Ramit Sethi with Chase Jarvis – Business Advice For Creative Professionals

by Joey on January 14, 2012

I’ve been following Ramit Sethi for a few years, back when I interviewed him for my doc You 2.0. He just had his blog, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and offered a different approach to personal finance advice. He works really, really hard and in the years since has done a great job becoming the next generation Suze Orman.

Lately I have mixed feeling about his content. It seems like most of his emails have the one goal of trying to convert you to buy one of his courses.

That said this interview with photographer Chase Jarvis has some of the best advice I’ve seen, especially for creatives who make their living from job to job and don’t get a steady paycheck. Finding clients, negotiating, figuring out how much to get paid. It’s free, it’s an hour and a half of good content, and it has some concrete tips you can walk away with.

You should also check out Chase’s interview with Tim Ferriss. If you read 4 Hour Work Week or are familiar with Tim’s work, it’s mostly a rehash of that. But if not, you can get caught up in less than an hour (the last part of the hour and a half video is Tim playing photographer with a model).

Panasonic GH2

The Panasonic GH2 Review – Small, Awesome, and Less Than $1000

by Joey on December 28, 2011

A DSLR that doesn’t overheat, doesn’t have a recording limit, shoots the gamut of HD frame rates, autofocuses while filming, and is less than $900…does it exist?! Yes.

The Backstory

I’ve been sitting on the sidelines for the past few years during the DSLR battles. For my needs in documentary work, there seemed to be so many limitations with DSLRS (specifically the most popular brand, Canon) that having shallow depth of field wasn’t worth the tradeoff for no audio, short recording times, overheating, and lots of additional support gear needed.

I’ve had my Sony EX1 for nearly three years and I still love it. The only DSLR experience I’ve had was with Andrew’s cameras, and they weren’t positive. First he got a Canon T2i and that was a flaming turd. It would constantly overhead and shutdown. Recently he upgraded to a 7D. While it doesn’t overheat and is a really good overall camera for stills and video, it still has a lot of limitations, especially during interviews.

We just did a project where I used my EX1 as the main camera for the interview, and as the main source for sound. The 7D was a secondary camera. The EX1 can roll forever without needing to stop. The 7D would keep reaching it’s 12 minute recording limit and then you’d get an obnoxious shutter clicking sound right in the middle of the interview.

However, besides shallow depth of field, the other thing DSLRs have going for them is they are very discrete. I walk in a room and start filming with my EX1, everyone thinks it’s a big production and knows I’m filming. Which is usually fine, especially with client work.

But I’m about to embark on a project where I don’t want attention called to my filming, and a DSLR is perfect for that.

So now I was in the market for one. While obviously the 7D and T3i are cheaper, it didn’t make sense to save some money if the camera wouldn’t meet my demands. I was thinking about going for the long standing king of the DSLRs, the Canon 5D MK II, especially since they’ve lowered the price to under $2,000 with a bunch of extras to sweeten the deal for Christmas promos.

By chance I was reading a Filmmaker Mag blog post from doc maker Jared Flesher. He talked about shooting his movies with a Panasonic GH2 and its lack of issues you find in the Canon cameras. I was intrigued.

Panasonic GH2 Back View

The Panasonic GH2

Technically the GH2 is not a DSLR, because it doesn’t have the flipping mirror that reflects the image to the viewfinder. But for video that doesn’t matter, because in video mode on all the cameras the mirror is permanently flipped up anyways. The GH2 is a Micro Four-Thirds camera.

The GH2:

  • Has no recording limit.
  • Has very little reports of overheating.
  • Can shoot just about every major frame rate.
  • Not only can you autofocus (with specific Panasonic lenses, of course) while filming, but you can touch the screen to tell the camera where to focus to. Built in AC!
  • Built in mic is surprisingly good, and there some minimal level controls.
  • Flip out monitor.
  • No moire.
  • Free hacks available.
  • Being a Micro Four-Thirds camera, there are a wide range of adapters available to take just about any lens.
  • Also, as a Micro Four-Thirds camera, the viewfinder is a video screen, which means you can use it while filming since a mirror isn’t blocking it.

The best part – the camera with a kit lens is available on Amazon for less than $900. How come no one talks about this camera!?

It didn’t take me long to order this beast.

First Thoughts

Holding the camera for the first time, it initially felt like a toy. It’s light and has a plastic body. It was way more in line with the T2i than the beefiness of the 5D or 7D. Plus, the Micro Four-Thirds mount is small. Smaller than I expected.

But in the end that doesn’t really matter. I like the small size – I can palm the whole thing in my hand, or easily throw it in my bag.

I had to upgrade the firmware in order to get the 1080P 30 fps settings. But once upgraded everything has been working great.

Autofocus works as promised, along with the touchscreen focusing. But it’s autofocus, not an AC replacement, though useful for run-and-gun.

The f-stop on the kit lens is obviously not great, so for about $25 I picked up a Nikon adapter. This is where the camera has truly shined.

I know I said I didn’t buy it for the shallow focus, but it looks so damn good! Using my 24mm 2.8 and 50mm 1.8, the depth of field has been amazing.

Plus, the ISO noise level has been truly amazing. While expectedly noisy at high levels, so far I’ve found the noise to be acceptable, while the noise on the 7D is atrocious and unusable.

I also forgot to stop filming once, but fortunately this proved that there is no recording length or overheating issue.

The camera is quick to boot, you can keep it in movie mode so you don’t have to switch modes every time you start up, and the battery lasts a long time, even while filming a lot.

I did buy the GH2 Shooter’s Guide eBook from EOSHD. It’s a book specifically written on how to get the most from the GH2 for filmmaking. While I think the $30 is a little high for the book, I’m glad someone took the time to write it. It goes beyond just what menu settings to use and includes gear and lens recommendations. Though with some time you could probably figure out everything in the book through Google searches and just looking at EOSHD.com archives.

Drawbacks

So far the only drawback I’ve found is the file format it records to, AVCHD. While I wouldn’t natively edit Canon QuickTimes, at least there’s a file I can quickly preview in Finder.

The AVCHD files are buried in the most bizarre file structure on the SD card. The only way you can play them natively on a Mac is with VLC. Or you can edit them natively with Adobe Premiere.

For Final Cut 7, you can encode them with Log and Transfer. But this only gives you the option to encode to ProRes. I like to keep everything in XDCAM codec, because it’ll probably be mixed with XDCAM footage anyways and it takes less space than ProRes.

So to encode straight from AVCHD to XDCAM I have to use Adobe Media Encoder.

Slight annoyance but something that’d have to be done no matter what DSLR I’m using.

Bottom line – this camera is amazing. Panasonic seriously needs to up their marketing and make this Lumix line of cameras seem more professional. When I tell people I have a GH2 it doesn’t hold the same cache as saying I have a Canon 5D.

Panasonic has a sub $1000 camera that holds its own against bigger DSLRs but is talked about very little. I hope that changes.

Additional Resources

Panasonic GH2

Now I can blur the s#!@ out of anything

by Joey on December 24, 2011

Yes, I got on the DSLR bandwagon. Well, technically it’s not a DSLR as the Panasonic GH2 is a Micro Four-Thirds camera that lacks a flipping mirror. But for the sake of video, that’s actually an advantage.

About a week ago the GH2 wasn’t even on my radar when I started thinking about DSLRs. After playing with it for a few days, I don’t understand why it isn’t on more people’s radar, and in their gear kit. I’ll go way more in-depth next week with all the features, but so far, it’s blown every Canon I’ve used out of the water.

DYMO 450 Turbo

DIY Order Fulfillment and Label Printing

by Joey on December 23, 2011

With DVD sales for Bots High, I’ve been handling the fulfillment myself. Order volume has been low enough that this isn’t a big time suck, and when I learned I could order and print postage straight from PayPal and avoid the post office I was sold.

I’d log into PayPal and view the latest orders. I could either click each one and buy postage individually, or launch PayPal Multi-Order Shipping, which is a completely separate web app that let’s you make batch changes and apply presets to numerous orders, and then print them all out at once.

I’d place my orders and print them on regular letter size paper. (This only works for US shipping. Interntaional required a customs form that is available to buy online, I just haven’t made the jump to get that and the sticker label I’d need to mount it to the package.) It’s formatted so you can cut or fold it in half, and then stick it to the package. I’d tape all four sides with packing tape and drop it in the mail.

Not a terrible workflow, but my dream was to print out a bunch of labels with all the shipping data, slap it on the package and drop THAT into the mail. Bam! Done.

Unfortunately my Brother label printer wasn’t listed as compatible with PayPal. So I decided to get one that was. Or at least try.

I got the DYMO 450 Turbo, which technically isn’t on their list, but that’s because it’s so damn old they haven’t removed the now discontinued DYMO 350 Turbo. 450 is the new version and a quick web search said that was the one to get.

Bad labels
I got the label printer, hooked it up, went to print some orders, and…it printed the fragment of a label formatted for another printer, rotated 90 degrees the wrong way.

Went into the settings, set everything to format it for the DYMO 450 Turbo with the PayPal specific label 99019.

I got it to display the correct layout for the label, but still it wasn’t printing correctly. The most annoying thing is that the label loads in a Java program that bypasses the normal printer dialog box, so I don’t have the great options I’m normally used to with rotating and scaling. All you can do is pick which printer to send to.

The closest I got was 90% of the label printed correctly, but the super important barcode was getting cut off, which made the label useless.

So what else could I do? I could try to print the label to a PDF, and then print that. But the printer dialog box that gives me the PDF option won’t show up, so how?

After a lot of searching, the Etsy forum proved most useful. Yes, this is an issue for a lot of people, and it’s pretty much only an issue for Macs.

One post recommended exactly what I was looking for – CUPS-PDF. It’s a free program that adds a printer to your list but it automatically creates a PDF when you “print” to it. Since the only option I’m given with PayPal’s Java label printer is what printer  to use, this would be the perfect solution.

I sent the label to CUPS-PDF, pulled it up in Preview, printed it on the label and voila, I got my mailing label on a sticker.

So in the end it works, but not exactly the seamless workflow I envisioned. It won’t work with PayPal Multi-Order Shipping, so I have to individually type all the memorized weight and package info into each order, print it as a PDF, pull it up again and then print it to the label.

But less paper, less tape, and a more professional packaging look. Anyone have any better experiences with a different label printer through PayPal?

PAP

How to Use Your iPhone Overseas Without Going Broke

by Joey on October 31, 2011

Got back from Haiti – great trip, I’ll write about it soon. For now I just wanted to highlight some of the ways I use my iPhone to stay in touch without paying the ridiculously high data/voice rates.

(These tips are from first hand experience with an iPhone on AT&T. You’ll have to check your own provider for their data rates.)

Enable International Roaming

Whether you use your phone’s data or not, for AT&T you need to enable the International Roaming service. It’s free, you just need to have had an account in good standing for a few months. I did it over the phone with an AT&T rep, but you might be able to do it online.

For about $6 a month there’s a World Traveler add-on that will give you lower minute rates when using your phone in other countries. But that’s just an additional option to the free International Roaming.

SMS and Twitter are your Friend

After landing and turning on your phone, it will automatically connect to a cell provider. You’ll also get a text from AT&T with the current data rate for where you’re at. When landing in Haiti, it was $19.97 per Megabyte!

By default, International Roaming, an option in Settings, is off, which means your phone won’t use data when abroad (though you might want to double check that it’s off before you leave).

So aside from WiFi (which you should definitely try to find), the only other way you can transmit data to and from your phone is SMS text messaging.

For AT&T, it’s free to receive (or just deducted from your regular plan) and $0.50 to send. You can also pre-buy an international texting package, like 50 texts for $10 ($0.20 a text).

Twitter was natively built to work with texting (thus the 140 character limit). When setting up a Twitter account, it’ll ask for your phone number. Once setup, you can simply text a tweet to 40404.

What are the advantages of this even if you don’t use Twitter? Simple. 1 tweet, 1 text, unlimited recipients.

When going to Haiti it’s far easier and cost efficient to send one message anyone can read to know my status and well-being (well-being is more a family concern).

Family not up to par with technology? No problem. Any cell phone can follow you via SMS. For example, anyone could follow me by texting ‘follow @C47‘ to 40404. Done, that’s it. Updates go straight to their phone. Here are some more Twitter SMS tips.

It’s also a good idea to turn on SMS notifications for Twitter news feeds to get them sent to your phone, like CNN. And easy way to stay in the loop.

That’s all I got. This lets me keep people updated without paying crazy rates. If you need to communicate locally you can also buy a prepaid phone.

I’ve heard of unlocking phones and swapping SIM cards to have a local number (and be able to use data). Anyone have more info on that? Or any other tips?

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