Cheap gear for 7D

[Adam Chapman]

If your looking for cheaper gear (shoulder mounts, matte box, etc) check out IndiSystem. Their indiRAILSpro DSLR sm model looks very similar to many of the upper priced models (redrock/zacuto).

Now with me saying this, I have never used any of their stuff. Just giving you some more direction. I have not heard much about indisystem on this forum, but give it a search and see what you can dig up.

[Bill Pryor]

Cavision makes some good quality stuff too that's cheaper. You can see it all on their site but buy from B&H since they're in Canada. Also, Redrockmicro has an optical loupe with bracket that turns the Hoodman 3.0 hood into something useable and doesn't require the rubber bands. Cavision has one too but it's 6x magnification ,while the Redrock is more in line with the Zacuto's eyepiece, I think. So far Zacuto and Redrock seems to have the most ideal shoulder mounts, etc., but Cavision looks good too.

[Kin Lau]

Originally Posted by Shawn Wright

Great help. I have several CF cards and have never seen a Class # only speed #.

The Class 6 (6MB/s sustained) stuff is only for SDHC cards, which the 7D does _not_ take, so you can ignore that.

Many CF cards are already considerably faster than the Class 6 cards. Anything with UDMA will be _much_ faster, ie 30MB/s Sandisk Extreme III's or faster will be plenty. The 8fps 17.9mp RAW files will be far more taxing on the memory than video.

If you already have 16gig CF cards, then you're likely okay. Otherwise, I'd start looking at UDMA 16gig or 32gig CF's.

[Shawn Wright]

Originally Posted by Matt Newcomb

So I was hoping this thread might have more links to stuff like shoulder mounts and such that are at least less than the cost of the camera itself.

Yeah, I am still looking for that. I notice that Adam has a post just a few before this one that list some ideas.

Great help.

[Shawn Wright]

Adam -

I found their site. This looks great! or the price is great at least.

IndiSYSTEM - Studio 4 Productions

[Matt Newcomb]

Yeah, that looks more like the range I was looking for. I'll have to check out some reviews.

[Bruce Foreman]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

Shawn, double system sound is shooting the sound on a separate system, as we used to do in film (and still do for those shooting film). For syncing it is good if you use a clapboard at the head and tail of each take. But if you're by yourself, that's difficult to do. What you can do is use the camera's mic to record reference audio. Then load that footage with its audio onto a video and audio channel, plus the audio from your recorder onto two additional audio tracks, then slide the recorder's tracks in your timeline back and forth until the echo goes away. A bit cumbersome and increases your editing time.

That Zoom H4N gets good reviews, and B&H has lowered the price of the new Tascam DR-100 which also gets good reviews

Shawn, I just finished editing a short project I used double system sound on. I have the ZoomH2 (cheaper bottom line product, I'd rather have the ZoomH4n ! ) and used it because I was using two cameras, a Canon HF100 (which I have some fair good mics for) and the Canon T1i which has mono only sound and NO MIC INPUT). I let both cams record audio for reference and set up the ZoomH2 on a stand (project done outdoors). I had a good windmuff or it to kill wind noise and just announced "Take one", "take 2", etc. after starting both the camera and H2.

The Zoom recorders record on SD cards and using a free program called Audacity, I "trimmed" each sound file from the "Take 1" (or "take 3", etc.) leaving that announcement there just for temporary ID. If your editor shows waveforms on both the audio part of the video track and on your auxiliary audio track (where you put the Zoom file), synching is a fairly simple process of matching waveform peaks by sliding the aux track file in place and then "fine tuning" position to get rid of any slight echo.

Then mute the audio part of the video track so all you have left is the audio from the ZoomH4n or H2 (or whatever recorder you use).

In my case the built in mics from the H2 covered with a good windmuff and placed in close enough gave me very clear voice audio.

[Shawn Wright]

Originally Posted by Bruce Foreman

Shawn, I just finished editing a short project I used double system sound on. I have the ZoomH2 (cheaper bottom line product, I'd rather have the ZoomH4n ! ) and used it because I was using two cameras, a Canon HF100 (which I have some fair good mics for) and the Canon T1i which has mono only sound and NO MIC INPUT). I let both cams record audio for reference and set up the ZoomH2 on a stand (project done outdoors). I had a good windmuff or it to kill wind noise and just announced "Take one", "take 2", etc. after starting both the camera and H2.

The Zoom recorders record on SD cards and using a free program called Audacity, I "trimmed" each sound file from the "Take 1" (or "take 3", etc.) leaving that announcement there just for temporary ID. If your editor shows waveforms on both the audio part of the video track and on your auxiliary audio track (where you put the Zoom file), synching is a fairly simple process of matching waveform peaks by sliding the aux track file in place and then "fine tuning" position to get rid of any slight echo.

Then mute the audio part of the video track so all you have left is the audio from the ZoomH4n or H2 (or whatever recorder you use).

In my case the built in mics from the H2 covered with a good windmuff and placed in close enough gave me very clear voice audio.

Sounds great, but maybe over my head with only iMovie. Thanks for the help. When I get more set up I will refer back to this.

Thanks.