…and starting to edit the sound and video I had recorded there for a short experimental film.

The logging and capturing to Final Cut out of the way, I decided to work on my skills exporting stills from the video footage. The camera used was a Panasonic TZ7 (ZS3 in the US). Why use a compact digital camera when I have a Canon 5D MKII? The answer to that in a future post.

Why experiment exporting stills from video? Because my clients are shifting – more or less rapidly, more or less coherently – to web-based publishing. Those that aren’t already will be in the future – you only need to spend a day with a printer to understand that. Their demand is becoming multiform: stills, video, sound… But budgets are limited and it is simply impossible for one person to film and produce stills of the same event at the same moment. So, sooner or later, if the client wants video and stills, you (I, we) are going to be faced with having to use frame grabs. This is less of a problem if the stills are intended for the web rather than for print because a lower resolution is required.

I’m actually quite surprised at how good the shot looks here. There’s about 15 minutes (careful) Photoshop and Lightroom work on the picture after export.