SHOP SECOND-HAND MOVIE MATTERS
WHAT TO
You don’t need to have the latest brand-new kit to be able tomake professional-quality films WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH
M ost filmmakers would love to own the very latest and greatest kit, with all the cutting-edge tech that the camera manufacturers can come up with. That’s fine if you have the budget, but it’s not the only way to shoot great films. Cameras that were the latest technology not very long ago don’t suddenly lose the ability to create great footage. And if you buy used, then the original purchaser will have funded the depreciation that can be pretty scary, especially on high-end kit. However, some equipment has stood the test of time far better than others which often makes it a better buy, if you know what you’re looking for. And when we
By comparison, back in 2010 the best buying advice was to avoid SD cameras in favour of Full HD ones, many creative users were using lens adapters to get a shallow depth-of-field and the interchangeable lens Panasonic AF-101 had only been revealed in prototype form. New it cost around £5880/$6500 but today you can get a used one for around £500/$700 used. That’s a huge depreciation, and we wouldn’t recommend one anyway for its small Micro Four Thirds sensor. So what would be a great used camera buy today and why? We name our picks and explain why these cameras still make sense for a budget-conscious filmmaker.
say equipment, it boils down to cameras, more often than not. Lenses tend to hold their value for longer, and aren’t replaced with a new version particularly regularly. For example, if you’d bought a Zeiss CP.2 compact prime when they were launched in 2010, you’d still own a magical bit of kit today. OK, it might not have the smaller size of the redesigned new CP.3s, but it will still be worth a large percentage of the original purchase price, and still work flawlessly on the very latest cameras. Despite selling in huge numbers, there are only a few around on the used market and most go for around two thirds their original price.
ABOVE Browse the used shelves and websites – it could
save you a pretty penny and you’ll still capture worthwhile footage.
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PRO MOVIEMAKER SUMMER 2018
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