Tuesday, November 29, 2016

I Got My P&C Camera Rig Today

I got my P&C video camera rig today. It seems solidly built and is very fast and east to set up. I was able to get it read to use the first out time in 3 or 4 minutes.  I believe this was a good buy. It is cheap, well made and will hopefully not scare my subjects off as some more high end larger more intimidating looking pro rigs might. Sometimes using to high end equipment can be off putting for the local folks your filming, causing fear and unnecessary worries. These are peoople who often struggle to buy rice and pay for medicine, coming into their lives with hundreds of thousands of expensive video/photo gear can be a bit scary for them!

My P&C rig without gear mounted
I have no camera/sound gear, no follow focus on the rig yet but so far so good. Will continue to load it up over the coming days. I will probably be adding all the items listed below.

- Canon 5d Mark 3
- Zacuto viewfinder
- Kamera follow focus
- Rode stereo mic
- Rode shotgun NTG-2 mic
- Receiver for the wireless Lavalier mic
- Zoom F4 field recorder
- Possibly a light source of some kind if I spend all night or part of the night filming in the dump.

I hope all that stuff together plus the rig is not TOO TOO heavy. Walking in garbage all day in 33c heat and humidity tends to wear you down. The less weight the better in those situations. Plus I will also be caring some film cameras (at least one a day) with me.

Note* Another bonus to this P&C rig is that you can build and add to it in multiple ways. Not sure I will do much of that might eventually go to something higher end. Will see how good of a film maker I am, how this all works out and move on from there.
Where I Bought The P&C Rig

Update* Am having some problems with the front handles moving and twisting free no matter how much I tighen them with the red knobs or allen wrench. I might have to add some sticky sand paper or a cork surface of some kind to metal tubing in that area to make the grip better. I have some sticky-cork in my darkroom that I use for my photo paper easel bottoms that might just serve the purpose.