[Leica] Putting cameramen out of work

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

According to TV News, cameramen and photographers are the lowest paid
staffers on the roster of most local TV stations. My daughter and son-in-law
verify that this is the case on their own TV station in an affluent, near
NYC, market. Most of the photographers and videographers receive so little
salary that they qualify for food stamps. Here is a New York Times article
that describes another way of putting even more of them out of work.
Larry Z

This month's collection of New York Times digital innovations
begins with a contraption. Maybe there's a more technical term
for the double-decker photographic device that NYT shooter Doug
Mills deployed recently, but contraption feels right, too. Kerri
McDonald, a writer for the Lens blog, explains the innovation in
some depth in this post, but here's the boiled-down version:
Doug was looking for a way to shoot still photos AND video.
After finding a micro-ball head on a hot-shoe mount, he was able
to bolt an SLR-like video camera atop a conventional digital
still camera. When he used the device to cover the beginning of
the Roger Clemens trial, he was able to let the video camera
run, while firing the shutter of the still camera. In the
process, he was able to satisfy the multiple needs of the
printed newspaper as well as NYTimes.com. If you listen
carefully to the video, which is at the bottom of Kerri's post,
you can hear the shutter of the still camera.

>Check out the post; the comments are worth reading as well: 
>http://nyti.ms/pjG9XG 
><http://email.newyorktimes.com/19880bd52layfousbaf6rnfyaaaaaax5jntuanxyoqyyaaaaa>