HDVideoPro: The Top 10 Products of 2012 – This Year, the Digital Democracy Train Kept A Rollin’

HDVideoPro by Neil Matsumoto

If you’re online as much as I am, you’ve probably been following the whole Instagram debacle. Earlier this year, Facebook bought the popular photo sharing/social networking site for approximately one billion dollars. What was most astonishing was at that price, the small start up company with less than 20 employees could now buy imaging giant Kodak several times over. Within a few months Instagram updated its Terms of Service, which would allow them to sell users’ photos to third parties without their knowledge and more importantly – with no money going to the photographer. This would essentially make Instagram the largest stock photo company in the world.

As you probably know, stock photo companies have had a tremendous effect on the professional still photography world. With the ability to license a photo for a few hundred dollars instead of paying a professional thousands, many photographers are basically packing it up. The question has become, will the video world follow this trend? How far can the democratization of filmmaking go?

Before you go off and shoot your next feature film on your iPhone 5, 2012 still saw most blockbuster films being shot with the ARRI ALEXA, RED EPIC, and yes, 35mm (even 65mm) motion picture film. But in my opinion, in the past few years, the most impressive production and post-production tools that have been released have been aimed at indie, or even consumer, filmmakers. Another trend has been huge price cuts of high-end cameras and software – essentially giving companies slimmer margins but wider access to filmmakers. In either case, it’s still an exciting time to be a filmmaker.

Anyway, here are my top ten products of 2012: read more...