On the spur of the moment yesterday, I filmed the Chiswick Great River Swim organised by Steve Newell – I used the 550d and as I wasn’t at the office, had no tripod or microphone with me.

So the whole thing was filmed handheld, using the camera’s onboard mic, and as it was a bright, sunny-cloudy day with a lot happening quickly, I decided to also set the camera to Auto, apart from focus.

I’m quite surprised at the quality of the result in the FLV that you can see by clicking the picture above – I don’t see any effect of the exposure or ISO changing automatically, even in the rushes.

The audio is not great, as there was a lot of background crowd noise – but I was surprised at how well the tiny mic coped for the interviews – in a quieter location it could certainly be relied on – especially for web video – if no proper mics were available.

The experience did prompt me to ask colleague Phil Bloom which Zacuto Z-Finder I should invest in – it is close to impossible to see focus in the otherwise excellent LCD, especially if you are far-sighted.

This post was created at this location.

I just saw a hedgehog scuttle by, my 5 year old daughter loved the Camping Kids talent show tonight and my wife came back from the same event brimming with pride at one of the UK ‘entries’, a Sri Lankan boy of 8 rapping without music, brilliantly.

I can hear an English family making friends with a Dutch couple, their kids all asleep now; I heard two families from Yorkshire discover they have the same local haunts and the French woman with Touretts who is one of a group has stubbed her last cig and gone to bed.

This site, very family-focussed, is expensive at �35 per night – so most families can do this. Everyone is elbow to elbow regardless of class when they do the washing up, and by virtue of the physical proximity and willingness to rough it to varying degrees, people are keen to be friendly.

So I’m wondering if camping – that I grew up with as a child, reconnected with in a cidery sort of way as a ‘beatnik-punk-hippy’ in the late 70s, and have just returned to as a Dad – is our only remaining modern Utopia?

Definition of Utopia: an ideal community or society possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system. (OK, the legal bit’s not relevant here)The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean.

This post was created at this location.

Saw this today in Najac, a medieval village in France – hopefully this won’t lead to a legal battle with Apple!

Our webcast for NHS Direct will be live today at 1030. Click the image above to visit NHS Direct to view it.

Inevitably, if two blokes who do not normally wear scrubs – the outfit required in operating theatres – are required to do so by the fact that they’re filming a training video, the regular nursing and surgical staff will have quite a good laugh at them and insist on taking a picture – here’s ours, yesterday at Barts. I think David looks slightly more daft than me.

We just completed a Video Series of 10 Safety Tips to appear throughout the summer on ChiswickW4.com: Staying Safe On and Around The Thames – Chiswick RNLI station manager Wayne Bellamy’s top tips… click here to see the first one

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/ChiswickW4/statuses/18501086280

Webcasting @ NHS Direct

Today Ian, David and I were at NHS Direct in London SE1, demonstrating our webcasting solution – we’ll be webcasting the NHS Direct AGM on July 26th.

Our Akamai-hosted webcast solution includes 3 remote-controlled cameras and a template-based system that enable the viewer to see the slides of a Powerpoint presentation alongside a live mixed video from the 3 cameras and a pre-recorded video input.

Here’s our new film for Capital Motors, featuring actor Richard Briers CBE – our first local community Business Video ad, heralding the start of our local business video offer, in conjunction with local community website ChiswickW4.com

Thanks Capital Motors – for both commissioning this film, and for looking after the CreationVideo-mobiles over the years!

Today we’re back at International House London, the world’s leading language school, filming lessons for an online training resource.

It’s a two camera shoot; the audio comes from a Sennheiser radio mic and a pair of Sennheiser ME66 gun mics. We’re using our two JVC GY-HM100s and some great new Lilliput HDMI monitors – these can also be used with an HD-DSLR if it has HDMI input.

See our Education page for details of the original Teacher Training DVD series

This post was created at this location.