Hi folks, I'm new here although I've lurked here in the past. Google relentlessly has pointed me here on a number of occasions, this must be the right place to be. I'm fairly quiet and have spent the last +month reading up/down here @ DVinfo. I've learned quite a bit, as well I realized I know quite a bit.

A short on how I got here.

I was once a young and avid photo hobbyist, I've always loved shooting. As I hit my youthful stride I slowly faded away from photography and well....life happened. Once I got married and began a family I bought a cheapo-nasty film camera soon followed by a *new* 1.2mp digi-cam. After a few years of upgrading new cameras/camcorders and buying little extras here and there, I found myself doing projects for friends and family on occasions. Albeit I only had consumer equipment, I had a lot of it and I could use it. While I've never made a dime doing it, it certainly justified my buying more equipment.

Lacking any real justifications, I used my best begging skills and tried several times to convince my wife we needed to buy some *real* gear to play with. She was of course right, we had too much going on to afford such toys. So during this last 18 months we have been shooting a number of interviews and some other odd little projects that we took on and they came out extremely well. People really enjoyed our presentations and our style. Word made it back to the University Admin where my wife teaches. The short of it is that the University asked if she could create two of her classes in a format that could be done online. And thats it! --My wife came home and said "you need a new camera".

Yesterday my spanking new Z5 arrived and so it begins. I've only shot ~20 minutes of tape and ~5min of PC capture. We've been getting acquainted, I'm quite happy with my camera, I think we will get along just fine. We plan on going to our cabin this week-end and I'll get a chance actually play with it.

For us this is big jump and we believe we can make it work even in this economy. Worst case, we get mom home with the family a little more often. So far we bought the basics and plan on a few more items to get us started. We are sticking with Sony for the most part just to stay with what we know. We expect that we can purchase a 2nd system within a year and then we can experiment a little more.

Z5
MRC1 + 2x 32GB CF
Sony wireless Lav and onboard LED light.
2x 970 batteries, LCD hood.
Sachtler DV6 and tripod.
Vegas 8 (ordered Veg9 today) and the School is giving us a copy of Adobe CS4 Master collection.
Hard cases, cinebag backpack, and a desert suit that best fits my occasional rough style.
A few tiffen filters and little doodads.
2nd and 3rd units we plan on using for now are the HDR-CX7 and HDR-CX12 consumer

The MRC1 and mics arrive today and we've been shopping for a new dedicated laptop for the system (ASUS/Vaio). We have an old mismatched lighting system but we are looking at buying a more modern one. I'm leaning towards 3x 600w Britek halogens with 8' stands.

Thats my story.

I'll try to stay out of the way and learn what I can. There are certainly some talented folks here, I hope some of their wisdom's rubs off on me.


Mark Wheelan

Thats a great story Mike, I hope it all goes well. I also own a Sony Z5 and it is a great camera.

Just wondering are you making this your full time job? Because you've got an impressive equipment list if not.

I hope all goes well and keep us up to date with how its going.

I'm currently a uni student camera op/editor who is trying to get into the industry. I've decided to do a video blog of my experiences including behind the scenes stuff etc. Follow me if you want vimeo.com/channels/blog

Good luck.

P.S. I am very jealous you have a MRC1, I want one of them very badly haha

Mark: you're "starting out" with better gear than a lot of us did who have the "honour and privilege" of earning a living doing video. Now you have no excuses: if you produce lousy material, it's ALL YOU, BABY! <laughs>

Now get out there and makes some mistakes, learn from them and have fun (and a healthy sense of humour) and report back.

Welcome to the forums!

Just wondering are you making this your full time job? Because you've got an impressive equipment list if not.

Full time? No! I don't do anything full time anymore. Thats half the point of going into video for me. I can dive into something and work it 16 hours/day for 2 weeks, but then I like to relax extensively. Week-ends, I find, are just too short to enjoy.

I will explore your vimeo channel.

Mark: you're "starting out" with better gear than a lot of us did who have the "honour and privilege" of earning a living doing video. Now you have no excuses: if you produce lousy material, it's ALL YOU, BABY! <laughs>

Now get out there and makes some mistakes, learn from them and have fun (and a healthy sense of humour) and report back.

Welcome to the forums!

You had to go there, straight to the bottom line of the matter. :p

We are fortunate that we can't really fail on this, its gov't work. We are planing on making tons of mistakes and have the time to make up for them. For us this is an experiment we have talked about in the past, for the Uni its a chance to offer her class state-wide and make a little money for them. The classes are not required, they are to prepare people for the written and oral state licensing exams

If we can achieve our goal of making these videos anything but dry and boring we believe we can go further with it in several ways. When she started the class the exam pass rate was 52% and for the last 5 years her students have carried a 100% pass rate, highest in the state.

If it works we will be buying more gear and moving up, if not .............I got a z5 ;)

(The mics and MCR1 didn't get delivered as scheduled. Tonight its the kids and the green-screen for some fun)

Boy, you just jumped right into the deep end to get started. Great gear for a newbie. Go for it.