february 2009 newsletter

February 2009 Newsletter

Project of the Month

Food Network Wine & Food Festival

DMS crew members Brian Satchfield and Lance Robson where hired to spend two days in Miami capturing high definition video footage of the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Celebrity chefs Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, Paula Dean, Bobby Flay and others entertained crowds as nationally-recognized chefs - including Chef Tony DeRienzo from Waterfront Grille - served up culinary delights at the Grand Tasting Village.

Check out some of the highlights of the event here.

Marketing Tip

Simple ways to keep your Website fresh

Tech Tip

Camera lens terminology

Photo and video lenses incorporate sophisticated technology in helping an image professional capture a scene. Whether the lens is an expensive Panavision prime lens on a 35mm motion picture camera or a simple zoom lens on a consumer pocket camera, many of the same principals apply. Specifically, the lens is the piece of ground glass or other translucent material that is used to focus incoming light onto a recording medium such as film, an electronic CCD chip or a CMOS chip. A lens system may contain multiple lens elements that provide image adjustments or improve image quality. Generally speaking, the term lens refers to the assemblage of glass, plastic, metal, electronics and mechanical adjustments that attach to the front of a camera system. Following are some introductory explanations of lens terminology.

Aperture: the diameter of the opening of a lens. The larger the aperture, the more light the lens can collect. However, if a lens aperture gets too large, it may introduce distortion to the image. Higher quality components and additional mechanics are needed to counteract these distortions.

Iris: an adjustable diaphragm that allows for an alternating aperture, thereby regulating the amount of light passing through the lens to the recording medium. The camera operator can use controls to open and close the iris to expose the recording medium to the proper amount of light.

Focal Length: the measured distance from the center of the element at the front of a lens to the recording medium sitting directly behind the lens; generally given in millimeters (mm). Lenses in the 45mm to 55mm range are said to be “normal” lenses as their views are similar to what the human eye sees. Lenses with smaller focal lengths (35mm and below) are considered wide angle lenses; they produce larger fields of view and make objects appear farther away than they actually are. Conversely, lenses with larger focal lengths - 65mm and beyond - are considered telephoto lenses; they provide a more narrow field of view and make objects appear closer than they actually are.

f/stop: the measurement of the amount of light passing through a lens. f/stops are calculated by dividing the focal length of the lens by the aperture setting of the lens. A 50mm lens with an aperture set to a diameter of 12.5 mm is working at an f/4. Closing the iris to create an aperture of about 9 mm in diameter will allow about half as much light through the lens. This increases the f/stop setting by one stop, which is an f/5.6 setting. Each increasing f/stop setting can be estimated by multiplying the previous setting by √2 (square root of 2). Fortunately, f/stop settings are indicated on the lens allowing us to avoid on-the-spot math.

Depth of field: the portion of a scene being viewed through a lens that appears to be in sharp focus. Depth of field can range from very narrow to very deep. For instance, say a lens is set to focus at a distance 10 feet in front of the camera. If the objects that are from 9 feet 10 inches to 10 feet 2 inches in front of the lens are in focus, this is a narrow (4-inch) depth of field. If everything from 4 feet in front of the lens to up to 20 feet in front of the lens is in focus, this is a deep (16 feet) depth of field. There is no depth of field control on a lens; DOF is determined by the size of the aperture, the size of the recording medium and the focus setting on the lens. A larger aperture and a larger recording medium create a shallower depth of field. The opposite is also true.

Zoom lens: a type of lens system that uses multiple elements and mechanical operation to create variable focal lengths. A zoom lens can act as a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens by adjusting the zoom setting.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts will tell you that search engines love fresh content. You can use this to your advantage when working to improve your site ranking as potential customers attempt to find your product or service.

When a Web surfer performs a Google or Yahoo search, one of the factors (among many) that improves a site’s ranking is fresh content. Given two theoretically identical sites, if Site A has had a recent update on its home page while Site B has remained stagnant, Site A will generally perform better during a typical Web search. But since most of us have worked very hard to develop the perfect text, layout and navigation for our sites, it doesn’t really make much sense to be constantly changing the site just in hopes of getting a bit of a better search ranking. Well, here are a few ideas...

Maintain a “Recent News” page. Devoting a single page to frequently-updated company or industry news is a good way to keep fresh content on your site. A splash phrase with key words on your home page drawing attention to the news updates will add to the effectiveness.

Start a blog. It’s acceptable and even expected for blog content to be less formal than the main text on your site so it’s much easier to quickly add a new item to your blog page. By their nature, blogs are generally very current and great search engine fodder.

Review and update older content. Read over your existing Web pages and look for ways to make simple improvements like refined grammar, updated photos and more focused keywords. Since your existing pages are already pretty good, you can tackle reworking them as you have time; a page a week or so is fine. Over time, you’ll likely to see slight improvements in your search rankings.

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Extras

Other cool DMS projects

Questions? Comments? Feedback? All are greatly appreciated! Email us by clicking here or call us at 727-512-9998. We’d love to hear from you!

February also found Rob Kildoo shooting event photography for a St. Francis University reunion, Brian Satchfield editing projects for the educational market and attending several industry events and Vince Mann acting as utility man on a variety of photo shoots.