Lessons

Lesson Info

Packing the Right Kit: Camera Support and Audio

So kind of the two things that all use the most is a mono pod and here are all actually come out front so what I'll use the most is actually a man photo mono pod and you can tell this is very different than a mono pod for still photography there's actually a ball on the bottom and we actually have a fluid head on the top so you can do fluid pan right left the bottom of it actually moves you khun tilt up and down, and one thing that I often times will get rid of this arm. I just tend to find with the dslr you don't need the arm all lose the arm and just move the camera so this one I think we brought it because you know there's the occasional situation when you need it, but typically it's kind of like the lens cap thing is I used to just get rid of the lens cap I keep the arms, but I rarely will keep them on the mono pod even with lightweight tripods are pretty much lose thie arm so that's a man photo mono pod and then a tripod this is a b fear set up this is probably the beefy ist tripo...

d all use what makes a video tripod unique and this is important if you're going from still photography to video is there's actually a mall on the bottom of this tribe but you know, I don't know if you've been on a location where you see some like photographer show up and he spends nine minutes setting up his tripod toh level it out and then he misses the shot because the light in the deer has long since left well, the beauty of a video tripod with the ball is you kind of throw your sticks down it doesn't matter how level and then there's a little level ball and boom you lock it off now we're level and now you have perfect panning perfect tilting and with a bigger set of tripod legs I will keep this handle you know this is a beefy enough tripod we could put the two hundred to four hundred on it into a very fluid move so this a beefy set of sticks this set of sticks that dane how's on the ground that's also that's just a stripped down lighter weight version of what we're using here there's a ball so that it's easy to level fluid head actually that one doesn't have a fluid head, but this one with the g a bonnet over here does so those are the basic you know, fundamental devices that the key devices for shooting video get yourself a mono pod and get yourself a decent tripod with the fluid head then we start graduating into the world of little jib sze like one man band like sure honestly, this is yeah I mean you're going out on location this is you can tell this one's the most beat up and I think what name just said was really key this is realistically the one man band set up its carbon fiber legs. This thing has gone all over the world have closed van doors on it crack to the legs it's a super lightweight seven o one hd head and you can see there's no arm on this thing that that long since has disappeared because usually I'm just putting a camera one dslr with, you know most of seventy two, two hundred and all manipulated by simply grabbing the camera or grabbing the head of the tripod again because this I can carry on my backpack that other tripods pretty heavy in comparison. So this is probably your starting point tribe that equivalent you khun still level it very easily as faras holding cameras may be all that you will be very rarely am I using it but sometimes will actually use a shoulder rig this aman photo rig and this allows you to operate a dslr much more like a conventional video camera you can put it on your shoulder, you can mount monitors, you can actually put a hood on the front of it you need to you can drop filters in matt blocks there's handles you can make it so that you're carrying it on the ground. You can carry it on your shoulder. So this is again, this is not mandatory. I would not put this high on the list of equipment to buy, get a tripod, get a mono pod, and I would probably skip this in the short term and move on to some of the other cool tools that we're goingto show you later, you might decide why could occasionally really use a carrying rig, but you're going to see how we're going to show you all of the different devices that we're using. This one goes lower on the list. It's perfect when you need it, but there's fewer situations where you need it in some of the other tools were going to show you. So why don't we let's just go case by case here and please ask questions at any point. Nice, uh, tripod the middle of the y, says one man band tripod called I have a company that one this's an older version, but man photo now sells a kit, which is their equivalent to the seven o one head, and they'll sell a kit, which is carbon fiber legs with a video ball, and I think it's the I should know this but it's it's not it's no longer the seven no one have they've replaced it with a newer head but go on and look going the web look at video tripods maybe someone that's online can even tell us what it is but this you know this about it's kind of a five hundred dollars tripod maybe slightly more than that and I won't throughout prices anymore he's usually a mountain left field yeah, I think it's more last thing yeah, I get that that's the that's the last price quotes and I'm going to provide you'll have to look online that's the beauty of online so the next let's actually start over here in this bag so this actually is a glide camp this allows you to mount it cameron have a pretty fluid, pretty fluid motion with your camera on it. This is kind of a poor men's verdict version of a steady cam and so you balance it with these washers so that it's perfectly weighted for a dslr. So we've balanced this for a d eight hundred with fourteen to twenty four to eight lens on it I love it! We've got some paddle voters is that really excited out in the distance here? So the beauty of this is you, khun occasionally nail a really beautiful shot but it takes a lot of practice we've all let stopped using this if shawn's on the job and we'll get teo this device over here which is shawn's handheld gimbal has completely replaced it makes this feel really obsolete actually and really difficult to nail shots but this is relatively cheap and it doesn't require another operator it's something that you can teach yourself how to dio and creates an pretty sophisticated shot it's quick and it's it's a little less delicate so it's you khun definitely beat it up a little more and you khun you can get stabilized shots so it still has a use for sure yeah let's see also in this bag we have you know, when someone asked the question of audio this is kind of a beat we have a shotgun mic inside of this and this called the blimp and it's really for shooting in recording sound when there's wind like right now we're starting to get enough wind that this would make a big difference. We can put this on a moon pole or we can mount it on the stand and it's just so that we might use this when we go to do the voiceover with jim just so that we're not getting wind blowing into the mic so this is a blimp it's bulky but there is no substitute for having a decent boy your audio quality coming from the mike it's better out of that one then you're smaller mike hunt much better but most of it's a price point thing right? We're we're putting a ah high end microphone shot actually mid level shotgun microphone in this blimp you know that little emmy one because on top of the camera too pretty you know it's a smaller, cheaper microphone so everything with audio and I'm not an audio file but no, the audio gear is very expensive and the better the audio gear gets the more expensive and and the quality really does change but I think there's a middle of the road point we're for it for our style of production we kind of buy into that level and it's it's acceptable for production for tv and for, you know, web content for video so um let's see, one of the things that will bring is grad filters so these are nd filters that air split down the middle and here's a great example of right now we have it's really dark on the lake but then we have this beautiful cloudy sky so we can drop this filter in and it brings the sky down. We can either drop it in the mat locks and we screw this little holder on in front of the lens and it allows us to actually burn down, bring the exposure of the sky down and match it to the shadow exposure these air pretty valuable for video when it's in their valuable for still photography as well but I find them using the much more now that you know there's a lot of video work that we're doing so again when you buy those you want to buy pretty darn nice filter speaks you're putting in front of your lens um dane and I use small hd monitors we used these little small hd four inch monitors and these air there they take our nikon batteries on the back we can actually mount them two cameras we can mount them on the end of jib arms and it just it's really bright and it's a pretty affordable monitor for what you get it's h d m I and these you khun daisy chain monitors out of the foreign jj so it means I can actually if I'm operating the jib I can be you know this is mounted on the end of the jib I'm looking at it and weaken daisy chain out of thie out of this monitor to another monitor if we have a client standing there of danes no I don't know pulling focus or I don't know I guess rarely do we daisy chain what yu can we send it out of the parent links wireless transmitter so and I will bring to little small age d's and then we'll bring some jails I don't think we need maybe just hold that up so we bring in just a burrito wrap of gels, so if we're gonna gel any of the lights and I was telling you about our fish, this is jim's this's jim's fish that he's going to be catching that looks pretty authentic when it's wet and flopping around this is a three hundred fifty dollars, proper fish that we bought for a busch beer shoot a number of years ago and it's been hanging in our office with the busch beer cans speaking out of its mouth for about the last three years. So I'm really happy that we can repurpose this fish for the creative live shoot. I think jim is going to be disgusted that when he sees the fiberglass fish okay with the gels actually just curious, I don't need usually think of jails like when shooting inside and trying to mix light, but you're shooting outside primarily like what do you use are using them for just like creative lighting matches? I wouldn't you know, I would say mostly were using these jails when we're either indoors trying to match lighting or four outdoors and we're trying to warm up the light, you know, kind of doing a video portrait style shot mostly for indoor court if you go back to the monitors, you see those as essential kind of the next step after essential gear with capturing video because focussing can be very difficult yeah tracking that you find the loop or the monitors and more you see more you say the monitor over the lip if if I can carry extra gear you're burning more power that's another thing tethered to your camera that makes it a little clunkier but I'll take the monitor over the loop but you know, in the mountains I can't carry a monitor a minute yes turns out to be and with clients monitors are pretty important like that you know it's really hard you can't show your client through a loop the back your camera you know this would be really lightweight monitor to show a client but well sometimes use a seven inch monitor monitor for clients viewing and how often during the day are you showing your client what's what's been going on and what it all depends? I mean it there's jobs where we're running a wireless feed to the monitor on every shot to give him confidence you know it all depends on what the client's expectations are and then what the the the environment we're in really allows, you know, sometimes they want to monitor, but it just isn't possible right? Forget it and and I would also say, you know, we you know I keep on telling you that symptoms we look rinky dink we dio compared to like hollywood style production now the idea of using a seven inch monitor for a client is tiny but its portable it allows them to be untouched third with batteries holding a monitor you know, even when you're in a remote location I mean the next levels you bring out really giant monitors and you know, you build a tent but then the instant word like when we're doing that we've really slowed production down we can't be as efficient we're not a small footprint production anymore these are not the type of monitors that air the dual purpose recording devices and monitor no yes don't you prefer to just record to a card we do? Ay dio I mean it's it's just unless there's a really reason for recording to that external device you're just adding complication to your equation like the chords pop out it's one more thing that needs to be battery powered you're just you know it's another link in the chain that khun break you know that bottom line is ninety eight percent of the time with the sl ours were shooting director card and do those monitors allow you to do the focus speaking yes cool so all right moving on I will always carry we have a bag of walkie talkies and these are you know these air just the cheap walkie talkies that you can buy at, you know, big five sporting goods or walmart or but the reality is these air super valuable for keeping a crew moving efficiently you get simon often times our location cell phones don't work and so you can't just send a text across the way one guys at the car you know jim's out on his kayak trying to fish we need jim back for a shot and so really will try to keep walkie talkies on everyone on the crew the entire time and not only for crew but also for talent like giving direction shawn's flying the helicopter sounds like there's a weed wacker in the air jim has no idea what we want him to do so it's this is a way that sometimes will mount the radio really close to his chest or even like on his shoulder and you can't see it just so that you can hear what we're asking him to do so it's jim turn around fly back or you know kayak back and so he can spin around real quick and he knows what we're trying to communicate so just cheap radios but they really help so this is we used these low probe blocs inside of our inside of our bags and what they allow us to do is really have kind of sectioned off years so this is our audio kit and then inside I'm not going to show you everything but here's this is the shotgun like that we use what's this son heizer not sure with the model is but I mean this a couple of hundred bucks that you're going to invest in a mike that's really kind of the entry level microphone I mean these mikes can get incredibly expensive but you know pretty decent quality and then we have all kinds of modifiers we use this task cam recorder if you know it's just a very simple recorder but it allows us to control two channels of audio um actually three channels of audio and this oftentimes will either one person will monitor it or well mounted to the bottom of a camera will also push our feed right back into the camera and we're finding more and more with the d a hundred and eighty four we rarely will actually go back to this recording device usually will use the audio that can usually we're running it through this and then back into the camera but this to back up it's like redundancy um oh look sometime throwing this gear around so people are getting sick at home so we're using the task cam it's the d r sixty d super impressive recorder definitely uh step up from the zoom which I think a lot of folks online of used for a long time um always a pair of headphones which bly is holding them you can show those why um let's see way also used to things this is actually a transmitting device for the shotgun mike so that we can go cableace so we can actually plug this in it's the e w one hundred g three and this allows us to actually plug it into the back of the shotgun mike and we can actually have our microphone a few hundred feet away from the receiver which is pretty nice to not be running cord but any time you start doing wireless um with microphones or with any cameras you start to run into complication when there's interruption I'll give you that and then this is actually this is a set of laval ear mike's laval ear mikes in the microphones that you mount I'm wearing one on my shirt here so you have a receiver in a transmitter and this same receiver can pull in that thing other piece that I was just showing you you can buy these as a kid just go online and you can buy the sennheiser kits with a little microphone. Okay, then we get into for still photo pocket wizards so that we can fire the strobes remotely hold those up so this allot the pocket wizards allow us to of course fire strobes and also fire cameras remotely so I was showing you in the mazda piece way had the camera on the jib arm and the jib arm was allowing us to actually shoot the camera remotely where we were usually just rolling video that's how we did it was a pocket wizards and let's keep on moving. So this is kind of our basic lighting kit we carry, we use a lot of leads, that's I mean, I can't think of the last time we weren't just shooting on light panel ladies, so we actually carry two one by one, leads and these air by color so we can actually go from daylight to tungsten in terms of color, temperature will carry a couple of smaller light panels. This is the this is a real favorite. These chromosomes a run on just double a rechargeable batteries, they're fantastic. This is a little more aggressive spot with a proprietary battery. Thes air. Great. We're describing to you sometimes, even in daylight situations, we'll point the lady really close to the subject's face just to get that little catch light in their eyes that would work in this lighting environment. We're just looking for that little white dot near their pupil, so we'll use those will also carry a couple of like flags that we can build the super lightweight flags, so maybe build one of those out, just a show who's, the fabric, just really simple flags, but it's, when you're trying to keep you know, son or flare coming into the camera but they all fit in one case that's the goal so we have an entire lighting kid in one pelican case and then this is this is a just a little flag that nasty client makes you can clip it right on your tripod and you know if there's just one shaft of light coming into your lines you could kind of clip it wherever you want it pretty lightweight easy to use flag you know the poor man's version of this as you hold your camera and then you hold your hand like this and then you get tendinitis and your camera shaking that doesn't work for video so you've got to start using flags and you know you're going to be using mohr continuous light so that's that's just a portable flag um does the job okay? Anything else in here then that's worth these are actually kind of cool these little stands these man photo stands you know, when they collapse they're tiny they fit inside a sixteen fifty pelican case and you know they can hold any of our light panels here or at least the small light panels gear so it's you know you're getting a lot of bang for the buck and they go up to about I don't know six feet would be my guess a pretty lightweight, easy to use stand and they fit inside the case um we just picked up a set of these helios which is like a five hundred watt equivalent light and which is really incredible for led and you guys understand the value of led is they don't get hot, so they're really they're they're cool lights, continuous cool lighting and so it's great if we're on we're trying to run and gun we're shooting as fast as we can we can flip on the lights, we have a bunch of power and then as soon as we're done shooting we can pack them in the case and move on to the next location so we're really the helios are right now I think they're the brightest life that that light panels has produced but they're about to roll out some even brighter solo lights which will be kind of thousand watt style equivalent lights and their battery and a c powered which is pretty key yeah so we can put anton bauer batteries on the back and run I think for almost two hours we can run these helios which is pretty impressive yes question about batteries this is from the rookie who is cory from vancouver bc how do you maintain and deal with camera batteries on remote location shoot right that's a good question you know more and more with the camera battery technology is just getting so good these days that it used to be you'd have to figure out how to charge the batteries on location now I think the better solution is you just bring more batteries like that you can work even shooting video and stills on a d a hundred you khun sometimes shoot all day on two, two and a half batteries so the idea of bringing solar panels or generators I'm in all oftentimes take twenty batteries on location versus trying to charge dane and I did a trip to the arctic circle to the arctic a couple years ago and the eye we knew that we weren't gonna have much sun, so I bet we brought forty batteries it was really cold, you know, minus twenty degrees at times and we're out there for ten days ish and I think we only burned through half the batteries despite the cold temperatures. All right? What else? Um okay, we move over here too tio r water housing so this is the awkward tech housing for the d for and so with the port on it. This is really designed for surf like being in really rough water and floating in the waves and kind of getting banged around really rugged, but you don't have a lot of control on the back we're gonna find out tonight if we can actually talk going to video mode um we shot why on aqua tech housing, but it was designed for the d three s and we just jammed before into it and I think we had, like, zero control of that press record and just let it go, right? This one might be a little better I think this is actually set up for the d for so I'm revealing that we haven't tested it will probably flooded tomorrow on camera, and then we also have we're talking about a water houses that we can use for the nikon one system, so this is the w p n too you can see it's a lot smaller a lot lighter than the awkward tech housing and we're putting a very lightweight camera, so this is a lot easier to mount on the front of the kayak, but we still have all of the control of a nikon one camera so that's, another great option really easy to use and this thing I think it goes to two hundred feet like you can go two hundred feet underwater, so this is a legitimate heavy duty scuba housing and you can attach strobes to it still really cool piece of equipment, let's see storage this is a big question, what do we do in the field? So we are actually using this g tech device, which allows us to swap drives and license you are our technical guru why don't you explain why this is valuable to us? So this is new from detect this is what they call their g doc and this is big for us because we're able to have this in our studio so this stays in the studio which actually has thunderbolt ports on the back, which is our fastest transfer speed onto the computer for downloading stuff on offer these drives and if we want say they're in our studio these air to one terabyte drives inside that weaken just press the button and pop him out and slide and it becomes a portable drive so we can hand this off to dane or he can you know bring it to us and all we have to do is plug it in it's got a sat a port in the back or if you need on the fly it's got usb three which is huge for us the port ability to be able to pop them out, bring them with us, bring him back and have a fast transfer rate back onto the computer and in the field if we're not sitting in a tent if it's not bus powered will bring this in the field for example here we can download to driving than they automatically raid so they'll duplicate so that's a that's a huge advantage in the software is part of the equation you're confident that you have redundancy in your back up and if we working on an edit, for example, and danes office and we have another editor working in maine, we can ship drives around the country that fit into the same docks station that's a that's a big time save around location as well. When you're able to duplicate while you're doing your original download, the guy who has to do the overnight backups he's the most unhappy person on the crew because he's sitting there watching files transfer so this this is a good time saver to be ableto near your your data on the fly woman we have a variety of other single drives this's I'll just like you described, and these are also our portable drives that we're able to take with us were all of our drives or at least a terabyte in size just because of the cameras that were working with these days, their file sizes plus video just sucks everything up. So, you know, this is a terrified drive, and you can see how small they're getting, which is key for us is faras lightweight portability on dh, you know, being able to pass it off from whoever, too, to do transfers s o that's pretty key for us these days.