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TV Station replaces cameras with Iphones


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In sweden most news camera men where sacked and replaced by tripods 10 years ago.

I can see that.  Most local news is BS anyway.  But at least use a decent camera.  An iphone 6s Plus is $750 for a 16 GB version in the US.  The 128 GB will cost you $950.  I think for nearly $1,000 a pretty good ENG camera system can be put together.

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Not surprising, like all old media, TV is facing more competition, higher costs and declining revenues. If I were managing a station, I would do something similar for more reporters gathering more comprehensive coverage than a traditional reporter/photog combo - just convert photogs into multimedia reporters. Most of all, lots of training on getting good sound and images. If its all handheld shaky footage it will look very amateur and turn off viewers. You can upload clips to the cloud and someone back at the station can start editing, if done right it can be a very efficient workflow for short turnaround times.

This is the key:

"Keller says the new use of iPhone cameras allows reporters to go live from anywhere, both on air and online. “It’s up to us to reinvent the grammar of the image, to learn to shoot differently,” Keller says. Since the station is only on air for a few hours each day, this move to iPhones will allow reporters to capture and share much more content for online channels."

Going live anywhere, anytime and not needing expensive/bulky satellite transmitters, live trucks, a crew to run everything and so on. The article also mentions driving content online, which the iphone is more than adequate. 10 years ago, the station I worked for was shooting digital beta on 30 minute tapes the size of a novel inside a 40 lb camera sitting on a 25 lb tripod. Live shots were from a van or a large trailer that had to be setup hours in advance, with lots of cables and 1 or 2 people off camera getting the feed back to the station - plus we had to buy satellite time at $200 for a 15 minute window as opposed to a little more than $100/mo for everything in a phone. The 1080p out of my 6+ is easily better than what we used, it also does 240fps, its stabilized, and the higher bitrate apps help improve IQ. 

Give them a gimbal to smooth out spot news coverage and handle walk-and-talks, a Rode mic setup (lav, stick, and the new small shotgun), a selfie stick for standups, and a LED light - bam - you have a complete one-man-band ENG kit that'll fit in a small sling or messenger bag. For small stations there's really no need for anything more.

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Yeah but your prerecorded stuff will look a heck of a lot better.  And I'm sure given time streaming video will come.  With samsung in the game it is inevitable.

Streaming live video from mobile phones has already been working fine since a long time. I'm working for a company, Bambuser, that does just that - and has provided live streaming from phones since the company launched in 2007. It works plenty fine on 3G/4G.

We have a specific platform for media & news companies, http://bambuser.com/iris - that is built on the same platform as the free-for-personal-use Bambuser app & service that you find at http://bambuser.com.

Personally I don't see this as something that will fully replace camera men (if you want good images - you want someone with a good eye for composition). I see it as something that will make it possible to bring in footage that wasn't possible to bring in before due to resources / equipment in a particular location - or because no camera crew were actually at the spot when something occurred.

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Streaming live video from mobile phones has already been working fine since a long time.

I've made a skype call.  I'm aware there is streaming video on cell phones.

I'm working for a company, Bambuser, that does just that - and has provided live streaming from phones since the company launched in 2007.

It's cool you're making money from this.  I have no problem with that.  But the quality is not going to match a DSLR or a mirroless camera.

 

Personally I don't see this as something that will fully replace camera men (if you want good images - you want someone with a good eye for composition). I see it as something that will make it possible to bring in footage that wasn't possible to bring in before due to resources / equipment in a particular location - or because no camera crew were actually at the spot when something occurred.

Tell yourself whatever you need to to get to sleep at night.  Make no mistake a lot of news organizations will go the same route as the Chicago Sun-Times using the tech you are advocating for.

TV companies are trying to sell us 4k TVs and TV stations are trying to record the news with iphones.  I love capitalism!

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This is inevitable and honestly, a lot will change in the industry in the next 5-10 years I think.

The lower end cameras are rapidly scrunching up to the higher end. Phones will be perfectly viable soon. Hell, the iphone6 probably is right now.

Obviously, talent for lighting, keen eye, editing etc... will always need human creativity, but bread and butter basic stuff will become increasingly oversaturated. 

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A similar experiment was conducted in the US by Charlotte’s Fox46 back in 2014, but they pulled the plug due to the quality of the result. “Plagued by technical problems and relying on journalists with little experience, it had an amateurish quality,” the station reported afterward. “Viewers turned away.”

There's a shocker! I often wonder if stories like this are the result of Apple's marketing push, mostly made up: TV stations switching to iPhone, reviews of iPhone beating Nikno D750 as posted in another thread here, filmmakers making movies with iPhone (with $10K worth of accessories and a big crew, BTW) as we saw recently, commercials by the likes of Martin Scorsese, etc. All to give the completely false impression to credulous masses that somehow this is a new world in which all you need is creativity...and an iPhone!

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