Kerner.net

FCP Multicam with Aiptek Camera

Aiptek on Canon
Originally uploaded by kerner.

Last week I had the opportunity to do a bit of playing with multiple cameras for a video to promote MOPS at the church. As you can see in the picture I mounted one camera on the other. The main camera is our Canon XH-A1 that we use for most production work. The small camera on the top is a super cheap Aiptek camera we bought at Wal-Mart for under $200. For the interviews in the video we used the Canon, a consumer grade Canon HD camera, and the Aiptek mounted to the shoe on the larger camera. 

The footage all got edited using the multiclip feature in Final Cut. We've done multiclip pieces for interviews in the past, but never for b-roll. The day I shot the footage the MOPS project was cooking, so I set the Aiptek for a nice wide shot and then did closeups with the Canon. It provided us with cooking show style, synchronized cutaways yet only one camera operator.

The Aiptek footage looks really good for a $180 camera. It shoots 1080p at 30fps or 720p at 60fps. I'm going to have to try some slow motion stuff soon. The microphone is horrible, but strapped to a camera with XLR inputs it's great for cutaways. It integrated very well with only minor color correction with the two Canon cameras. I think we'll be picking up several of these cameras to collect random footage from youth and kids events (ideally shot by youth/kids). It's perfect for run and gun b-roll.

I'll post some footage samples soon.

Homemade Hamburger Buns

Sarh and I have been on a quest for quite some time to eliminate high fructose corn syrup from our diet. We've also tried to reduce the amount of processed food that we eat - which means we limit the amount of processed food we buy. As many people have noticed it's almost impossible to buy any food without HFCS in it - even bread. Before we got married I baked almost every day for about a year to have fresh bread on a regular basis. The hustle of life got in the way of the baking fairly quickly though. A while back we made the switch to baking our own bread rather than buying it (although not quite daily baking). The bread has been much better.

The exception has been when we would have burgers or bbq or some other food that requires a bun. I'd never had great luck with making buns. I'm guessing it's because I usually tend to bake a hard-crusted, rustic bread - not good bun material. I came across this recipe the other day and had to try it:

Homemade Hamburger Buns 

This recipe is great. It's incredibly easy, taking less than an hour from start to finish. I substituted a cup of the flour with whole wheat flour and the results were great. This marks the end of buying hamburger buns in my book.