Two Tools Intro

Hi Friends,

I’d like to tell you a bit about an upcoming series of posts I’m working on that deals with the hands on part of telling your story. For most situations all you really need is a point & shoot camera and a Mac. For those of you without a Mac, I’ll be attempting to adapt the Mac specific parts of this series for the PC later on. I’m not as familiar with what’s out there for Windows, so that’s going to serve as a learning experience for me.I’m going to be demonstrating all of this stuff with my own gear, which is probably very much like what you have now. If you don’t have your own, here’s what I have:

Camera

I’m using a Canon Powershot A590 IS. I bought it refurbished from Adorama.com for less than $100. I chose this camera because it allows me to have full manual control (including focusing), which is pretty amazing for a camera this cheap. (Unfortunately, it’s been discontinued. I’m trying to find a comparable model, but not having much luck)

If you feel intimidated by the idea of manually controlling a camera, don’t worry; the first part of this series is going to be about how cameras work, and how to use them best. If you don’t want to think about your pictures beyond the rule of thirds, that’s fine. You can flip the dial over to automatic and go to town.

Computer

I have a 13″ MacBook Pro with iWork ’08. I bought mine for $1,299 refurbished on Apple’s online store. If you don’t have a Mac, you can find refurbished Macbook for only $849. Add about $80 for iWork and you can do everything I’m demonstrating for under $1100, including the camera. (You can save a few hundred by getting a Mac Mini, provided you have keyboard, mouse and display from an older computer)

Why am I recommending a Mac? Quite simply, it includes all the programs you need to make a website, record a podcast, create a video, and share your photos. And that’s BEFORE you add in iWork, which gives you more tools to build great looking newsletters and presentations. Yeah, that sort of sounds like an ad, but I firmly believe that buying a Mac will make your life far far simpler. It has for me.

Topics

I have a rough idea of where I’m heading with this series (I’d hope so, I mean I just wrote a whole post about it), but it’s still subject to change and by no means complete. Here’s the list of topics I’m planning on covering. By all means, if you think I’m missing something, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

• Camera – How Cameras Work
• Camera – Camera Modes
• Camera – Shooting Events
• Camera – Shooting Video
• Camera – Shooting Interviews
• Computer – Organizing Your Photos
• Computer – Building HTML Emails
• Computer – Newsletters using TextEdit
• Computer – Building a Basic Website
• Computer – Recording a Podcast
• Computer – Making a Video
• Computer – Advanced Newsletters with iWork
• Computer – Presentations 101 with iWork
• Computer – Presentations 202 with iWork

Again, if you want me to cover a specific topic that’s not in the list, let me know and I’ll try to add it in.

That’s all for this note. Talk to you soon.

- Josh