Buyers’ guide
Get a movie on
Get into filmmaking with this month’s buyers guide. Here you’ll find plenty of great suggestions for video-friendly kit, and it doesn’t need to break the bank either...
IF YOU WANT to get into filmmaking there may be lots of kit you already have that can be used. But in many areas video requires a whole different set of gear in your bag, too. Movie gear can look very different from equipment for stills, but there are lots of similarities, too. Just like shooting stills, you’ll need a tripod, lights, and
storage, but there are subtle differences. Probably the biggest departure is in audio, as you can’t rely on your camera to record decent sound on its own. Fortunately, the price of equipment capable of shooting high-quality films is dropping all the time. Here we outline some of the kit you’ll need to start making better movies.
LIGHT: NANGUANG LEDPADLIGHT LUXPAD23 £54
AUDIO: OLYMPUS LS-P4 £149 An external recorder lets you capture high-quality audio. Olympus’s LS-P4 recorder is well worth considering if you want to shoot light. At 75g, it’s scarcely noticeable when hotshoe mounted and size-wise it’s pocket friendly. Recording is capable in a variety of formats, the highest quality of which is Linear PCM 96kHZ at 24bit. It has three built- inmics, a mini-jack port to plug in an external mic and a headphone- out for monitoring. There’s 8GB internal memory, and you can also record to a micro SD card. olympus.com
A lightweight light panel that’s only 35mm thick and weighing only 236g, the Nanguang LED Pad Light Luxpad23 can be used on-camera for fill or even off-camera as a useful addition to any bag; and it’s a bargain at around £50. The pad uses 112 LEDs with a soft, 0-100% adjustable output of 969lm, and the colour of the light is adjustable from 3200K-5600K, letting you mix it with daylight or tungsten lighting. It can run off the mains, or Sony NP-FH, NP-FM, NP-F batteries, which you’ll need to buy separately. kenro.co.uk
SUPPORT: KENROTWIN TUBEVIDEOTRIPODKIT £145 This is one bit of kit that certainly doesn’t look like it’s a budget item, and is a proper twin-tube video tripod with a fluid head and ball & socket type levelling plate. A fluid head is really
LIGHTING: ROTOLIGHTNEO2 £199
important for video as it allows smooth panning that a regular tripod head can’t do. Kenro’s Twin Tube Video Tripod Kit comes with the company’s VH01B fluid drag action video head. With a maximumheight of 185cm/72.8in, it’s a great bit of kit for the money, supports loads of up to 6kg and weighs only 4.5kg. kenro.co.uk
Some decent light canmake a huge difference to your film and the Rotolight NEO 2 offers a lot of light output despite its small size and weight. With a diameter of only 14.5cm and weighing just 354g, it’s ideal to put in your bag and keep there at all times, and it can be run on or off the camera. Running of the mains, or six AAs, it has an output of 1032lm and as a bi-colour light, it can be dialled tomatch anything from tungsten to daylight conditions (3150-6300K). There’s also an updated suite of CineSFXpreset lighting effects, including fire, lightning, TV, gunshot, and paparazzi, and the NEO 2 comes with a range of filters to vary the look of the light. rotolight.com
40 Photography News | Issue 70
photographynews.co.uk
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