Here is a small sample of the shots I did using my HC1 when I was in the Azores last year. Because I didn’t have a filter or a Wide Angle lens some of the clips could have looked better if I did but I still managed to get the picture to look decent. I wish I could show more but I don’t have time at the moment. Please tell me what you think and remember “If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all” just kidding. Just give me a good evaluation. Because its my first time that I shot stock footage.

The bit rate of the clip is only 8417 kbps compared to 25 MBPS of full HDV. I’ve compressed it in order to keep the clip under 50 MB using Windows Media HD. It ends up being 43.8 MB compared to 136 MB of the original file. It still looks remarkably alike to the original. To open it just use Windows Media or my personal favorite DIVX but remember to set the DIVX player to Wide Aspect in order to get the Wide Image.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mzfogo

Some pictures were too bright but some adjustment could probably solve that. The pictures are very beautiful but I wish you had longer duration on the clips. Now it's like 2 seconds that, 2 second that et c. It would be nice if you would have done some camera movements or zoom out or something on the waterfalls. But very nice pictures indeed and now there is another place I want to travel to... :)

The clips that I have are about 1 to 2 minutes each. The sample shows 1 second each in order to squeeze as many shots as I can. I do have shots with movements in them but I’ve decided to show only fixed shots.

Because I was doing this sample in a hurry I kept some of my bad shots in and left some of my good shots out.

I wish I had a filter in the island beach scenes but that’s the best the camera can do without one. I hope future consumer camcorders would have a built in neutral density filter.

The waterfall shots was not what I wanted because the first time I tried to get the shots it started to rain a lot, the second time was very foggy and then the third time it rained again and I decided to wait until the rain stop and then I went to tape the scenes. Next time I go there I will make sure I check the weather before I start to shoot anything.

Nice footage. Like others already said, it is a bit too shocky because you edited all clips in for a few seconds per clip but the composition is great.

Very nice footage indeed. I felt that the slides were a little too fast, but other than that, amazing shots!

I couldn't help but notice your name, are you Brazilian?

Alexander Karol,
Floris van Eck,

I’ve already mentioned that the originals are about 1 to 2 minutes each. 3 reasons why I kept it to 1 second each is to keep the file short and to prevent people from using my clips into personal projects without paying me. The last is to make sure a stock company buys it which is also the reason that I compressed the file to Windows Media in under 9 MBPS.

Alexander Karol,
I may not be Brazilian but I do speak Portuguese. I was actually born in Sao Miguel, Azores. Some of those shots that you see are next to my grand mother’s house. The place that I was staying during the time I shot those.

If I were to ever get the funds, I will go their again and this time with a DVC-PRO HD camera instead of the Sony HC1.

I don’t expect someone to try to imitate the shots that I did because some of them are very dangerous to get and one of the shots almost cost me my life because I was climbing down a hill with the camcorder in my pocket. Luckily I decided to not bring the tripod. This particular shot I haven’t showed yet but I may in several days.

For those of you that haven’t tried it, there is a way in Window Media Player to slow down the footage.

While you play the file, pause the footage, hit play at the top of the screen and hit play speed then select slow. The footage will actually look a lot better because this time you will have time to notice the detail.