|
« Seasons Greetings from Kuwait | Main | "Hezbollah's Putsch - Day One" » December 28, 2006
Embed Prep: Portable Electronics
Posted by Bill Electronic equipment comprises the lion's share of initial embed start-up costs. Some pieces and variations are optional, but Citizen Journalism 101 demands a laptop, digital voice recorder, camera and camcorder. Advanced Citizen Journalism in the Middle of Nowhere suggests a durable laptop, rbgan satellite modem and phone. The specifics: Toughbook CF-18 Laptop w/external Toshiba CD/DVD drive: Digital Voice Recorder with Dragon Naturally Speaking Software Thus it was with great excitement that I learned about Dragon Naturally Speaking, software that claims the ability to digitally recognize recorded speech and convert it into text. Its tantalizing promise was never realized, however; for while the Dragon is pretty good at recognizing my speech after 20 minutes worth of training exercises (it successfully captures and prints roughly 80%), it's next to useless at transcribing the speech of those it does not recognize, particularly when English is spoken with a foreign accent. Lesson learned. The Sony recorder itself is top-notch, with excellent clarity, a sensitive mic and super compact design. Cost: $250 (bundled w/software) * BTW, the most difficult aspect of '04's citizen journalism? The smell of patchouli.
1. Manual focus, allowing the user to reach higher levels of artistic composition and clarity on demand. For example, this photo would have been a nice shot if the flower had been the crisp focal point. A tertiary boon to pros is the wide variety of manual settings available on a digital SLR. But many of these settings also exist on point-and-shoots, and today's cameras take great shots in many of the automated default modes. Then again, playing with the settings can achieve magnificent results, as in the case of this Michael Yon photo of a North Florida swamp ... wow. Cost: $1100 Canon Optura 400 Digital Camcorder: BGAN Satellite Modem/Phone Rental:
Oh yeah, he also advised me to D) avoid hitting on any local girls ... but I'm not sure if I buy that. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? More later. If you'd prefer to donate via check, please e-mail me and I'll provide you mailing instructions. Thank you for your support. Posted by Bill at December 28, 2006 02:03 AM | TrackBack (4) Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsIf you don't want your stuff destroyed, check out the various things THESE GUYS offer. I think you'll find the skydiving videographer community has put a lot of thought into making commercial cameras and camcorders survivable. Posted by: Purple Avenger at December 29, 2006 04:48 PM |