finally, a little piece of @zacuto (with pics!)

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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Tagged canon 7D HD-DSLR video zacuto

video kills the budget

but first... i should note that yes, the fact that i'm actually f'real blogging is something of a novelty (apparently). there is absolutely no guarantee that this will last, but we'll see.

anywho...

as if you haven't noticed lately, dear readers, i've really jumped full-on into the video game realm. i've really gotten hooked on honing whatever skills i have into learning all i can about video creation, particularly with the use of our Canon 7D. its a two and a half fold mission, really:

  • when i did my last big video project last summer, i realized i had forgotten much of what i taught myself in the course of the previous big video project. shooting and editing on my own time keeps those skills nice & warm, ready to go when the next project comes down the pipe.
  • i'm hoping to translate what i'm doing into something commercially viable for freelance work. i'm not quite at that point yet (i don't think), but i would love to take yet another thing i love doing and turn it into something that makes for some semblance of a tertiary income.
  • (the half part) i'm hoping that by shooting all this digital HD footage, i'll be able to convince the powers that be at my work work we need to and can invest in upgrading our equipment to keep with the times.

all that said, i'm realizing that i'm running into one massive, giant wall: money.

photography in and of itself, when pursued as a proper career option, is an expensive venture. once you get past buying the camera bodies, you have to start investing in lenses. not just any lenses, but great lenses. there's a saying in the photo world that boils down to this: its the glass, stupid. the better glass in a lens, the better your quality becomes. of course you have to take into account skill and talent, something that's 99% of the job. but that last remaining percent i feel falls into quality of equipment. when Jac first began shooting, she shot with a basic, low-level consumer grade Canon XTi. looking back on those images, its clear that even with all the innate talent and skill she has, a better camera and glass would've benefitted her that much more.

thankfully, though, we've gotten to a really good stopping point with our equipment. we just purchased a walk-around, everyday shooting lens for the 7D, which means both cameras have one. we've also got the telephoto lens and a 50mm, not to mention the Lensbaby and the random wide-angle adapter.

so now we're past that, the next step (for me) is to look into investing in video accessories. and holy crap: i thought photo stuff was expensive...

i realized today, as i was shooting out at ASF for fun, that strictly using the LCD screen on the back of the 7D was an exceedingly difficult affair, mainly because of the sunset behind me. there was a terrible glare and i could never tell if i was in focus. i knew i shot 90% crap and when i got home and unloaded the card, i was right. what looked decent enough in the field wound up just blurry enough to become maddeningly disappointing.

also, i've come to realize that using the focus ring on the lens is ruining the flow of many shots, mainly ones where the focus is changing from the fore to back and vice-versa. when focusing with a hand on the ring, there's a near requirement there be two points of contact, and simply because i'm human, those "coming into focus" shots are never quite perfect and because of my general propinquity for shaky hands, the shot shakes.

there are, of course, solutions for these problems. for the LCD screen, there's a brilliant product called the Zacuto Z-Finder. it attaches to the screen area and acts as a proper viewfinder, eyecup and all. its price? a mere $395. there are cheaper options out there, but the Zacuto is seemingly the first to be designed and built specifically for video work on DSLRs.

for the focus problem, there's a wonderful invention/tool called follow focus. basically, you have a ring and gears and a knob that seamlessly moves focus around. the cost for a proper, quality follow focus system? we're talking starting around a little under $2000.

[side note: i will say though, i'm tempted to try this out for the time being. we'll see.]

and then you get into the notion of steadicam systems, high quality audio recording systems, storage for the sheer amount & size of footage captured... it starts to add up quickly. its easy to say (and think), "buy the less expensive stuff and make do." but i feel, personally, better quality equipment begets better quality work which (hopefully, eventually) begets money-paying gigs.

so there that is. no real purpose behind this entry (and if you made it this far, i'm shocked; i'm certain most of you who read this blog have already navigated back to twitter for baby pictures), other than to vent (so to speak, although i'm not really venting or whining... its just been on my mind for the past couple of days).

tomorrow: we're off to the zoo!

Tagged DSLR equipment freelance HD-DSLR video
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