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Newsmakers
Excellence in Journalism 2012, hosted by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Radio Television Digital News Association, will be held in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida from Sept. 20 thru 22. The conference brought 1,000 journalists together last year in New Orleans. This year, there will be professional development sessions, programs with top journalists and opportunities to network, learn and share with journalists from around the country.
There are plenty of warning signs about the ongoing disruption in the media industry, and everyone is looking for someone to blame. But when it comes to their journalistic competition, many traditional outlets still seem to look primarily at other media players such as the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed or Politico. As information architect and web developer Stijn Debrouwere notes in a smart post about the evolution of media, however, the reality is that much of what we find competing with journalism in the digital world are things we barely even recognize as journalism. How the industry adapts to that change will be the real challenge.Tech Talk
Panasonic has announced a new series of higher-speed, lower-cost memory cards called the microP2 card, that are the same size as a standard SD card and will allow the company to develop smaller cameras and offer easy compatibility with standard laptops (using an adapter). The microP2 Card Adaptor assures that the new series of 64GB and 32GB microP2 cards will operate in current P2 hardware. The microP2 card provides high-speed transfer, high reliability and the writing assurance of all P2 frame rates, formats and codecs, as well as Panasonic's newest compression platform, up to the AVC-Intra200 mode of AVC-ULTRA, which will be available within 2013.
Among all the new 4K cameras on the floor at the recent NAB show in Las Vegas was a small, very low-cost mounting system for Apple's iPad that turns it into a professional video camera. It's actually two products, the Padcaster and Lenscaster, which are designed to work together. Developed by Manhattan Edit Workshop founder Josh Apter, Padcaster allows an iPad to be mounted on a tripod. It actually appears to become an old fashioned view camera, though with high quality 1080p video capture and excellent sound quality. 
BlackMagic Design, a small company that makes video recording devices, has taken on the camera giants with an under $3000 cinema camera that records 2.5K RAW with 13.5 stops of dynamic range to an SSD, with Thunderbolt and HD-SDI. Sensor size in this new camera is similar to the respected Panasonic GH2 Micro Four Thirds 16:9 multi-aspect CMOS. The size is between Super 16mm and the GH2. It's not quite as large as Super 35mm, but is close. The whole area of the sensor is 16.64 mm x 14.04 mm and the recording area for video is 15.6 mm x 8.8 mm.
Litepanels is offering readers of VideoJournalistToday a $100 rebate on purchases of the company's Croma variable color temperature LED light and the Sola ENG LED Fresnel lighting fixture. The new Croma is ideal as an on-camera light that delivers soft illumination at any color temperature between daylight and tungsten. As the cameraperson moves from one lighting environment to another, he can match the output of the Croma to the color temperature of the ambient light. 
Anton/Bauer has introduced its new Customer Support On-Site Maintenance Program. "At Anton/Bauer, we pride ourselves on offering the industry’s best customer support team," said Shin Minowa, Anton/Bauer's vice president of marketing and business development. "Now, we’ve expanded our role to help clients manage inventories and get the best performance from Anton/Bauer batteries, chargers and accessories conveniently at their own locations."
Broadcast journalists now have a new way to capture, edit and deliver full HD stories from the field that is more affordable than traditional satellite services and reaches beyond the boundaries of microwave. Exede Newsgathering is a new service based on a satellite system created by ViaSat. Terminals can either be vehicle-mounted or transported in a luggage-sized carrying case. The service is available in the U.S. now on a select basis with general availability by the end of this year.
When Bristlecone Media partners Jonah Matthewson and Ryan Christensen gear up for a documentary shoot focusing on wild land conservation, they need their field equipment of a Canon D5 Mark II and a Sony XLR, to be safe, portable and easy to access. This is why the team uses Petrol Bags' Black Deca DigiSuite DSLR cases. "The bags elegantly suit almost any situation from a rock-climbing shoot in the granite crags to a studio interview in the city. Regardless of where a shoot might occur, I can always rest assured the fittings, straps and zippers won't not fail and that the contents will be completely protected," said Matthewson.Getting Started
To piggyback off my post from last month, I wanted to continue a discussion of the various new technologies available to today's video journalists. We last discussed in significant detail the importance of establishing a presence on social media, including the various ways in which sites like Twitter can be used to leverage your journalistic work and your self as a brand. In fact, writing that post really got me thinking, "What other technologies are out there that are greatly impacting the way journalists, especially video journalists, do their jobs?" Education
The Story So Far:What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia School of Journalism
Widener University's Communication Studies program has become the first university to participate in Sennheiser's Digital Microphone Education Program, and acquired a pair of Neumann TLM 103 D digital microphones. The school is located in Chester, Pennsylvania. "Students need the best tools possible because I can't think of today, I have to think of 10 years from now because that's the environment in which my students will be working in," said Dwight DeWerth-Pallemeyer, the university's director of communication studies. Partners
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Frank Beacham on Today's Video Journalist: Temperature and Humidity of Recording Media
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Frank Beacham offers recommendations on the temperature and humidity for storing recording media.
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Reviews
When I bought my Panasonic DMC-GH2 camera, I really wasn't thinking about using it for video. Then―boom―it hit me how good the camera is both for stills and video and how it makes a very, very compact video package that I can carry anywhere. It was the light weight and low light picture quality that first attracted me, but I was soon rethinking video. Being of the old school, however, one thing bothered me. I couldn't monitor the sound. The DSLR manufacturers―for their own reasons―refused to put headphone monitoring jacks on this category of cameras.That Was Then...
We profile some of the milestone cameras and other tech that started it all...
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