One of the new features in Aperture 3 is the ability to create exportable slideshows. Images included can be still or moving and multiple soundtracks are supported. When you are ready to output you can choose the aspect ratio and export to different formats via presets (low res. to 1080p HD) or create your own.
It’s helpful to take a look in Aperture’s help file first to learn the lay of the land. Once done, it’s very easy. I tested this out creating a video for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, exporting it in 720p HD, and then running the video from my laptop direct into the hall’s HD projection system. It worked perfectly.
As with all things Aperture you can work from raws, tiffs, jpegs, or Photoshop format image files. Video included is similar but the controls are limited. You can trim a clip from within Aperture and that’s about it.
The video I created spans the past thirteen years. So, it covers the transition from film to digital. Still images in it run the gamut from scanned prints and scanned negatives (Nikon & Leica 35mm, Mamiya RZ) to Point & Shoot Digital (Olympus 2500L, Canon S2-Canon G10, iPhone) to DSLR (Nikon D1 & D1x, Canon 1Ds Mark I, II, & III). About half of the images are direct from raw files. There are three video clips included, the first from a Canon S2 and the last two from the iPhone 3Gs.
I used Aperture to do my edit, first gathering images already in the database into an album. I added the new scans and video clips. Then I started editing and ranking the images via the color tags (the 1-5 star based rankings were already in use and I didn’t want to disturb those settings.) I was able to quickly pare down the take from 369 images to 122 plus the three video clips.
Some of the preset export formats are *.m4v, Apple’s iTunes video format. If that’s the case and you want to use a more universal format you can open the file in Quicktime and re-save it. This will save it as *.mov.
All of the export options are video files. They can be sent automatically to iTunes and/or Apple TV, they can be shared online, or run via a computer to another device. They can also be burned to playable DVD but not within Aperture. To do that you need to open iDVD and add the movie file to a project within it.
Rounding out today’s trifecta of site updates, I’ve added a new splash page slideshow. It features images from the new Portraits – Recent gallery. Prior to this, since the launch of the site last November, it has featured architecture work shot during 2009.
Actor Corey Haim passed away a couple of days ago. Best known in his child-actor days for the movie The Lost Boys and for being interlinked with fellow actor Corey Feldman. They earned the nickname, the two Coreys, and it followed them into adulthood.
I photographed the two Coreys in 1987, a few months after The Lost Boys premiered. I was working with a publicist doing PR photos for a nightclub, the Tunnel. It was the first client I had acquired on my own and my first assignment for them.
The two Coreys were 15 and 16, out partying and checking in on a fashion show at the Tunnel.
Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, and models. The Tunnel, New York City, 1987.
Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, and models. Andre Van Pier Fashion Show, 1987.
I don’t know what they went on to do that night. I called it quits at about 1am but was asked to run the film to the NY Post immediately. I eagerly obliged my new client, happy at the prospect of a published picture but not knowing that the Post was at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge and that the photo editor wasn’t due in until 7am.
Word comes this morning that insolvency proceedings against JOBO were initiated last week (via Online Photographer.)
JOBO holds many memories for me. They manufactured home/small-studio processors for film and prints. I didn’t get one until I started shooting 4×5 and was looking for a more consistent, less hands-in-the-chemicals, method of running the film than in trays. The JOBO CPP2 provided the answer. Large, very plastic, somehow it worked in spite of itself. How many hours did I spend in the company of this device? I can’t begin to fathom. For my personal work alone – I might come back from a trip with a couple hundred sheets of 4×5 Tri-x and the JOBO could only run 10 sheets at a time.
JOBO Expert Drum for 4x5 Film
It worked well enough that I ran my 35mm and 120mm b&w in it as well. The roll film module enabled eight or ten rolls to be run by extending the processing tube further and further. With a metal core in it you could use metal reels and in the end it provided a more civilized method than using two 4-reel stainless steel tanks simultaneously (aka – old school.)
I sold my JOBO equipment 4-5 years ago as the switch to digital became complete. While I had no problem parting with it, it’s hard to hear of JOBO’s demise and not think of the countless hours I spent running that device. Lots of whirring as it rotated, the fact that it was all still a very much wet process (the processing drums rested in a temperature controlled basin of water), the setup, the cleanup, and once all was done using the foot pump to pop the lid on the 4×5 expert drum and see the processed film for the first time.
JOBO did try transition to digital with small digital storage devices, digital frames, gps units, and a few other items. None of the new product line seemed to have legs but more importantly none of them provided what JOBO’s processor line had, a niche market to ensure JOBO’s survival.
Film, slow ISO’s (Kodachrome and Tri-X, even Tri-X @ ISO 400 qualifies as slow these days), slower lenses, manual focus, maneuvering to get the film out of the country, a different time. But Burnett makes the case that even though technology has advanced over the interim, people and history remain quite similar.
Additional interview and story at NYT’s Lens blog from last September.
