
 

SandRat

Well-known member
We've started the same thing. So far it's been like looking for a certain needle in a pile of needles, but I bet we'll get some good stuff.

In Waco, the staffers are using picture phones to send back pics of their working stories so the internet folks can promo it on the website. They are also sending small video files for online promotions. Not a bad idea ... if there's no reason for the raw to be any better than the final product, why not take advantage of new technology.

Our jobs are already making the transformation to web-based broadcasting.
 

Natural Born Stringer

Well-known member
Those are pretty sharp for a cell phone cam. Sure that wasn't some dude with a full on digital camera? If that's from a cell phone cam thend I'd like to know which one he used - that's a damn clean picture! Looks every bit as good as what the still shooters out here put in the paper.

Too bad he gave it away. Someone needs to tell him there's money in them thar car wrecks. :D Had that been shot with a 3 CCD handy, he'd have raked in a few hundred beans for those shots.
 

RichVid

Well-known member
NBS Wrote:
Had that been shot with a 3 CCD handy, he'd have raked in a few hundred beans for those shots.
In this case, I don't think so... These cell phone shots were touted on the ABC7 website only...all the local stations had plenty of aerials on this and got plenty of aftermath b-roll similar to these cell shots... As the cell photo phenomenon plays out, I'd also bet that most of these pix will be for internet publication and not so much for broadcast on the show...As for the cam on the phone, aren't they coming out with megapixel imagers as high as 1 or 1.2 or even higher? Just the same, NBS is right, there's no reason some Puddinghead couldn't take some decent digital pix with a real camera, rush home, and then email them to the same address...
 

SeattleShooter

Well-known member
I was embedded with the Washington State Air national Guards 141st Air Refueling Wing for a relief effort in Gulfport Mississippi. There was no way for me to send back video but I was able to send back a bunch of camera phone pictures for on air. This just a few of the many that made the air.





The pictures turned out all right but not as good as a normal digi camera pic. I was kind of shocked to get cell phone reception at Gulfport NAS!
 
Originally posted by INLANDNEWS:
Anyone see the commercial MSNBC is running about the cameraphones? They are telling viewers to grab their cameraphones and handycams and start shooting whenever they see breaking news and email them to pix@MSNBC.com This comes right after all the cameraphone video that was aired on the London Bombings. Wonder how much MSNBC plans to pay people for their "amateur" footage. Anybody have any thoughts on this topic?


--Shaun
 
Who knows but this is just another example of technology along with smaller and cheaper equipment making camermen out of everyone. We can only hope that the business is cyclical a eventually newsrooms will again start to appreciate employees who know how to take nice pics.
 

Stormgod

Active member
We got fantastic cameraphone video of a fire with a rescue sent to us in our newsroom, would have loved to use it on air BUT our station is so far behind the times that we had no way of taking the video off the puter and put it on air.
 
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