Special note: a tragic helicopter accident in New York City this week claimed the lives of five people excited to see and photograph Manhattan from the air. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the victims and the pilot who managed to make it out alive. 

It got more and more fun as we went along, with more friends joining in the merriment. Yes, that's legendary blogger Ken Rockwell on the left, and YouTube phenom Jared Polin of FroKnowsPhoto in the middle. And there's more...

Suddenly, an off the cuff test of our new mid-2017 Macbook Pro 13" for 4K video editing while on the road turned into a romp as a micro-series with industry friends.

First in a four part series begun on a lark to test the 4K editing performance of my new road warrior laptop, the mid-2017 MacBook Pro 13" with touch bar. I was hoping it would be almost as fast or perhaps a little faster than the computer I was replacing, my mid-2012 MacBook Pro 15."

It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, but this time (unlike in April) I wasn’t official press. Forget about a tripod or monopod - Secret Service rules prohibited even selfie-sticks. Forget about a lot of glass, especially long, fast glass: not only would everything have to be hand-held, but those same rules stipulated no backpacks and no bags bigger than 18” x 13” x 7.” And then there were the closed-door meetings where even if I had been press, no press were allowed. Traveling small, light and unobtrusive were the orders of the week. Heads-up: this is a post about gear -- not politics -- but if you don’t want to see photographs from the Democratic National Convention in Philly (along with protests) you’d better stop reading here.