The Video Animal’s Cave

This week I would like to talk about accessories. There are a ton of gadgets and gizmos out there. They are shiny and cool looking and you will want to get them for christmas.

What else do I need to get started?

Lets start with the one thing we all take for granted, and often forget to buy

Tripods

There is a big debate among photographers and video nuts like myself as to how much money you should spend on your tripod. The range is insane, from 20 bucks at your local wal-mart to multiple thousands of dollars at the specialty camera store.

I equate the difference between the low end and the high end tripod to wine. A 5 dollar box of wine will taste horrible, but you can drink it if there is nothing else around, a 20 dollar bottle of wine will taste one hundred times better than the 5 dollar bottle of wine and is totally worth the upgrade if you have the cash on you, and a thousand dollar bottle of wine is nice… but not 50 times nicer than the 20 dollar bottle of wine you just enjoyed. Not by a long shot.

Tripods are the same. a 20 dollar tripod is going to be a piece of junk, the panning and tilting will be sticky and show up in your shot and it will wobble with the slightest wind, worst of all it probably isn’t very balanced, so it might fall over at a moments notice. On the other hand, a 90 dollar tripod will be just fine, it will pan smooth, last you around a year of hard beating, be fairly balanced and is totally worth the higher price tag.

Like the $1000 bottle of wine, the $5000 tripod is for experts or aficionados with too much money on their hands. It will work perfectly, you will love it, but it isn’t worth spending 50 times as much. Particularly since we plan on taking it on canoe trips and tossing it down rapids. Imagine how much it would freak you out to get sand in the works of that tripod… or even a $500 one for that matter. The expensive tripods are great for studio work, as they will stay safe and get a lot of careful use, but for the outdoor guy, you need something that you can bash or lose and never look back at.

I like $90 tripods, every mom and pop camera store has them. Make sure before you buy that the head of the tripod has some sort of frictionless or liquid head so that you can pan and tilt smoothly. Test it to make sure it will support you camera, and blammo, you have a cheap ass tripod. Saving yourself about $500 off a standard video budget.

Lenses

Lenses are great. They can make a cool shot even cooler… and an outdoor shot spectacular. Lenses are one of the things that subtly seperates the amatuer from the professional.

Shooting water and sunny days there is a specific lens you cannot live without. It is called a polarizing filter. Unfortunately polarizers are not as cheap as other lens filters because they have moving parts. The other drawback is that they are not intuitive. You can’t just stick it on, point and shoot and expect it to do anything. You need to get a bit of practice.

A polarizing filter cuts out reflections. Technically, the concept is pretty simple. There are two lenses in a polarizer. Each lens has a series of light reflecting strands in them running across the lens. by spinning one of the lenses you change the direction the light is bouncing in to your camera. Doing so allows you to target light coming from a specific direction… such as the sun. This means that by simply spinning one of the two moving parts in the filter, you effectively can filter out the stuff that is causing the glare… such as the sun bouncing off the water.

This is hugely effective when you want to shoot the beautiful green waters of Killarny or have a great image of a car without being able to see yourself and the camera in it’s shiny paint.

The other major cool lens you can get, but CAN live without is a wide angle, or a fish eye lens. These lenses are usually pretty expensive, $100-$300, but are totally optional. The wide angle lens warps the image and is useful for shooting panoramic, because it allows your camera to see father to either side. The distortion is barely perceivable, but the camera can see more of the awesome mountain scape you are trying to capture. A fish eye lens on the other hand REALLY warps things, giving a cool artsy warp to your shot. This is an invaluable lens when you are shooting boats wizzing by your camera.

Extras

There are plenty of other cool tools out there, some useful, some are just something that looks cool to show off to other gear heads. My Girlfriend has a rule around our house; “If it doesn’t get used at least once a year it goes in the trash.”
Although often heartbreaking to throw away your coolest toy, it is a good way to keep the junk out of your camera bags, and keep you under budget.

No matter how cool a peice of gear seems, if you can’t think of more than one thing you will use it for, it just isn’t worth buying. In the case of teleprompters and steadycams, a little research can let you build your own for a fraction of the price. In the case of outdoor HD field monitors… you won’t ever really need it, so forgo the cost.

Remember that shooting outdoors also means you need to lug all your equipment with you, sometimes through swamps and snow. Keeping the weight down in your packs can really make a huge difference when you are hiking. The best way to keep the load down is to cut the extra gear.

That being said. Some gear you might want to get are things like:

* Waterproof Housing- Check out Ewa Marine. They have great underwater housing solutions for reasonable prices.
* P2 card reader- If you are using P2 cards in a Panasonc camera, you will NEED this
* Lens cleaner- make sure you buy a professional lens cleaning solution. Paper towels and cloths can scratch your lens and cost you big bucks to repair
* Waterproof camera bag- Check out Watershed bags for the best solutions. These are required for outdoor shooting
* Rain cover- although a plastic bag will do, sometimes a fitted cover works best

Thats a pretty basic list, but covers most of the gear we take with us on a regular shoot. I will add that a boom and steady cam are great assets if you have the space to take them with you, the money to buy them, or the time to build ‘em.

Any other suggestions you might have I would be happy to hear about.

Happy Shooting

The Animal