When I posted my thoughts on Avatar I talked briefly about those moments when their was a short depth of field and it clashed with the 3D effect. Basically when an object in the foreground is out of focus and your eye passes over it you want it to be in focus, it’s the way your eyes function and in a 3D movie you want to create a natural viewing plane that is essentially like looking through a window. Failing to do so and having objects in the foreground out of focus can become jarring and confusing for viewers because as their eyes migrate over them they expect them to come into focus.

Avatar kept this problem to a minimal because it was conceived and designed to be shown in 3D. James Cameron is a very technically minded director and a lot of thought went into the 3D effect and the films depth of field. Even with so much thought going into the process there were still times when Avatar suffered from this problem with depth of field. Perhaps this is because they made the film with the idea that it would be shown in both 3D and a traditional 2D prints.

Moving right along, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland has hit the theaters and I’m hearing A LOT of people complain about the 3D effect. They say it’s overbearing, jarring, and distracting, that it takes away from the film. Can it be because the director did not make the film with 3D in mind? Is it because the film relies on using short depth of field in the traditional way, in order to create depth on a 2D picture?

I haven’t seen Alice In Wonderland yet, but having heard some of the criticisms about it’s use of 3D I think one thing is overtly clear. This is a film that was not conceived to seen in 3D, it’s been converted into 3D by studio executives that want to try and get a higher ticket price off of Avatar’s hype. The 3D effect like any cinematographic principle needs to be applied with thought and discretion, it can’t be used like a standard filter and thrown over every 2 hour film.

There are people that think 3D is just a fad, just a way to try and sell everyone a new 3D TV and a higher ticket price at the movies. If directors and cinematographers allow major studios to throw 3D on their projects without them doing the proper research and work on it, then it certainly will become a short lived fad.

Now the question is do I go and see Alice in Wonderland in 3D and confirm my suspicions, or do I go for a cheaper showing and skip all this 3D business?

Enjoy!

I think we need to think the good people of RED for this one. This rumored feature, along with the addition of HD video on still cameras, seems like a clear response to the market Red has been creating and stealing from companies like Canon and JVC. Going back to RED aside from having delivered a camera many people were calling vapor ware, they’ve forced what was a rather stagnant market to speed up new products and feature introduction.

As for this Canon rumor … I love it. I own a Canon camera and a good amount of Canon glass. I plan on buying much more glass when I get a chance too. So for Canon to start releasing video cameras that are compatible with their lenses is a strategy that makes sense. At the same time they could just continue to pile on video features on their foto cameras and try to cannibalize this medium ground HD market.

Gang Starr is one of those groups that defines the genre, they are Hip-Hop music. It’s one of those groups were you struggle to pick out your favorite album, in my case either Daily Operation or Hard To Earn. Hard To Earn being the album where they had really grown as a group and reach a peaking point. Daily Operation came before it, and holds a special place in my heart because I had it on cassette and would let it play back to back in my beat up Honda.

Here’s hoping Guru recovers quickly, in the meantime I’ll leave you with one music video from each Gang Starr album.

Positivity – No More Mr. Nice Guy (1989)

Just To Get A Rep – Step Into The Arena (1990)

Take It Personal – Daily Operation (1992)

Code Of The Streets – Hard To Earn (1994)

The Milita – Moment Of Truth (1998)

Rite Where U Stand – The Ownerz (2003)

I upgraded to Aperture 3 recently, it seems a lot of people have been having trouble with the new version. Luckily I got through the upgrade with only some minor issues that were quickly solved. Having had a chance to play with the app I have to say that I’m loving the new Places feature.

At first I noticed that Aperture had automatically put all my iPhone pictures on the map and was content to leave it at that and not go through the hassle of trying to add GPS coordinates to the rest of my pictures. But once I started looking around in Places I found out you can search for places and Aperture automatically searches Google right from within the app. This allowed me to quickly put a couple of thousand pictures on the map by searching for monuments, city names, restaurants, and so on. It’s a really cool feature that worked perfectly for me, and I love being able to look at a map of the world and zoom into all the places I’ve visited and photographed.

The non-destructive brushes are also bad ass, but I’ll leave that for another post.

1. PSD Tuts+
2. Photoshop Killer Tips
3. PS Hero
4. Photoshop Lady
5. Brush King
6. Photoshop for digital photographers
7. Planet Photoshop
8. Blend Fu
9. Brusheezy
10. Lynda.com

And if that doesn’t quench your thirst for all things Photoshop, then check out this video of the first version of Photoshop running on an iPhone: