Since my last post in May a lot has gone down. I’ve really ramped up my efforts to get more interviews under my belt and begin to build my reel. I’m gaining more confidence with my equipment and the images I am producing are getting closer and closer to what and how I envision them.
It may seem strange, but this is the first time in quite a while that I’ve really felt the inevitability of improvement as long as I continue to push and practice. I don’t get as upset when things go wrong, or I miss a shot, and have been much kinder to myself about the rate of my improvement. I know my work will get better.
Here are some stills from my latest work/experiments:
As I am growing into this new type of storytelling, through the words of other people. I do feel like I am out growing my equipment fairly quickly. I’m struggle with the dynamic range of my T5I. I like really dark dramatic photography, and would love a camera that gave me a few more stops. I’m also considering a big flat LED softbox to replace my 120D as my main keylight and use the fresnel spot for a bright hair light. That said. I promised myself and my fiancé that I wouldn’t buy any new gear until I got at least one paid job for shooting.
Do to my obsession with finding an affordable replacement to my T5i, I’ve been researching the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera.
The pocket is about 5 years old and while ancient by current video standards, still creates an image that is really incredible. It doesn’t shoot 4k, has awful battery life, and requires a lot of kitting out to make it ergonomic, its still use quite a bit, even showing up on big budget Hollywood sets as a stunt or crash camera, because it’s affordable yet it’s footage grades very well with the Alexa.
I rented the camera off of Sharegrid for $100 for 6 days, and had a great time testing it out. The camera can be found used on ebay and craigslist for about $600, often with a bunch of batteries and a cage. I would have to buy a speedbooster/focal reducer, battery solution, rails system, etc to get this to a place ergonomically comfortable, but it seems like a good solution while I continue to learn.
Just waiting for that first paid interview jobs….