2008 July archive -- Leechon

Everyone is given 24 hrs a day. How well you use these 24 hours differentiates you from the others in this life and in the hereafter.

HQ (Almaghrib Headquarters) called me up late last week to make a trailer for their seminar A Heart Serene coming to Toronto soon. They wanted the trailer for a conference that took place this past weekend. Normally I would say no to such a request mainly due to the short notice. The trailers I’ve made for AlMaghrib in the past take me about 80 man hours of work (2 weeks full time hours) from coming up with a basic idea to delivery.

Why did I take up this challenge considering I had about one day to make this trailer?

Simply for the challenge! (…and to focus my mind away from some stress makers in life). I don’t recommend that you do this often mainly due to the mental and creative strain it puts on the individual and the effects of partial burnout that take place afterward, but I do advise that you challenge yourself once in a while.

Keep in mind that the video below isn’t near in quality (in my humble opinion) as my past trailers, but then again my past trailers were made in over 80 hrs of work spaced out over 2-3 weeks.

You probably noticed this graphic at the beginning of the trailer:

Leechon’s stance is that sound produced by musical instruments, whether they be made from percussion, brass, wind, or string instruments of music are not Islamically permissible. All projects that have been done officially done under Leechon (2005 and later) have kept to this principal. Some people have confused sound tracks of the videos to be sourced from musical instruments, for that reason all productions will now feature this slate before every video to remove that confusion/assumption.

If you wish to use this graphic slate for your videos, you are more than welcome to. Simply click the image to download the ZIP file which contains the image.

I Didn’t Buy That Canon Camera!

by Belal Khan

11 Comments

Which camera am I talking about?

A couple weeks ago I made a post about the Canon FS100 and HF100, one of which I reviewed. Read about it here:

Canon FS100 Review and Process

After going back and forth I was undecided on which camera to purchase. Here’s what I had going for each camera when compared head to head:

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Canon FS100 Pros:

Cheap! Close to $300
I could add extra accessories like the Steadicam Merlin and Lavaliere Microphone for the extra cash
Easy editing

Canon FS100 Cons:

No manual audio gain control
No HD (not really a con at this point in time)
No lens attachment feature (I fixed this with a lens adapter)

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Canon HF100 Pros:

Has HD (but wont be using it really)
Had manual audio gain control
Can add lens to it without and fiddling

Canon HF100 Cons:

$600+ causing me to go out of budget with other accessories

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So what did I purchase?

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Canon FS100

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Transcend 8GB & 16GB SDHC Flash Cards

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Lens adapter with 52mm to 37mm step down ring

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Audio Technica ATR-35S Lavaliere Mic

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Tiffen Steadicam Merlin Camera Stabilizer

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I’ll be posting about my experiences with this camera and how well the steadicam merlin performs after this weekend. I’m also planning on doing a head to head comparison of the Merlin with the $14 steadycam I built and tested here: http://www.leechon.com/14-steadycam-9.htm

If you have any questions of comments to share go ahead post them before the end of the weekend.