Wedding Equipment

[Geoffrey Chandler]

Originally Posted by Joel Peregrine

Great excuse to continue my lens buying addiction.

Joel,

The first step is recognizing one's addiction : )

Geoffrey

[Greg Fiske]

Wow, good to know about the MemoryKick. For focus I use a mix. When on the tripod I use the loupe, when handheld the lcd. The more you use it, the more you get a feel for it.

One thing, as I was going through footage last night and working. These cameras basically resolve at 720. So there is no real quality hit when dropping from 1080 to 720. By delivering at 720 you get to crop your video and take advantage of rules of third, etc if you want. The gig I'm going through was my first one with the cameras, and I made the mistake of handholding the camera and the footage is jittery. The problem with fixing the stabilization is that you need a software that deals with the jello effect like mercalli. Mercalli can clip and create a border in your footage. Looking back I wish I had not filmed so close, and might experiment with shooting more loose in the future. Also, highly recommend newblues flash plugin. Gets rid of about 2 of the 3 flashes you get in footage. More:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...s-premier.html

[George Bean]

Joel,

I am a few hundred miles south of Chicago. which is probably a good thing or else i would spend all of my money at frys :)

borrowed mine from lensrentals.com

[Geoffrey Chandler]

Originally Posted by George Bean

Geoffrey, I am also attending the Chicago workshop and will have the Tokina 11-16, you are welcome to take the lens for a test drive. It looks like you may have a wedding before the chicago workshop, is that correct?

before i bought some of the lenses i rented them, you could rent some for your upcoming wedding and then compare to the info presented at the workshop.

Thank you for the offer. I look forward to meeting you.

I think I better pick one up today so I can start practicing to see what kind of moves I can do with it. I was thinking the Canon 16-55 IS lens might be more useful because of the stabilizing feature, but the forum seems to be unanimously in favor of the Takina 11-16. And it's cheaper!

[Geoffrey Chandler]

Originally Posted by John Wiley

Here's a list of things you should have if you want to seriourly have a stab at doing weddings with a DSLR:

1. A camcorder.
2. A spare DSLR body.
3. An assistant/second camera operator.

With these three things you'll have a bit of a safety net if you need to quickly change lenses, or if a body overheats. You'll also need:

4. An audio recorder such as the Zoom H4n.
5. A loupe such as the Hoodloope or Z-finder.
6. Some kind of shouldermount/stabiliser for handheld shooting.

Thanks John. I think I have everything you mentioned already or they're on my shopping list.
-I'm going to get a T2i body tonight for a 2nd DSLR. I might get a third body.
-I'm looking at a Canon Vixia HF S200 camcorder for around $800
-My college aged son is my 2nd camera and my wife will be the PR person
-I have a Z-finder and I guess I'll need another
-I'm going to go without a shoulder mount device for wedding #1 and just use monopods as both a tripod and as a glidecam. I'll re-evaluate after the first wedding and after I attend the seminar.
-I've ordered a .75 Meter long HD Glidetrack

[Keith Forman]

I use my DSLR for B-roll for a montage and multiple video cameras for the important elements of the day.

[Spiros Zaharakis]

Originally Posted by Geoffrey Chandler

Thanks John. I think I have everything you mentioned already or they're on my shopping list.
-I'm going to get a T2i body tonight for a 2nd DSLR. I might get a third body.
-I'm looking at a Canon Vixia HF S200 camcorder for around $800
-My college aged son is my 2nd camera and my wife will be the PR person
-I have a Z-finder and I guess I'll need another
-I'm going to go without a shoulder mount device for wedding #1 and just use monopods as both a tripod and as a glidecam. I'll re-evaluate after the first wedding and after I attend the seminar.
-I've ordered a .75 Meter long HD Glidetrack

If you wait a litle bit you can get one of the new Canon camcorders with the new and very much improved sensor. Going from the cheaper upwards, model numbers in the US are: HF M400 $650, HF M40 $700, HF M41 $800, HF G10 $1500, XA10 $2000.

Expect them to be much better in low light as they share the same sensor that goes in the XF100

A bit too late with this but this slider 50KG Tele lens Camera Camcord slider dolly track 5d2 7d - eBay (item 120672581291 end time Jan-26-11 08:39:52 PST) looks like it is going to be much smoother than the glidetrack thanks to the roller bearings (found thanks to cheesycam.com).

[Keith Forman]

Originally Posted by John Wiley

Here's a list of things you should have if you want to seriourly have a stab at doing weddings with a DSLR:

1. A camcorder.
2. A spare DSLR body.
3. An assistant/second camera operator.

With these three things you'll have a bit of a safety net if you need to quickly change lenses, or if a body overheats. You'll also need:

4. An audio recorder such as the Zoom H4n.
5. A loupe such as the Hoodloope or Z-finder.
6. Some kind of shouldermount/stabiliser for handheld shooting.

John's suggestions are good. I would ad a second camcorder (pro-level); two decent tripods-handheld video looks amateurish. Two wireless lav mics. Use the DSLR for montage video but not the ceremony or reception. The montage will look great.

[Lance Watts]

If you are considerng a third camera, I think you should stick with a dslr. I slowly transitioned from video cameras to total dslr's last year. The last holdout was an HV30 that I used to stick up high and in back and just let it run, just in case.

Now I run 3 7d's and 1 60d and I don't have to worry about matching footage in post.

[Kin Lau]

Originally Posted by Greg Fiske

Whats everyone's experience with those memory card backup drives? When I looked it seemed to take an hour to backup a card with video from the specs, but I've never actually used one.

I've used a Hyperspace HD80 for 5 years, and now have a Hyperspace UDMA. Both are capable of copying a 32gig CF card in 15min's - and I've done so _many_ times.

The last wedding I did as a photographer w/ some video, I was able to backup the cards from all cameras quickly btwn sessions, pretty good since btwn my wife and myself, I had 6 different cameras going for stills and video.

So it would seem that the Hyperspace, Nexto and MemoryKick are all about the same speed, but each with a set of features that set them apart.

Hyperspace - cheapest, only one with user replaceable HD's and batteries but least number of features
Nexto - most expensive but there's quite a few different modes, some video capable and can handle some of the specialty memory formats like SxS, P2
MemoryKick - good USB support, able to copy to/from/btwn USB devices, possible future video updates, but B&H lists their models as discontinued.

[Jim Greene]

Consider the $650 Canon T2i with the Magic Lantern firmware to let the camera run for over 80 minutes with a 32GB card and just one battery. This has replaced my $3000 "real" video cam for the unmanned-back-of-church shot.

[Lisa Maxwell]

Originally Posted by Lance Watts

If you are considerng a third camera, I think you should stick with a dslr. I slowly transitioned from video cameras to total dslr's last year. The last holdout was an HV30 that I used to stick up high and in back and just let it run, just in case.

Now I run 3 7d's and 1 60d and I don't have to worry about matching footage in post.

Did you ever match the 60D with the HV30? Can you share any secrets? This is my current setup: 60D, HV40, HV20
FCP7

[James Donnelly]

Originally Posted by Geoffrey Chandler

I'm making a big jump from SD shoulder cameras to DSLR. I have two very, very nice weddings coming up.

I'm sorry to lower the tone, but where I come from, 'wedding equipment' has very different connotations.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[James Strange]

Originally Posted by Jim Greene

Consider the $650 Canon T2i with the Magic Lantern firmware to let the camera run for over 80 minutes with a 32GB card and just one battery. This has replaced my $3000 "real" video cam for the unmanned-back-of-church shot.

This is what im about to try, how has this been going for you?

Do you lower the bit rate or turn of lcd to save space and or battery.

Cheers

James

[Luke Gates]

No, one of the features of magic lantern is continuous shooting. It shoots the normal 4 gig/12 minute video clip then cuts filming for 1 second and starts a new 4 gig/12 minute run. So its not technically 100 percent seamless but lets be real, you're going to cut every few seconds in post.