I wasn’t planning to do a review of my new purchase, but some Twitter buddies were curious about my new tripod, so I thought I’d post a little overview. It just arrived yesterday and has not gone on a shoot yet, but I played with it a bit today and can go over some of the features. The tripod in question is the Manfrotto (Bogen) 535 Carbon Fiber legs with the new 504HD head. I wanted a second tripod and when I was at NAB, in April, that was one of the things I was looking for. Read more…
Posts Tagged ‘equipment’
Expansion
So this week I added a new piece of gear to my arsenal. Unfortunately this piece of gear won’t make me much money, but it will get me from point A to point B. I bought a new car, a minivan, in fact. As anyone in production knows, having a good sized production vehicle can be essential. Even though our cameras and a lot of other gear have gotten smaller, there is still a ton to take on shoots. My previous (now second) car was a Mazda 3 wagon. A great, fun, zippy little car. I could pack A LOT of stuff in it. I used to joke that this car could JUST barely fit whatever was needed. Read more…
NAB Wrap-up
I just got back last night from my first trip to the NAB Show in Las Vegas, and after a good night’s sleep I am now beginning to feel human again. It was a short trip, only there for 2 full days, but I sacrificed sleep in order to pack each day with as much stuff as possible, and my head is still spinning a little from everything I saw and everyone I met. This trip also included what will hopefully be the first of many All-In Film Charity Poker Tournaments on Monday night. It went great, and was well received. I will go through my highlights of the whole trip for you all. Read more…
It’s Heeerrree!
My shiny new Canon 7D camera is here! I pre-ordered it through Amazon about three weeks ago, but Amazon seemed to be behind the ball on shipping. I had been seeing clips posted online from people all over who had received THEIR cameras, and I wanted mine! So I called Calumet Photo in Cambridge and Newtonville Camera in Newton and got on their waiting lists. Sure enough, the next day (yesterday), I got a call from the fine folks at Newtonville that they had one for me. That was easy. Read more…
Going Steady
On Wednesday I took some time to attend the Learning Lab series at Rule Broadcast. I have mentioned Rule in the past, as one of my go-to rental/sales houses in Boston, and since they moved to their new facilities (after merging with Boston Camera) they have been conducting these weekly sessions on new equipment and techniques. I have attended a few of these workshops, and they are potentially dangerous for techno-geeks like myself. It was through a similar session Rule hosted two years ago that made me buy my EX-1, and virtually all of them feature new gear that I feel I MUST have. As I said… DANGEROUS! Read more…
Seeing RED
Last week I took a day off from working and, well, worked.
My friend was working as production manager for documentary filmmaker Alla Kovgan on a film they were shooting this week in New London, CT. They brought in a DP from Armenia (Mko Malkhasyan) who Alla had worked with previously on her STUNNING dance-film Nora, which they shot in Africa. I am a huge techno-dweeb, especially when it comes to cameras, and they were shooting on the RED One, a new-ish camera that I had only worked with for a tiny bit before but am planning to use on an upcoming project, Read more…
Gear…Renting and Buying
I feel somewhat fortunate that I entered this business in 2000 when the cost of entry, as far as professional level equipment, was considerably lower than ever before. The DV (digital video) format had emerged in the 1990s and was seen as a viable professional acquisition format. Sony was at the forefront of creating small “prosumer” cameras (notably the VX1000) with the miniDV format and, for that time, were able to produce quite lovely pictures that certainly looked better than would be expected from a camera that was only a few thousand dollars. Certainly large Betacam and DigiBeta cameras (costing tens of thousands of dollars) Read more…