We at Clearhead are all very excited to announce our latest partnership being with a British institution and a corporation that is seen worldwide as the leader in broadcast.

It got to a point where we did everything we could to not print anything out. So we went about a mission to make sure that we didn’t make the same mistake twice. So we decided to go down the laser jet route (having had good experience with these in our respective jobs in the past).

Now the task of searching for a laser jet is not for the faint-hearted. There is literally a mountainous plethora of sites that tell you everything from reviews to prices, descriptions to ratings. Struggling through can be a minefield. However persevere because it could just unearth a diamond.

That diamond came in the shape of this.

The Dell 3130CDN

Yes, the Dell 3130CDN has been literally a gift from God! I think if you look from a non-techy perspective when it comes to the checklist for a printer in your office, you need something that is reliable, that can be networked, has consistently good quality (in b&w and colour) and is fast. Finally something more important is that it makes financial sense. For a little over £300 initial outlat, we haven’t had to change the toner in 7 months!

So it may not be a massive part of your thinking but for us SME’s it certainly is imperative that such a vital piece of equipment is your workhorse that you don’t have to think about again!

Learn more about the ARRI L-Series here.

The band are currently supporting Mcfly on tour!

Clearhead are now inviting up and coming bands / artists to perform in our studio to record two songs of their choice as we document their performances.

// Tracks

“Feel”

“Last Friday Night”

Read and See More here

Inspired by Ryan Booth’s serialboxpresents.com we have decided to begin a series we like to call The Clearhead Factory Sessions.

Inviting up and coming bands and artists to perform in our studio to record two songs of their choice as we document their performances.

Count The Days are a three piece punk pop band residing from Hitchin, UK.

// The Band

James Kinsey – Vocals/Guitar
Robert Hulbert – Bass/Vocals
Alex Preston – Drums/Vocals

// Audio Session Recording by Stu Rolls

Are you an up and coming artist keen to be a part of the Clearhead Factory Sessions? If so get in touch, we’d be interested in hearing from you.

// “FEEL”

// “LAST FRIDAY NIGHT”

BUY THEIR MUSIC HERE!!!!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/count-the-days/id360591976?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

FOLLOW THEM ON TWITTER:
https://twitter.com/CTDOfficial

I recommend using a good stills camera, anything above 10 Megapixel should be adequate but in general the higher the better, as it will give you more leeway in post production and you will better image quality. I also advise a good sturdy tripod that is not going to move once you have placed it down, the slightest movement could ruin the panoramic and images won’t match up. To aid with this a solid panoramic tripod head is essential, this allows you ensure your shots remain level as you rotate the camera and allow you find the nodal point of your lens. Talking of lenses a fisheye lens is a big help because most fisheye lenses have a field-of-view of 180 degrees; this means you need fewer images to capture your subject in a full 360 rotation. They also give a distinct distortion to the images which many find desirable with visual tours. A remote shutter release is handy because it means you don’t need to touch the camera to take the picture so it eliminates the chance of camera shake. I used a piece of software called Easypano to stitch my images together and convert them into VR files. There are many different software brands available but this one did the job in an all-in-one package and hosted some powerful tools with lots of creative control.

I enjoy panoramic photography; I find it is a nice balance of technical and creativity. My advice is to get out there try it or keep doing it. That’s a sure way of improving your skills.

Nathan

The Pros:

They can be chillingly beautiful, the ability to freeze sections of the movement to forever hold it in time and let the flutter of an eyelash or the wave of hair in the wind seamlessly loop can be fascinating or shocking when what you thought was just an image blinks at you.

The Cons:

It’s a gif, it’s a dying format for a reason. It has horrible compression and sickening file sizes especially when you are attempting to convert full hd video into a web ready cinemagraph.

This cinemagraph we created an an experiment to see what was possible, we filmed a short 10 second clip of the water filling up the cup. The final loop was only 9 frames of the full hd video, the difficulty was getting enough movement of the water and avoid the rise of water level in the cup.

We at clearhead love experimenting with media and we were able to see the potential of cinemagraphs in advertising and marketing. There is even the potential to use cinemagraphs to captivate visitors to your website making an image really speak.

What more can be done with cinemagraphs is freezing parts of the clip the only thing possible? Can the same effect be achieved in another way using javascript or html5 to avoid the annoyances of gif files?

- Woody Senior Graphic Designer at Clearhead

Launch Site