Video Hardware/Software Response

My experiences with the Olympus digital camera ultimately effected how my final drift project turned out. Overall I was very pleased with the capabilities of the camera once I discovered a few things about it.

Firstly I was somewhat tricked by the lcd display screen's size. Being so small it seemed like objects farther away that I wished to capture on video were too insignificant and minuscule to be noticed. After bringing the camera back from my initial walk and uploading the content I was pleased to find that the video was taken with much better quality than I had expected. So those far away objects were represented better than I had previously imagined.

I was also intrigued by the effects that natural light, obviously the sun, had on the camera. It created an interesting purple glow on the video that I eventually implemented into my final video.

This camera was much simpler to use than camera's I have previously worked with. This allowed me to not worry too much about the functions of the camera and I could focus on what it was I was trying to capture. In the end I think this allowed me to take more substantial material.

I was able to capture light being transmitted through natural life (i.e. leaves and bushes) effectively with this camera, but it was the effects I was not intending to capture that I was most interested in and are depicted in my final video.

In an ideal world the camera would be able to capture things the human eye could not perceive, I find this more entertaining material to view.

I had quite an adventure deciding on a video-editing software. I am most framiliar with Adobe software, but since I did not have a copy of Premiere Pro, and am financially restrained I searched for an alternative. I am using Windows on a laptop so Imovie was out of the picture and Quicktime Pro required the spending of money I did not have as well. I had initally turned to the basics of Windows Moviemaker but could not edit the video from the camera, so I made due with stills for the first rough drafts. I tried to convert the video with VLC but unsuccessful so I downloaded a free trial of Sony Vegas which I was pleased with. Vegas was easy to use and provided enough basic tools, as well as more complicated tools that I had no need for, to feel confident in my video. Presently I am contemplating investing in this software. There's a few day's left on the trial so I might play around with it to see what it's capable of.