Boy Howdy! That last week was a doozy. I had a cold, a cough that wouldn't stop and a nasty bout of insomnia on top of everything else. I was out of the pool from Sunday the31st all the way until yesterday (April 9th) because I literally couldn't get one lap in without stopping to cough like a three pack a day drifter...
The combination of having been sick, deprived of about half my usual sleep and out for so long was felt in its entirety during my first swim back. I woke up early yesterday, packed up and headed to the pool. It was still dark at 7:00 when I hit the water. My stroke felt perfect but there was very little energy behind it and I tired quickly. I finished the hour and fifteen minutes but only by judiciously skipping a lap now and then; taking a few liberties with the written workout. That's a masters swimmer's prerogative.
I came home, ate breakfast, drank coffee and then hit the couch (Gosh! I love our couch!) and took a nap for the better part of an hour. I needed a bit of recovery before I could drag myself into the studio and start making calls. I'm looking for a talent for a shoot on Tuesday. The whole thing came up rather quickly and finding just the right talent takes....time. If you know a male, late 40's/early 50's, caucasian, who is in good shape and can take some time off on Tuesday, be sure and let me know..... I'm looking for someone to play the part of a doctor in scrubs, face mask, etc. And, yes, there is a talent fee in there somewhere...( Austin area ).
The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to unpacking from our condensed video shoot last Friday (didn't have the desire to grapple with gear while infirm..) because those rechargeable batteries are not going to charge themselves, the batteries in the wireless microphone receivers and transmitters tend to leak if you leave them in for very long and, it's nice to know the camera lenses are snuggly back in their slots in the equipment case. Ready and easily findable because....they are in their correct spot.
The most important part of the whole organizing and unpacking process is the getting the memory cards backed up. I'd already pulled all the video files from our shoot out and put them on a little SSD for my client/collaborator; the guys who is tasked with doing the actual edit. But he's still on the client side and my paranoid expectation is that if there is a way to lose, corrupt, misplace, reformat-over, the files I gave him it's almost a client's imperative to attempt it. I wanted to get a complete set of the files on two identical 7200 RPM G-Tech drives that I use when I edit. Now that I've done that and asked the client to back up to their server I am finally able to re-use those SD cards. I like my new Delkin Devices Black 128GB V60 UHSII cards. They are fast and new. All the better to play with...
Mulling over some nerd-side new gear acquisitions for the office. I'm toying with the idea of replacing my (2015) Apple 27 inch iMac with the new i9 processor iMac. I'd like to get one with a 1 TB SSD for the OS drive and 32 GB of RAM. I also want to trick it out with the fastest video card they offer just to give me a bit of a speed boost for video editing. The current machine is absolutely fine for photography file processing but I'd like to give the h.265 video file format available in the X-T3 a spin and I've read that the h.265, while a space saver during shooting, requires some intense processing to edit.... (yes, I am sure you are super smart, brave and infinitely skilled and can make your own machine for 1/10th the cost but I think I'll save a bit of time and just buy one ready made, thanks!).
And, over in the realm of the irrational (one of my specialties), now that I've worked out my one audio issue with video recording on the X-H1, I'm actually toying with adding another one while the camera+grip+three batteries are still on sale as a package for $1299. We used three of them on our video shoot Friday and as we slip further down the greased slide of video production toward the revised mosh pit of commerce, multi-camera shoots seem to be the routine and not the exception. And how often can one acquire a full on back up, with accessories, of one's current favorite camera at such an advantageous price?
I'll wait on all the purchases since my recent illness has made me a bit loopy. My bank called to ask me "what I intended?" on my last deposit. Apparently, I transposed numbers left and right.... Glad someone is watching my back. Thank you! Bank. Maybe I'll be thinking straight after a few more swims and a bit more recovery time.
