1. How was your experience with the Olympus digital camera? How did it compare with other still or video cameras you have previously used? Were you able to successfully implement your Image Capturing Strategies using the features of this camera? In an ideal world, how would your still/video camera of choice function?

Well, the Olympus cameras we received were definitely annoying enough to use - especially because taking a long shot of anything is painstaking. I brought a second 1GB card with me on my walks, since the one that came with the camera became full of footage so quickly. Besides that, and the choppy, low quality of the camera, as well as its inability to capture light well, the camera was OK. 

Whether I was able to successfully implement my Image Capturing Strategies I think is more up to you. But I believe I was able to do what I originally set out to do, since I took into consideration how the camera would function when I created my Image Capturing Strategies. 

In an ideal world, I would own this camera:

 

A Canon XL H1S. Here's the specs.

2. Discuss your choice of video-editing software and describe your history with this software. If you used this software for the first time, explain why you chose this particular application and how you think it helped you to accomplish your creative goals (or proved detrimental). Will you use this software again for future projects?


I used Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects CS3 for my video editing. I've used Adobe Premiere products since I was a freshman in high school, and have used Premiere Pro for four years now. After Effects I've been using for several years, but have just used the new CS3 version for this project. After Effects CS3 is basically the same thing as all the previous versions (I haven't dove into it enough to get to any of the new features).


Premiere Pro has been having a weird bug in where it stretches any unredered footage or footage that has any effects on it to 16:9 aspect ratio in its 4:3 window, distorting the image and cutting off the sides. It's an easy problem to fix by simply creating a new sequence and stretching the original sequence back to 4:3, but its a hassel and I haven't got around to doing it for any of my clips yet. Besides that, the only problems I've been having is recently the Premiere Pro files I exported from After Effects have not been opening in Premiere, forcing me to export anything I work on in After Effects in order to edit it in Premiere.


After Effects works like a charm when it doesn't crash. If I could stop eating for a couple of months and get enough money to buy some more RAM for my CPU and get an extra hard drive, it would work even better. Overall, I love both of these programs, and will continue to work with them and try as long as I can to not convert to Final Cut, which every mac user has tried to convince me is better than Premiere (which is just not true).