I’ve been on a media kick recently; life changes in the whole “employment” space will do that to you. Getting back to blogging, shooting, and creating is one of the things I’ve really enjoyed the most.
Last week I had a shoot in a local Tea Merchant for an upcoming catalogue/eBook highlighting all the coolest speciality teas made by staff members. A busted screen on the Alpha A300 meant no live view and no photo review; it was like being back in the early 2000 with my Canon Rebel Ti – which is currently sitting about a foot away from me. Some legends never die (where the hell do I find film for this thing now…?)
Off to the Future Shop I did go, where they sell cameras, so I know. I knew I wanted a Sony camera again; I’ve got a beautiful 50mm f/1.7 and a 28mm f/2.8 Minolta lens that you’ll pry from my cold dead hands. The 18-70mm that came with the A300 isn’t half bad either. I also wanted another camera that would use the FM-50 battery that I already have. I have two Sexy chargers for them, and having a spare battery around is awesome.
The Kingsway Future Shop is generally the bane of my existence (aside from a sales guy named Fuzz–he’s old school and completely awesome), but they delivered the goods that night. They had one A35 left… open box. Sold for $569, $90 off regular, and only a shade above the dealer cost (they always wonder why I ask them if they can check how many they have in stock… sneaky). It was missing a rear cap for the included lens; luckily (ugh) I had an extra after the destruction of my beautiful 70-200mm f/4 Minolta beer can lens. I still need to buy another one of those.
The shoot went well… and instead of turning the camera into a rental, I decided it was high god damned time I started shooting video with a DSLR. I’ve got a Sony HDR-SR7 that a friend and I pitched in to buy ages ago. It’s a good little workhorse, but it can’t scratch the surface of what modern DSLRs can do. My first video project with the A35 was the Nerding Out 3 video.
Thus began The Rig™.
The Rig™
A few things to note: The Sony does stupidly good video. Apparently it gets quite hot when SteadyShot is on during video shoots, but most of my use will be tripod based for now, so I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it (HA!). The microphone, however, is abysmal. I knew it would be, which is why I recorded sound to my Mac using my Blue Snowball USB mic. Final Cut Pro X synced the audio automatically (the naysayers might have a point for their projects, but FCPX is the best thing that’s ever happened to my editing endeavours). All said and done, the audio syncing was more than I wanted to deal with right now (saving every take to garage band as a separate files was a pain in the ass… I’ll revisit independently recorded audio when I can afford a Zoom H4N.)
So I concluded that the next step in The Rig™ would be a proper shotgun mic. I want to take The Rig™ to trade shows, out on the street, anywhere I damn well please… and I want to shoot fast, so a lav mic is out of the question for now. The conclusion of the Internets is that the Rode VideoMic is the best in class, offering more bang for your buck than anything, including its bigger brother, the Rode VideoMic Pro.
Everyone in Canada wanted $200+ for them… except Long & McQuade. L&M had them for $169… but couldn’t get their inventory shit together unless I trucked it out to their damned Langley store, which closes at 7 Mon-Wednesday. Ugh. I arrived with less than 10 minutes to spare. It was a close one.
So The Rig™ is on its way. Here it is pictured with an Optex mounting bracket; I have to use this until the hotshoe adapter I bought from China shoes up. Sony Alphas use a Minolta hotshoe, which is a pain in the ass despite offering compatibility with three decades of Minolta flashes that no one gives a shit about anymore.
Next up for The Rig™? The Cowboy Studio shoulder rig, a new plate and rails, and a $50 follow focus from KickStarter. Shit just got real.
It’s hip to hate Future Shop and Best Buy; Future Shop comes from a long and storied Canadian tradition of pushy salesfolk, and Best Buy carries a cross-border rep for being a big box store full of less-than-helpful blueshirts. In my experience the reputation is unwarranted, but even I’ve had my fair share of “God damnit, Future Shop!” moments in my time–both before, during, and after working for them.
Maybe you felt a little schadenfreude when you heard that these two big box stores were duped by thieves, taking back dozens of pieces of clay in sealed iPad boxes. It’s funny to watch the little guy stick it to the man, but that’s not what happened here; this was a concerted effort by organized crime, and it’s going to hurt you and I more than it will hurt either of these big dealers.
Why this sucks for us:
There was, up until a short time ago, an implicit agreement between retailers and consumers in Canada: if it’s sealed in the box, it’s an easy return. If it looked legit, it was legit, and the customer service kids at the desk would be happy to process the return back to the form of legal tender that you originally used.
Thieves are going high tech though, using heat guns to strip security stickers from boxes so there are no tear marks on opening, and resealing them with professional shrink wrap machines. Make no mistake, these weren’t cling-wrap and hair-dryer jobs; the thieves had high production values.
What it means is that even if a product is returned factory new, Future Shop, Best Buy, London Drugs, Staples, and everyone else is now left with one of two choices. First: trust that the consumer ISN’T a thief and return it unopened. Or second: follow the first rule of loss prevention–everyone is out to steal from you–and open the package to verify the contents.
This means that any item returned at cash is coming back as an opened box, an inventory status that these two retailers have struggled with for almost a decade. Open boxes mean price reductions, which may seem good for consumers at first. But those price reductions mean a loss of gross margin, which is a retailer’s lifeblood. As gross margin erodes it means belt-tightening for the retailer, meaning fewer sales, less staff, and stores that aren’t as clean or as pretty.
This isn’t an overreaction; when you’re faced with perpetual loss of high-cost, low margin products like an iPad, your only choice is a nuclear option–even if it’s for a short time. Future Shop, Best Buy, et. al need to convince thieves that this isn’t a profitable route–meaning things are going to get worse for the rest of us in the meantime.
What can be done?
The “carefully weighted” pieces of clay is an impressive ruse, but ultimately unnecessary; your average “register biscuit” (as a friend of mine was so fond of calling them) has only the vaguest idea of what an iPad weighs and wouldn’t give a slight variation a second thought. It does eliminate weighing the product as a solution.
In my mind, there are two solutions: we need to see inside the box, or we need to know for sure that the product is in there.
Hungry eyes
Ultrasound is a poor choice as it won’t penetrate some types of packing material. X-ray is harsh, and adding powerful cancer-machines at the retail level isn’t feasible for host of obvious reasons. That leaves clear packaging, which may, in a way, be worse. It’s hard to get into, requires petroleum products for cheap packaging, and isn’t biodegradable until you get to expensive options. Every one of these options adds significant cost to an already low-margin industry.
I sense… iPad
RFID could solve the issue… if it were embedded in the product itself. RFID or Radio Frequency ID is a small, no-power chip that is readable from a variety of distances with low-cost readers. The problem here is that a) it adds cost to the product, b)requires space inside and c) violates the end-users privacy as there’s no easy way to remove it that would remain secure for store inventory. RFID is currently in use in some Wal-mart stores in the states, but the chips are embedded in packaging, not products.
This sucks.
So we’re left with price increases and fewer sale options due to (rightly) paranoid retailers, or poor packaging options, or privacy violations–all of which carry higher costs and worse service.
Thanks, iPad thieves. You’re awesome. Hope it was worth it.
Three articles, one month each apart. Late to the party?
Today’s RSS reading held a bit of a surprise for me; I had to do a double-take because I thought I’d already done a double take. What do I mean? I started to read this article by Buzz Bishop–a former Vancouverite turned Calgarian who thinks his old town would have fewer riots if they had more pancake breakfasts (true story, he tweeted exactly that in mid-2011–from Future Shop’s TECH Blog.
What seemed odd to me was that it felt like I was reading the same store twice; Buzz has penned a brief article that consists of very little original content and links primarily to a NYT piece by Nick Bilton. It didn’t feel like I was reading Nick’s piece over again though. It felt like I was reading the December 29th, 2011 article by Time ideas writer Touré again. Indeed, the same anti-aeronautic-establishment sentiment conveyed by Touré is echoed by Buzz in the scant 375 original words he had to write on the topic–most of which were framing the quotes from Nick Bilton’s piece. I’m not really sure I see the point of his article; if, as a writer, all you’re going to do is parrot a main-stream media piece while retreading another, then why bother?
There are plenty of interesting things to write about at CES. Re-writing someone else’s story on why gadgets should be allowed during take-off and landing isn’t one of them.
To top it all off, doesn’t it seem just a little entitled when we whine about not being able to use our widgets during the time most likely to kill us on a plane? Touré made a strong point about the act being another morsel of the American TSA security theatre that’s spread across the globe in the name of compliance. Buzz, however, doesn’t bother with that level of depth, ignoring the fact that technology tends to move a great deal faster than legislation, especially when cross-border travel is involved.
Really, is it that difficult to separate yourself from your tech? God forbid you should have to put your iPhone down for ten minutes. Really, if you’re going to complain about it, bring something new to the table–or perhaps, on a Canadian blog, you could inquire with Canadian agencies. The last time I checked, the FAA doesn’t rule our airspace.
In the middle of last year I joined my friend Tristan Jutras at UBC to help him teach a course on social media fundamentals. We spent a few days over several months working with a variety of different class groups, imparting the important stuff about blogging, tweeting, Facebook, Google+ and more. The irony is that with the hectic nature of my end-of-year, I was failing to follow my own rules, and wasn’t practicing what I’ve preached. If you’re reading this now it may be because you’ve added my RSS feed to your reader based on one of those classes. If so, hello.
One of the things I tried to convey in those classes was how many blogs become orphans; simply left alone when the author no longer has any more time or content to give. That was precisely what happened with me. I neglected the rather lengthly list of blogs that I wrote for, leaving them free of new content and timely updates; it’s a death knell for a blog when that happens.
In one case, the Future Shop Tech Blog, I was unceremoniously retired. I don’t mean that in a mean way, there truly was no ceremony about it. I didn’t get an email, a text, or a call. I tried to log in a few days ago and was listed as retired. It’s tough to see; this time last year I was winging my way to Las Vegas as part of the Future Shop TECH Blog team (a brand I helped to build), and this year… chopped liver. That’s what you get in the dog-eat-dog world of unpaid blogging.
Which brings me to Harlan Ellison. He’s a dick of galactic proportions, but he makes a very strong point in this video: Pay the fucking writer.
There was the problem of a conflict of interest when I worked for Future Shop; they couldn’t very well pay me for my blogs or else it would appear that they were impartial: I can state honestly for the record that I was not directed to write anything other than my honest findings for that blog, which makes me feel good about the program and its intentions. Still, putting in all that work kind of sucked, especially to be dumped at the end of the year like a high school girlfriend as her life-long-love heads off to college. All things considered, it would have been nice to be paid.
Maybe it’s just late.
So this week has been one of rest and renewal. Updating my blogs to the latest WordPress platform has been a start; it was a real pain with 360 Arcadians and PS3 Arcadians as their PHP processor doesn’t have enough memory to do the upgrade automatically, and I can’t force it with a line in PHP.ini (it just kicks out an error). So I had to upload the software manually there, and ended up losing some content; let this be a warning: back up your damned blogs.
There’s new content up there, and I might be writing for a gaming blog called Troll in the Corner. All things considered, I intend to wear out a keyboard by July. Challenge? Accepted.
