Opportunity Knocks

I met Tinat Masood (through Miss News Anchor Lady) in Guwahati, who has a documentary production company.  She is willing to take me on as an intern on my next trip.  She has these really cool light colored eyes that can see auras.  I'm going to take aura detecting lessons from her as well.  I will try to be in town during the May mission, and be available to Op Smile if the need arises.

Bought the Sennheiser 416  for the EX1 at the recommendation of Cindy McCain's crew.  Will need wireless lap mics also.  

Just found out about the Convergent Design's Flash XDR.  Amazing device.  It takes the SDI output from the camcorder straight from the sensor at 1485 Mbps, and compresses it down to 100 Mbps at 1080p (vs 35 Mbps natively in camera), with the image quality being almost identical to uncompressed.  It also records in the sensor resolution, which is 1980 x 1080 at 4.2.2, compared to 1440 x 1080 at 4.2.0 stored in the Sony.  This makes it comparable to 35 mm theater quality.          Wow.        Not only that, it stores the files in quicktime format, onto compact flash cards, which are only $80 per 32 gigs, vs $900 for the SxS 16 Gig cards from Sony for the EX1, with the added advantage that you can edit the video STRAIGHT off of the cards!  Although this is going to be expensive, the quantum increase in quality, and the savings in memory costs makes it a less painful upgrade.

Also got this AntonBauer Harness to carry everything.  The battery with the XDR would be heavy enough on the back to balance the camera in front.