i've been drooling over Zacuto's array of gear/equipment made specifically for HD-DSLR shooters for a few months now. the problem is: its expensive stuff. more than anything, i want a Z-Finder but, current finances being what they are, there's no way i'll get my "owning" hands on one anytime soon, much less anything else in the lineup.
but then this project came along. its for the
Great Day of Service this Saturday and i knew from the minute i was tasked with shooting & interviewing on the Conference's behalf that i wanted to shoot in HD. i've been eversolightly picking away at getting us to upgrade to non-tape based, HD quality media for awhile now, but i've never had a way to really exemplify why. the last big video project i did was last summer and all we had at home was the 5D Mark II. that is jac's camera and there was no way i could ask to take that on the road for a full week (so i shot on the Conference's Canon GL2).
since then, its been a pretty dry spell for video projects. but then this came up, and now that we have the Canon 7D (essentially, my camera [haha]), i thought, "great! perfect opportunity!" but i felt i needed something else. shooting purely handheld was just not going to cut it, especially since my walkaround lens is non-IS (Image Stabilizing). randomly, someone from the Zacuto team tweeted something regarding rentals, and BAM, i was sold. i noted what i needed, priced it out, and presented it to my boss lady. she, somewhat surprisingly, was all on board with it. in all the insanity that this past year has been, she remembered my desire to push us towards higher-end, HD quality video work. she saw it the same way i did: this would be a great opportunity to show what was possible and why this could be made into a necessary line on next year's budget.
so there it was. i called up Leo at Zacuto, made my rental order, and it all arrived today. i am so so so so so stoked about it. i've got a little bit of tweaking to do in order to get everything just right, but i can already tell that this is going to lots of fun. of course, come Monday (when i have to ship it all back), i'm going to be a sad little puppy. but still: YAY.
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