My belly aching yesterday got me to thinking about the gear on my wish list so I thought I’d do a roundup to help me prioritize. I have no doubt there’ll be more of these because I just never stop wanting and wanting and wanting and wanting. Come follow me into the rabbit hole….
Okay, so if I want to take my video mobile…. no no no scratch that. I have a tripod, let’s start there and build up. The tripod I have is decent for still photography. I chose it because it was light weight, thinking I’d be carrying it around on hikes and stuff. I then paired it with the worlds heaviest and bulkiest geared head which was stupid, but the head is really good for fine tuning a shot and I like it. I also purchased one of those intervalometers like the one Philip Bloom was using to do his timelapses. This allows me to do them as well (even though I haven’t yet) but it also keeps the camera absolutely motionless during a shot by keeping my ham hands out of the way.
That’s great for stills, but light weight tripods and geared heads are terrible for video. You want a sturdy platform to avoid shakiness in the footage and you want a head that’s silky smooth as well. I can weigh my tripod down with rocks or babies via a built-in hook and that has been decent so what I need next is the appropriate head. I was hyped when I saw Philip using one of these Madmartigans in his dolly review I posted yesterday because I’ve been eyeing it as well. Relatively inexpensive fluid head, the idea being that it provides resistance to your movements and dampens hurkiness. The lever gets your, um forces and leverage. So I think this will be my next acquisition. It will keep me fixed to a spot but it will theoretically allow me to pan and tilt more gracefully than I have been. Being smooth and graceful with these cameras in particular stems from an extremely boring technical phenomenon known by it’s extremely entertaining and nontechnical term ‘jello’. I won’t get into it.
Après le tripod, you start to want to be able to take your videos mobile. I’ll begin with a video of my own as a critique.
Some of the hand held stuff in this I really like, but some other shots are horrendous. See how at 1:25 and 2:53 I’m walking and the camera is bouncing all over? I’m trying so hard to keep it steady but it’s just not happening. If you’re filming the Blair Witch, that’s fine. Otherwise, no. The hand held stuff I do approve of in this video was using a technique where you put the camera strap around your neck and push the camera away from your body has firmly as you can, thereby giving you 3 points of contact with the camera. That’s good, but it’s really hard to operate the zoom and the focus when you’re engaged this way.
Enter….. Glidecam! This caught my attention immediately when I realized I needed stability. There are a number of competing steadicams in this market and opinions are fairly divided. Either they suck or they’re awesome. I think it all comes down to your ability to properly balance your camera which is part user intelligence and part device capability. It’s $500, so I haven’t bought one. Seems a little cumbersome to travel with as well. Here’s a video demonstration of someone using one in dubious ‘Cribs’ fashion.
Looks good, no? Here are two additional videos worth watching for steadicam goodness. The first one couples the Glidecam with a traditional body mounted stabilizing arm for a really nice effect and the second is just looking back at someone using the Glidecam in a number of different ways. The body mount rig isn’t insanely expensive but you should probably be getting paid to make video if you have one. The problem with this rig is you won’t be adjusting zoom or focus on the move.
Enter Zacuto Rapid Fire, FIGHT! An adjustable gunstock arrangement that gives you three points of contact (shoulder, camera body and lens) and the ability to operate the camera at the same time. Not as smooth as the Glidecam but probably more functional and a hell of a lot more packable. Ideally you want to pair this with their Z-Finder which you can see by scrolling down that page a bit. You adhere that thing to the back of your camera and you can mash your face up against it and see the LCD screen for focus duties. It’s hard to get good focus with the 3.5″ screen on the back so getting that magnification is good. Don’t get me started on secondary monitor accessories. The Z-Finder also gives you a fourth point of contact on the camera. Here’s some footage I found with someone using it. It’s obviously hand held but not distractingly so. Also dig The XXs.
Yeah, so this is probably the rig I’d be most likely to set myself up with at some point. You know, when I have $1000 to spend on two metal sticks and a magnifying glass. Actually, I should try to build at least the support bits myself.
I think that’ll do it for this installment of shit Ben wants. Lunch hour officially kicked. Join me next time where I shill for more utterly useless gear! Oh, I would like to direct your attention to this thing Zacuto is doing. It’s sort of relevant to the 24p issue I’ve been going on about lately and it features my new man crush Philip Bloom I love you Philip ssshhhh. The details are actually a little slim in terms of what will be delivered on March 24th but looks like they’re doing a hardcore comparison of traditional 35mm film and DSLR video. Should be interesting.
To me.