Credits : Matt Clarke, Chad Behnke, Jerett Patterson

Source : http://www.no-spec.com/nospec-poster-downloads/

In my professional opinion, Spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client. Spec work can come in many forms and from existing clients, referrals and job postings.

What are the Pros & Cons of doing spec work?

Pros

Design Vendor : Exposure, Portfolio building, opportunity to work with organization

Client : Test out vendor, get numerous designs for free potentially lowering the cost of professional design services by hundreds or thousands of dollars, get the best for your business.

Cons

Pitfalls.  Spec client may already have chosen an agency to work with, and they are just trying to get some free ideas from the community.  It’s easy to recreate something or if worse comes to worse, you can hire the designer, but ultimately have no interest in working with the designer/talent.

“If you’re willing to commit someone else’s ideas to your business, without a clear concept of what you yourself want or desire, you leave yourself open to the mercy of other people’s caprice and fancy. If you’re running your business, don’t you want the right to get it the way you want it without gambling on something that may cost more to fix than to get right in the first place?”- From NO!SPEC

Overview

If it isn’t obvious from the title of the post I’m against certain types of spec work.  Doing something to get some experience or get your foot in the door is a career decision, but doing spec work won’t help you grow in some cases.

Or am I so out of touch with today’s economic climate that I’m lucky to stay busy with standard paying clients and jobs?

Why write this post

I follow ACTORSandCREW on twitter and I enjoy finding out about all of the opportunities and film / creative projects around the country.  Many of these opportunities are posted from professional organizations utilizing all outlets to find the top talent in their desired field. Thanks so much for this awesome service ACTORSandCREW!!!

Some of the posts provide people opportunities and chances to connect with work on productions that have a range of budgets from high to low budget in exchange for experience or references, etc.  Great, this is a good way for people to network locally and get their foot thru the door.

Earlier today, a job posting sounded like spec work to me, which I think is unfair to the design vendors, but perhaps great for the client.  For instance, Company X needs a logo, so they create a low paying job post asking people to submit their final designs for their new company logo.  Let’s say twenty designers submit their best work, the client basically gets a complete design package for free and then they can make their final decision.  Or if it is design by committee they can pick elements they like from all of the logos and have their own design agency do the actual work, leaving all of the hard working designers with nothing but their logo designs or concepts.  You can only build your portfolio so much before you will have to focus on what is important, paying your bills, right?

Idea : How to make it not spec work and work with the community!

Create a job post identifying your company and asking people to submit links to their portfolio or work samples.  Smart candidates will submit work that matches the companies industry or corporate culture/branding/potential audience.  Then Company X can pick the best designer to create their logo.  This is perhaps more traditional way of selecting a designer.  This way 19 of the 20 people aren’t wasting their time and you hire the designer that will meet your expectations and project’s budget.

http://twitter.com/ACTORSandCREW Excerpt from July 13th, 2009 followed by my notes of GOOD! or Strike thru for Not So Good.

GOOD! Manager Post & Production at Megamedia Films & Studios, Cochin: A newly started hi-end post p.. http://bit.ly/3MtS5y #India #Film #Jobs

GOOD! Crewing Up For Short Film (Miami/Ft Lauderdale): Want to build your resume?… http://u.mavrev.com/m57v #Miami #Film #Jobs

INMOTIONMX.com is a fast growing Motocross site … http://u.mavrev.com/m45m #SD #Film #Jobs

GOOD! #LA #Jobs Senior Writer/Producer at Walt Disney (Burbank, CA): The Senior Writer Producer for the Disne.. http://bit.ly/1a62xz

GOOD! #NYC #Jobs Managing Editor/Digital Media Producer at Walt Disney (New York, NY): Con Ed publishing Sof.. http://u.mavrev.com/m1fy

Some Additional Articles.

• Why most design firms won’t do spec work
• 10 Reason to Say No to Spec Work
• NO!SPEC website

What is your opinion on SPEC WORK?  Leave your feedback in the comments!  Would you join / stay a member of a professional site that offers a lot of this type of work?

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DxO Labs created dxomark.com for members of the digital photographic community who are passionate about image quality – professional photographers, advanced amateurs, photography reviewers and imaging media journalists. While other websites publish information about JPEG image quality, only DxO Labs provides the first publicly-accessible database of objective and in-depth RAW sensor image quality measurements.

From http://www.dxomark.com

ISO Sensitivity indicates how sensitive the camera sensor is with respect to light. In terms of exposure, the higher the ISO sensitivity, the better, as less light is needed to make an exposure. However, increasing the light sensitivity (from analog or digital gain amplification) also increases the image noise. On this graph we compare manufacturer-provided ISO number (indicated in the image’s Exif), versus the DxO Labs measured ISO (as defined in the ISO #12232 standard). ISO Sensitivity is also referred to as ISO Speed.

The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) indicates how much noise is present in an image, compared to the actual information (signal). The higher the SNR, the better, as less noise will be present in the image. The scale is logarithmic (in dB): + 6dB means two times less noise (as a reminder 3dB corresponds to 1 f-stop or 1EV).The SNR is here measured at the image mid-dynamic (which corresponds to a gray with 18% reflectance, commonly accepted as the average photographic scene reflectance).

Dynamic range or light sensitivity range of a sensor indicates the ratio of light exposure between the highest brightness a camera can capture (saturation) and the lowest brightness it can effectively capture (typically when noise becomes more important than signal, i.e., SNR < 0 dB). This range indicates the maximum contrast that can be effectively captured by the sensor. The larger the dynamic range, the better, as the sensor is able to capture higher-contrast scenes. Note that dynamic range is expressed on a logarithmic scale in EV (same as f-stop), thus an increase of 1EV corresponds to a doubling of dynamic range.

Tonal range indicates how many gray levels are distinguishable up to noise in an image. The tonal range corresponds to an integration of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the dynamic range of the sensor, and is therefore representative of the average noise level. The larger the tonal range, the better the image: noise is lower, and subtle nuances can be distinguished. It is expressed on a logarithmic scale as the bit depth necessary to encode that number of gray levels: an increase of 1 bit of tonal range corresponds to doubling the number of distinguishable gray levels.

Color sensitivity is an extension of tonal range that takes into account the color rendering involved in raw conversion: it basically indicates how many colors are distinguishable in an image, up to noise. Typically, if the sensor is slightly color blind, color rendering implies a strong digital color amplification and therefore a strong increase of noise. The greater the color sensitivity, the better the image: noise will be lower and with lower coloration. Color sensitivity is expressed on a logarithmic scale as the bit depth needed to encode a given number of colors: an increase of 1 bit of color sensitivity corresponds to doubling the number of distinguishable colors.

Site Screen Grab (Comparing some Nikons that I use and showcases the powerful comparision tools. View the Comparison of a Nikon D200 (DX Sensor), D300 (DX Sensor) & D700 (FX Sensor) here.

Updated Information (1.29.2009)

ISO Lies.  When ISO 100 is really 72..

I’m always a fan of open-source technologies and tools, while their use may not be practical for everyday work or commercial projects. Often the technologies can present an interesting twist to solving an common challenge or problem. After watching some of the video on the author’s website I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the easy approach to rigging and different method for animating and adding keyframes. I would recommend watching the screen capture videos on their website to see how characters are setup for animation and how video can drive performances and help with the process of animating character limbs.  Tools like these will hopefully make animation more accessible to the masses.  Any tools that empower anybody to Enjoy.

Reverse Shadow Theatre from gabor papp on Vimeo.

Animata: rigid body creation from bencesamu on Vimeo.

Disk Warrior X This utility is indispensable for restoring corrupted disk directories. It is a one trick pony, but nobody does it better. I carry this CD with me everywhere. Run it once a month on your system to keep things working the way you expect.

Tech Tool Pro (version 4.01). This system test and maintenance tool can help you spot trouble early

Macaroni. Runs key background Unix utilities run in a timely fashion after installation

Sponge Sponge is a tool to keep your Mac’s hard disk free of waste and junk temp files.

AppZapper, a software uninstaller tool

DiskInventory X, capable of showing the biggest files on your hard drive.

Other Tools

Oynx

fxphd Oct08 Term Overview from fxphd.com on Vimeo.

So Far the first two weeks are full of great classes, as usual I’m overwhelmed with making my final selection, but I don’t have to lock in my final selections just yet.  I’ll wrap them up this weekend.

New members. check this out, when you sign up you can reference my username ‘wilgory’ and I’ll get a free class, which will help with making my selection.  Karma is a great thing.

About time, sometimes company’s get the reputation for being an innovator, other times they get it finally get right after a half for the last three years.  To be fair, Silverlight is only fairly new for both the mac and the pc, but I don’t think version 1 of most microsoft releases are 100% ready for primetime out of the box. Sorry for the hating, its just seems like internet streaming of movies for instant viewing should have been an option for any platform about 3 years ago.  Either way, Netflix has become the clear leader in this field and perhaps a lack of competition has made these features hardly a main priority and this full scale implementation is simply a measure to stay at the top.

On to the catch, this feature will be available for Intel based Macs only.

Screaming Links

• Microsoft Silverlight
• Netflix Press Release

My review of this new technology implementation, does it work, is it worthwhile?  Or should I just quit wasting my time and buy that $99 streaming box for the TV?  Your opinions are welcomed, I won’t be buying anything until next year either way.

Pros : Netflix’s instant Watching movie options are both impressive and extensive in terms of hard to find indie films, foreign films but it also includes some of the newest blockbuster bests.  I’m sure this collection will only improve in the future.

Cons : Remember those HD quicktime trailers on Apple’s site.  Yeah, I want HD streaming already, and lets get HD streaming to the Set Top box and watch how many people pick one of those up for 99 dollars.  I maybe picky but if you want to quickly become the leader in media distribution these plans should be in practice already.