Tag Archives: DSLR

POV’s 2013 Documentary Filmmaking Equipment Survey

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Whilst the number of respondents is a bit too low to be a true picture, POV’s survey does paint an interesting picture of the Documentarist’s world. It’s still a ‘buy’ rather than ‘rent’ market, for the best part in love with Canon’s DSLRs and lenses.

However, there’s a couple of splits  I wanted to see, but isn’t here. Firstly the split by sensor size: what has happened to 2/3″, and what proportion are now S35? Secondly, and somewhat related, body design. There still seems to be plenty of room for ‘the little black sausage of joy’ – the fixed lens, all-in-one camera with a wide-ranging parfocal zoom.

Yes, the Mac dominates in Docco editing. I boggle slight at the FCP7 market – twice that of all the Premiere Pro flavours. FCP7 used to bog down with over 35-40 mins in a timeline, and for larger projects I’d have expected a larger takeup of Premiere Pro.

Still, at least Gaffer Tape makes it into the top 5 ‘things we love’ list.

POV’s 2013 Documentary Filmmaking Equipment Survey

Canon 7D vs EX1 – lens comparison

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With only days to go before I get my Canon 550D (I’m choosing that over the 7D so I can use my SDHC cards), I’m filling in the waiting time with final little checks and shopping lists of things I really shouldn’t buy yet, things I do need to buy, things to go and shoot for testing purposes. This, at the expense of proper work at times.

As I packed up after a shoot yesterday, I got thinking… If I shoot voxpops at around 30% of the zoom range, talking heads up to around 50%, presentations at 80-90%, and I have a 0.6x wide angle converter, what does this all mean in the language of a Video DSLR like the Canon 7D and 550D? What lens(es) do I need to cover myself if that were the sole camera?

So I got to work with a Spreadsheet. It’s not a comparison I’ve seen whilst doing my research, so I thought I’d share. It’s quite illuminating for someone such as I. If it’s popular, I’ll keep it updated with any corrections and maybe add 1/3″ and 2/3″ cameras in there.

But for now, I have some lenses to buy.

Here’s a PDF version

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