Filming Prep - Equipment

When I my initial filming in June 2007, I had brought the following camera equipment with me:

.5x Wide Angle Lens – Recommended for any type of shooting…except closeups.

Two D8 (Digital8/Hi8) Camcorders – One that belonged to me, and the other being my friend’s.

Generic RadioShack Microphone – After two years of much use and abuse, the mic was beginning to not work on me. I figured, this is its last trip.

Borrowed a Panasonic GS80 – Good camera for sub $300 range.

Since filming last time was mostly interviews and people, this setup wasn’t so bad. I did realize that when I shot the outdoor sequences I would need more appropriate equipment. This time around since most of my shooting will be outdoors I decided to purchase some new equipment.

I bought the following:

Zoom H4 Handy – Wav audio recording at 96Khz

Sennheiser MKE300 — I needed a shotgun mic, and according to people’s recommendations, this was the best one to get under $300.

Sony MDR-M150 Headphones – I had these last time I went, but my little sisters broke them. Bought the same exact pair. Excellent set of headphones. Don’t let your little siblings play with your equipment with out supervision.

Hoya Polarizing Filter — Without this, outdoor shots will appear washed out or extremely bright.

Panasonic GS80 – Its a good camera if you don’t want to spend more than $300. I bought this out of necessity. Some of the down sides to this camera is that there isn’t much manual control. One can adjust the iris, shutter, and focus, but only through the ‘joystick’ which isn’t very convenient. There is not mic jack or even a headphone jack. It’s one of the reasons why I bought the Zoom H4 Handy.

.38x Super Wide Angle Lens – Since I want to grab the imagery of the outdoors, I figured this would be appropriate.

Just to show you the difference with and w/o a wide angle lens:

Without the .38x Super Wide Angle Lens

With the .38x Super Wide Angle Lens

One of the challenges I found was mounting the z4 Handy with the camera and mic. I decided to detach the slate from my tripod and “MacGuyver” it the camera and H4 Handy. This is what I resulted with: