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Photography Tips

Posted on February 26, 2010 | Filed Under Photography

Here are some quick tips that will do a lot for your photography from a great website, Digital Photography School. The first one is a common problem with volunteer photographers but can easily be corrected.

Portraits and headroom:

One of the most common mistakes I see photographers make is the misuse of headroom.

The bottom line is, don’t leave a lot of space between the top of the subject’s head and the top of the frame. Avoid the tendency to put faces square in the middle of your viewfinder where your focus brackets may be.

In order to capture the emotions of the face, start by getting in as close as you can. At times you may even chop off the tops of a few heads. Unless the sky is particularly amazing or the trees more fantastic than your average set of trees, don’t try and force getting the surroundings into your image. Generally the background should not be more prominent than the subject.

Read more tips at digital-photography-school.com

Digital Sound Guys

Posted on January 26, 2010 | Filed Under Audio

Shawn Wilson sent me this link to an article about the possibility of new software that would mix a band to sound like it’s original studio recording.

Take the latest Dave Matthews Band album. It’s recorded digitally and everything on the album can be reproduced and analyzed in the digital domain. Stick with me here. I’m not talking about how a song is actually played, but rather the volume, tonal quality and relationship of all the sounds on the album to each other.

If the band wants to closely reproduce the sound of the record (the “mix” if you will) in a live performance, then why not have the person who used to mix the sound be replaced by a computer that knows what the song is supposed to sound like. Every instrument on stage will soon be introduced into the live sound system either by a digital direct box or a digital microphone. Instead of a human moving faders and twisting knobs, the computer doing the mix will maintain the tonal integrity, relative volumes and dozens of other parameters analyzed from the recorded sound. There will be no problem if the arrangement on stage changes from night to night, because the mixing computer doesn’t really care about how the song is played, only about how it sounds.

Click here to read the entire article.

Macbook Screen

Posted on December 31, 2009 | Filed Under Computers, Hardware

Over the Christmas break, Abe’s laptop started doing this:

Not sure what’s causing it but it’s getting this strip of white down the middle. We’re going to the Apple Store Monday to see what’s going on. It’s under warranty so it should be find. I’ll let you know what happens.

New tuning pegs for electric violin

Posted on December 20, 2009 | Filed Under Instruments

Recently Chris, worship musician extraordinaire at our church came to me and asked if i could replace the tuning pegs on his electric violin to guitar tuners. He said that he wanted more control in tuning, I said sure.

During research I learned that guitar tuners wouldn’t work, however I discovered Perfection Planetary Violin Pegs at Musiciansfriend for $69.00. These gems fit the bill to a T. I immediately ordered a set.

Three days later this arrived.

After reading through the instructions I learned that I needed a new tool, a standard tuning peghole reamer. I found that at Stewart-MacDonald for $49.98. The next thing to have on hand was some Gorilla Glue, then the fun could begin.

The first step is remove strings and old tuning pegs, being careful to note the order of the strings and bag them for safekeeping. Next I had to sort the new pegs between the treble and the bass side of the violin, because they actually screw in and the threads are reversed on the treble side. Read more

Step Lights

Posted on December 2, 2009 | Filed Under Hardware, soundroom

Shawn Wilson has installed lights to the steps entering the soundroom. The pictures below are of an LED set we installed but they were too bright and wouldn’t work with our motion detector or our fader. Now there is a regular set installed and automatically comes on when you enter the room. It also has a light sensor so if the lights are already on in the soundroom, the stair lights don’t come on. We’re eventually going to install the LED set under the counter of the soundboard and install an easy to get to switch so we can see when wiring under the counter. Let me know what you think!

iTunes Keyboard & USB

Posted on November 30, 2009 | Filed Under Computers, Hardware

I’ve installed a new mini keyboard in the soundroom for the iTunes computer. There is also an extra USB cable for jump drives, external hard drives or to charge a cell phone or iPod.

Blue Screen of Death

Posted on November 25, 2009 | Filed Under Computers, Hardware

My PC in my office recently started giving me the Blue Screen of Death. I think I either have a corrupt hard drive or a major hardware error. It’s also recently had a pretty nasty virus and I’ve been trying to transfer all the data off the drives. Now it’s sitting on my floor in my office so I can take out the hard drives and transfer them to the server via a USB adapter. Once I start the project I’ll detail how I do it.

Ghost

Posted on November 25, 2009 | Filed Under Lights

It seems there is a ghost in the church. I’ve noticed the lights being left on in the auditorium more often. After checking into it, it seems there was either a loose button in the foyer or a little bit of extra static causing it to turn on the lights. Watch the security camera video below:

Video Link

Thrive Marriage Conference

Posted on November 19, 2009 | Filed Under Audio, Events, Hardware, Photography, Visual

I tried to keep most people out of serving during the Thrive Marriage Conference. One reason is to allow couples to be together and not separated by having one serve in tech. Another is to keep singles from attending the event for obvious reasons. A third is it allows me and my wife to serve together. We began serving together in the sound room, AWANA, VBS and college ministries. Now I’m mostly serving in tech and every now and then she gets to come along and help. Here are some pictures of technology at the event (and a few others too).

Digital Sound Boards

Posted on November 19, 2009 | Filed Under Audio

Recently I went to a tech meet up where we got a demo of a couple digital sound boards. The one pictured below is the Roland V-400 V-Mixer. It runs about $15,000 which isn’t bad considering all the features it has. One of it’s unique features is it’s personal monitoring system. Just like our Avoim system, you can get boxes for the stage that allow the instrumentalists and vocalists to control their own mix in their headphones. This system from Roland is also digital and can hold multiple musicians’ mixes in one box. It also can be controlled from the soundroom and keeps it’s settings in case of power loss. There are a lot more features but you get the idea. Now, who’s got $15,000???

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