Last month Bourbon Street endorsed 29.97 as the preferred speed for shooting slow motion. Well... seeing how we're not running for President of the United States we're opting to exercise our constitutional right to equivocate.

After rigorous soul searching, camera testing and a few scented herbal wraps, we've reached a slightly different conclusion. If you're slowing down between 99 and 75 percent, 29.97 is still your best bet as it retains the film look we've all come to expect from HD. However, if you're trying to capture something really quick - explosions, NASCARS, acknowledgements of malfeasance from executive branch - we recommend shooting 59.94. This is based on repeated tests, and we certainly encourage everyone else to test, test and test for themselves.

In the last year chief camera operator John Bourbonais has probably stared down two dozen HD lenses to discover that not all are created equally. In fact, an older generation of lenses dating back to the Paleolithic era of 2000-2001 are still making the rounds in many rental houses.

"If you're going to rent an HD camera package, it's worth your time to go to a post house and do a few tests," says Bourbonais. "It's no more complicated than bringing a color chart or a back focus chart. Even the person just beginning in HD can really see the difference in lenses so I'd encourage people to take that extra hour during prep and look through a few lenses, if only for the benefit of making a comparison."

Resently, Bourbon Street has witnessed a sizable HD clientele who want to see footage in true HD for tradeshows. That's to say they want playback. Since clients are none too crazy about carting a gargantuan playback deck and plasma screen across country, we've been sniffing into some other options. While we're only in the testing stages, we're working with a local post-production house to synthesize an HD projector with a Macintosh G4 computer.

Bourbonais will be working on this for the next month or so and will post his findings in forthcoming newsletters.

My initial reaction was to go with a JVC D VHS deck which plays back 1080i. The problem is that it's going to be dead within a year due to the arrival of HD-DVD. Also, getting the footage authored is not just a matter of hitting record-play and feeding an HD signal. One has to produce it as one of a handful of authoring facilities around the country.

It didn't take much research to conclude this route would be cost prohibitive. Please look for more about his project in forthcoming newsletters.

So that concluded this month's assortment of tasty technical tidbits. We hope you find them useful. As always, we're delighted to compare notes, make referrals and the like so fee free to drop us a line.