In early 2017, I purchased a Zoom F4 digital recorder. Though I had been recording location sound for film for years, this is the first device I have owned that was designed for filmmaking. Prior to that, I had been using a Roland R-26, which was a step up from my Zoom H4n, which was […]
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Zoom F4 Battery Life
Posted: 6th January 2020 by Cheap in Filmmaking, TechnologyTags: Sound for Film, Zoom F4
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Last October, somewhat on impulse, I upgraded my phone to the Samsung Galaxy S10. It all began when I met up with a friend of mine and saw that she was taking photos with her phone, not with a DSLR. This was a surprise to me, since the photos she had been posting looked like […]
Whip-poor-will Overload
Posted: 22nd June 2019 by Cheap in Camping, Filmmaking, Outdoors, Photography, TechnologyI haven’t been to all of them, but I suspect that the Hercules Glades Wilderness is the crown jewel of Wilderness Areas in Missouri. It is not the biggest, but it is scattered with glades — some quite large and picturesque, has an extensive and well maintained trail system, and even has a set of pretty […]
Panasonic GH4 Crop and 4K Window
Posted: 17th June 2019 by Cheap in Filmmaking, Photography, Technology, VideographyFive years late to the game, I am picking up a Panasonic GH4 for filmmaking. This is for a specific project, which I needn’t discuss here. I have just spent some time making sense of the crop factors and the 4K windowed video, and here is what I have figured out. First of all, “crop […]
I just realized that I can’t remember the last time I saw a film in a theater that wasn’t a superhero film, a Star Wars/Trek film, a James Bond film, or a Harry Potter film. Maybe it was “Ready Player One”. I decry all the superhero films and sequalism, and the audiences who won’t risk […]
The newest release of WordPress requires a minimum of PHP 5.6.4, and so does Laravel. My primary web server has been running PHP 5.4.16, so I needed to upgrade. It was running on CentOS 7.0, so I figured it was time for a complete refresh. I spun up a new VPS with CentOS 7.6 and […]
My phone since December 2015 has been a Samsung Galaxy S6 Active. It is more than three years old, and until last week, it was still going strong. No performance or stability problems. The screen is still perfect. Even though I don’t use a case, there is so little external cosmetic damage that I don’t […]
For years, I had no home theater system at all. I had a television, with its pathetic built-in speakers, and I connected a DVD player and a VCR directly to it. When I finally built a system, I chose a Definitive Technology ProCinema speaker system. It was a staff pick at Crutchfield, and it reviewed […]
Samson R21
Posted: 15th January 2018 by Cheap in Filmmaking, TechnologyTags: Samson R21, Samson R21S, Shure SM58
I have a gig to record sound for a short film. This one is unusual in that all of the actors will be speaking into visible microphones (a PA system in an auditorium). I’ve been asked to supply microphones that will be used simultaneously as props and to record the dialog. I had a few […]
Dead Electronics
Posted: 14th January 2018 by Cheap in Camping, Fiction, Filmmaking, Hiking, TechnologyI have driven the highway through Great Smoky Mountains National Park again. This last time, the trees on the mountains were frosted white, and there was a smoky cloud hanging over the mountains. This has reaffirmed my goal of backpacking this park, which I plan to do during the summer of 2019. That means this […]