Looking back at new gear during 2018

I'm the first to admit I usually buy to much. But I'm really trying to keep it as low as possible.

I was so close buying a FS7mk2 a few weeks ago, just to get the few improved things compared to my FS7mk1. Did I need that new camera? No way, but that's how strong the urge to keep buying better and better things is.
 
J.Brown said:
I'm the first to admit I usually buy to much. But I'm really trying to keep it as low as possible.

I was so close buying a FS7mk2 a few weeks ago, just to get the few improved things compared to my FS7mk1. Did I need that new camera? No way, but that's how strong the urge to keep buying better and better things is.
Click to expand...

But will it make you any more money? Probably not, you chose wisely.
 
Best purchase of the year for me was easyrig. It is so much easier now. My back will thank me one day. I am already ok with my “easyrig look” on public nowadays:).
 
KrocanX said:
Best purchase of the year for me was easyrig. It is so much easier now. My back will thank me one day. I am already ok with my “easyrig look” on public nowadays:).
Click to expand...

EZ rig on film set/commercial production = cool
EZ rig around non-production people = strange and only sometimes cool
 
puredrifting said:
But will it make you any more money? Probably not, you chose wisely.
Click to expand...

Not a penny more. That's true for most things that can be added to my equipment these days. To be fair some things might get me a few extra jobs each year but it's marginally.
 
puredrifting said:
But will it make you any more money? Probably not, you chose wisely.
Click to expand...

It's not always about an item generating income on it's on. I have $1,000's(probably $10k's) worth of gear that's just for me, meaning to make my job easier or the experience better in some way that a client isn't (necessarily)going to pay one red cent extra for. Take my wireless camera hops for example. I've probably made extra money on them a handful of times in the last 10 years. Maybe. But I didn't buy them because producers were asking for them, I bought them because I didn't want to be cabled to my audio guy. And my shooting life immediately improved, both in my enjoyment/convenience and what I could do.

Don't get me wrong, I understand what you're saying, but it's not always that simple.
 
The thing with 'the little bits' is they make your 'service'

I feel my wireless monitor and atomos have given a real boost to my director experience.

Now I may not charge for that, but maybe the directors get that they get good vision from me and less cable bashing.. so I might be worth x$100 per day more than DOP Joe.

S
 
Little bits are okay to make life easier even if they don't make me more cash. It's usually a trial and error process to find the right little bits. Often I have bought things that might appear to be just the thing and when I start to use them they don't work as good as they should.

I bought this monitor mount from Shape which in theory looks great but it turned out to be next to impossible to mount on my camera. I run into this more often than I'd like. That's just junk piled in a box somewhere.
 
J.Brown said:
Little bits are okay to make life easier even if they don't make me more cash. It's usually a trial and error process to find the right little bits. Often I have bought things that might appear to be just the thing and when I start to use them they don't work as good as they should.

I bought this monitor mount from Shape which in theory looks great but it turned out to be next to impossible to mount on my camera. I run into this more often than I'd like. That's just junk piled in a box somewhere.
Click to expand...

That's what drove me to write that, I have so many boxes of fairly expensive "stuff" that just sits there from over the years. 15mm rods aren't that cheap and I have tons of them in different lengths that I never use.
They are too cheap and too much of a PITA to sell on-line, so they sit there. Brackets, adapters, old matte boxes and follow focuses, shoulder mounts before I arrived at the Zacuto VCT Pro. Old, cheap monitors, etc.
I guess the not buying gear that isn't a billable item is more for me, with probably less than ten years left as a shooter, I'm not buying anything that isn't billable unless it's something I MUST have to function. Wireless
video monitoring is cool but unless I can bill it, I can live without it and I should just rent the best when and if needed rather than owning a few steps down models.

I'm going through that with a long lens, I need something to shoot some wildlife for stock footage. I'd like to buy the long lens but realistically, I am only going to use it once in a while, it would be much smarter to just
rent it as the nice ones cost lots of money and most of the time it will just be sitting, collecting dust. And S35 lenses are worthless now that all of the cool kids only shoot full frame ;-)
 
Another thing is when I stumble onto something with a low price I know I can sell in the future without loosing anything. I still don't like these collecting dust but I might keep them for a few years and use them a couple of times and then sell with no loss.
 
puredrifting said:
That's what drove me to write that, I have so many boxes of fairly expensive "stuff" that just sits there from over the years. 15mm rods aren't that cheap and I have tons of them in different lengths that I never use.
They are too cheap and too much of a PITA to sell on-line, so they sit there. Brackets, adapters, old matte boxes and follow focuses, shoulder mounts before I arrived at the Zacuto VCT Pro. Old, cheap monitors, etc.
I guess the not buying gear that isn't a billable item is more for me, with probably less than ten years left as a shooter, I'm not buying anything that isn't billable unless it's something I MUST have to function. Wireless
video monitoring is cool but unless I can bill it, I can live without it and I should just rent the best when and if needed rather than owning a few steps down models.

I'm going through that with a long lens, I need something to shoot some wildlife for stock footage. I'd like to buy the long lens but realistically, I am only going to use it once in a while, it would be much smarter to just
rent it as the nice ones cost lots of money and most of the time it will just be sitting, collecting dust. And S35 lenses are worthless now that all of the cool kids only shoot full frame ;-)
Click to expand...

I sold of much of the bits filling my cabinets in lots on eBay. You want that 4x4 mattebox? It comes with all this other stuff, starting bid $500. I tried to group the stuff together and took photos so people could see what it was, sold in working condition as-is. Worked great and cleared out quickly.

I hear you on the telephotos. For years, every time I rented a 300mm T2 Optex conversion I would wonder if I should just buy one. But there was never enough business to justify the expense. Can't own everything.
 
Back in the day when I first built my Aaton S-16 package, my rule of thumb on every job was 50% for me, 50% for the kit. Meaning that for the first year or two I plowed half my income back into expanding the kit as long as I was making money based on using that gear. I was working in the indie-cine world of NYC in the early 90s, which was a pretty competitive market. I had a salesmanship strategy when I met with a director or producer that basically went, "I think your vision for the film would really benefit from us having a Canon 8-64 zoom. I will commit to buying one for your movie." That worked like a charm and I built out the package very quickly.

I always rented out my gear as a complete package. "It's not like it's going to do me any good having that zoom lens sitting on a shelf at home, and I don't want to be nit-picking with you or denying you access to anything. Let's work out a deal for everything." After a few years I hit a wall where I knew that I couldn't charge more for anything additional I would buy. My wife was quite happy that the gear purchases slowed down a bunch at that point. It was mostly maintenance and convenience purchases after that, at least until I had to start buying video gear again.
 
My clients, and even newer ones, tend do ask for more or less the same thing. Thus it's becoming more difficult to justify adding functions to what I'm offering by buying more stuff. I guess we all get to that level eventually.

I'm also offering all of my gear included in my day rate unless they want a second camera to do a two camera shoot. I tried years ago to scale up or down my rate depending on the clients budget but that only made my life more difficult.

My FS7 has so far given me many years of great service and ease of mind not needing to chase after a new camera. And so goes for more and more of the things I buy so I'm heading in the right direction.
 
I've more or less always hated the Nickle & Diming/a la carting that sometimes happens. For years, most of my clients always paid my/the "going rate" and my philosophy was "If it's in the truck, it's yours", meaning unless I had to rent a "non-standard" or oddball item, it was part of the package if we needed it. The big exception was playback decks. Now there are times where you have to craft a package to work within certain budgets. You always hate to limit the tool set available to you, especially when you already own it, but you also hate to give the bargain basement guy all of the same things the guys that are paying full price get. That's why I try to keep my rates up within a certain (small) window.
 
One thing that most people do not realize is the enormous amount of odds and ends that are needed. People think we need cameras, lights, computers, microphones okay. Then there are C-stands, sliders, jibs, dollies, gimbals, steadicams, audio recorders, monitors, tripods, monopods, booms, lenses, drones, teleprompters etc....But I have bought so much other stuff from misc adapters, clips, stands, arms, clamps, chairs, bags, cases, cables, plugs, diffusion, radios, and on and on and on. Just the number of audio cable adapters takes up a small case. Then there is another case of various video adapters and another couple cases for cables. There are so many situations where you need to figure out how to connect, hang or mount something to something.
Then there are batteries. I probably have nearly 30 Sony NPF style batteries alone, not counting about 30 more of other various types. And chargers.
I probably have several thousand $ in little things, just like many of you. It's remarkable how much gear it takes to do corporate, events, commercials, weddings and documentary work. And then there are the big things...
 
Last edited:
firehawk said:
One thing that most people do not realize is the enormous amount of odds and ends that are needed. People think we need cameras, lights, computers, microphones okay. Then there are C-stands, sliders, jibs, dollies, gimbals, steadicams, audio recorders, monitors, tripods, monopods, booms, lenses, drones, teleprompters etc....But I have bought so much other stuff from misc adapters, clips, stands, arms, clamps, chairs, bags, cases, cables, plugs, diffusion, radios, and on and on and on. Just the number of audio cable adapters takes up a small case. Then there is another case of various video adapters and another couple cases for cables. There are so many situations where you need to figure out how to connect, hang or mount something to something.
Then there are batteries. I probably have nearly 30 Sony NPF style batteries alone, not counting about 30 more of other various types. And chargers.
I probably have several thousand $ in little things, just like many of you. It's remarkable how much gear it takes to do corporate, events, commercials, weddings and documentary work. And then there are the big things...
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right. A lot of non-technical people don't realize what all it takes, but I think there are a lot of people new to the business that don't know it or realize it, either and think that it is "just buying a camera". Several years ago, me and a few other guys noticed that we were all starting to get calls and some of the producers or bookers were asking some really (at this level) stupid questions: Do you have a tripod? Do you have lights to do a sit-down interview? Do you have a mixer? Make sure you bring a toplight and microphone, too. I wanted to say, "You realize you're talking to a professional that's been doing this for their entire adult life, right? But then we thought about it and realized that there had to be a reason that they were all of a sudden saying this. Because there were idiots showing up on shoots with not much more than JUST a camera. Which led to me the next question that I wish I had asked, "What kind of idiots are y'all calling and booking, now?".

Sorry for the rant...
 
Run&Gun said:
You're absolutely right. A lot of non-technical people don't realize what all it takes, but I think there are a lot of people new to the business that don't know it or realize it, either and think that it is "just buying a camera". Several years ago, me and a few other guys noticed that we were all starting to get calls and some of the producers or bookers were asking some really (at this level) stupid questions: Do you have a tripod? Do you have lights to do a sit-down interview? Do you have a mixer? Make sure you bring a toplight and microphone, too. I wanted to say, "You realize you're talking to a professional that's been doing this for their entire adult life, right? But then we thought about it and realized that there had to be a reason that they were all of a sudden saying this. Because there were idiots showing up on shoots with not much more than JUST a camera. Which led to me the next question that I wish I had asked, "What kind of idiots are y'all calling and booking, now?".

Sorry for the rant...
Click to expand...

:))) I am not in the game for long time as you guys (less than 10 years) and I am usually happy when someone ask me questions like do you have a tripod etc. At leasr I know what to bring. For me it is usually less info than I would like to know before shoot. I have slomo camera not because of I like slomo but I was told many times during shoot that this shot must be in slomo.. Clients nowadays simply assume that you have all the stuff! Their phone can do 4k60 and 2k240 why your camera couldn't do that?
 
I think we are seeing a lot of issues here.

Often the gap between kit and its reality. Much falls at the feet of manufacturers who deliver stuff that is not professional shoot ready until added a bunch of ding dongs.. often so bulky the thing does not do what we wanted in the first place.. feeding a desire to replace the original item.. which actually we should have just passed on.

Take the EVA for instance.. the slo-mo is the same or less than the directors phone, the zoom range less than an EX1 from 2005, a monitor that is useless and codecs only unlocked when you chuck a small PC on the back attached by a poor consumer connection and a set of Meccano. I could say basically the same of the FS7.

Progress indeed!
 
Last edited:
That's the thing. There are, or should I say all, cameras suffer from not being ready as is. All of them, or at least most, do need junk attached to make them workable. Or maybe we are asking to much? I haven't seen any camera rigged for feature filming that didn't look like a pile of junk when ready to shoot.
 
KrocanX said:
:))) I am not in the game for long time as you guys (less than 10 years) and I am usually happy when someone ask me questions like do you have a tripod etc. At leasr I know what to bring. For me it is usually less info than I would like to know before shoot. I have slomo camera not because of I like slomo but I was told many times during shoot that this shot must be in slomo.. Clients nowadays simply assume that you have all the stuff! Their phone can do 4k60 and 2k240 why your camera couldn't do that?
Click to expand...

Maybe there's a disconnect between people that have "TV" backgrounds and started in the business a long time ago vs. those that have come up through the DSLR ranks, and the producer and bookers caught in the middle of these different generations. There were just certain things you were expected to own and have at all times, like a tripod and a basic lighting kit(basic meaning at least able to accomplish a network quality sit-down interview)(even a camera top-light) and audio, and situations to be prepared for and able to handle. These things never had to be mentioned. I'm not talking about briefing the crew on what they were going to be doing, but they never had to ask and check if the crew had the basic equipment to do what is considered basic production.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top