1. Point and shoot cameras. Flip type cameras with no zoom or a very short distance zoom (or worse yet, optical zoom) and no microphone input.
2. Consumer level camcorders with one smallish chip, a decent zoom and no microphone input.
3. Prosumer/low end professional level camcorders with three chips and either XLR or mini-jack mike inputs.
4. DSLRs.

…high?  Low?  In between?

Like I used to tell my students, you gotta know your target audience before you even think about creating a visual story.  Well, the same thing applies to writing a book.  In this case, The Basics of Videojournalism.

Our original demographic was high schools…then we realized there was a wider potential audience, so we have adapted to that.  And we’ve also finally settled on some of the finer points about our audience, including what level of gear they need.

Roughly we’ve broken gear into four basic groups.

1. Point and shoot cameras. Flip type cameras with no zoom or a very short distance zoom (or worse yet, optical zoom) and no microphone input.
2. Consumer level camcorders with one smallish chip, a decent zoom and no microphone input.
3. Prosumer/low end professional level camcorders with three chips and either XLR or mini-jack mike inputs.
4. DSLRs.

…high?  Low?  In between?

Like I used to tell my students, you gotta know your target audience before you even think about creating a visual story.  Well, the same thing applies to writing a book.  In this case, The Basics of Videojournalism.

Our original demographic was high schools…then we realized there was a wider potential audience, so we have adapted to that.  And we’ve also finally settled on some of the finer points about our audience, including what level of gear they need.

Roughly we’ve broken gear into four basic groups.

Well wasn’t THAT fun? Yesterday Larry Nance and I moseyed on over to our local community college campus in search of a good backdrop to shoot illustrations for The Basics of Videojournalism and got more than we expected. Former McNair broadcasting student Louis Martinez and Larry’s son Amani accompanied us as both models and assistants. […]

Opening up the computer some days is a downer.  On facebook this morning one of my favorite local newspaper photogs posted his blog for the week about how the staff of a local Congressman attempted to stifle freedom of speech by telling the audience there would be no videotaping of the public meeting (in a […]