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Zacuto Kameleon Overview

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A while back I wrote a review of the Zacuto Gratical HD, where I wrote about some of the benefits of using a third-party EVF. This time, I want to look at the other EVF from Zacuto, the Kameleon.

Let’s start with the why though. Essentially, third-party EVF offers you consistency across any camera no matter how good or bad the built-in EVF is. If you use a product like the Zacuto EVF, you always know exactly what you’re seeing in the EVF is consistent. You can trust that the colors are what you think they are. It’s good to know that the scopes and focus assist are accurate. Some cameras don’t allow you to install custom LUTS, which is another very handy feature that the Zacuto EVFs have.

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Lanparte Cage for BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Review

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The Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 4K is a really good camera with some amazing features. But one of the challenges that the camera presents is, it’s physical size and weight. In order to really get the best out of it, you really do need to put it in a cage.

Lanparte kindly sent me their cage for the BMPCC 4K to try out. Here are some observations.

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Zacuto Gratical HD Review

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Just about all cameras come with a built-in EVF, so why would you spend thousands of dollars on a Zacuto Gratical HD EVF?

Well, not all EVF’s are created equal. Also, not all cameras are created equal when it comes to monitoring options. Here are some examples. The resolution and quality of built-in EVFs on cameras vary hugely. You may get a camera that is amazing, but its EVF is not the best. You may then also get a camera that has an amazing EVF, but the camera may be missing features.  When it comes to the EVF, here are some of the features that could be missing in-camera, but the Gratical adds:

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The Hollyland Mars 300 is an affordable HDMI transmitter with decent performance

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I’ll be honest. I’d never heard of Hollyland when they reached out to me and asked if I could have a look at their Mars 300 wireless video transmitter (Amazon | B&H). Will I be keeping my eye out for more stuff from them after having tried read? Read on to find out. 

The Mars 300 is a new entry-level wireless video transmitter. So why would you need or use one of these?

Well, there are a few different use cases for wireless video transmitters.

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G-Technology Shuttle XL EV with Seagate IronWolf Pro overview

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The G-Technology Shuttle XL EV is a beast of a RAID array and has the storage and speed to deal with just about anything you can throw at it. Or so they say.

As anyone who has read any of my articles before, you would know that as a video producer, I need lots and lots of fast storage. And if you haven’t read any of my stuff before, well, just assume that as a video producer, I need lots and lots of fast storage. 😉

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Shoot for the edit or How to shoot a man walking through a door

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I’ve run many, many workshops and one-on-one sessions for photographers who want to move into the world of video. Wherever I am and however experienced the photographers are, one of the biggest questions they all have is about editing. For many of the photographers that I deal with, they don’t plan on editing their own videos. Rather, they plan on shooting the videos and then getting someone else to edit it for them.

So, of course, those photographers who don’t plan on editing their own footage don’t need to learn how to edit, right? WRONG! And here’s why.

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Making it work on real life budgets and why Content is King

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“Content is king” is what people say. Well, recently I delivered a video clip that was part of a series of clips I produced for a client. I wasn’t 100% proud of it on a technical level.  So why did I still deliver it to the client? This was, after all, only one part of a series of clips. I could have delivered all the rest and explained to the client that this one wasn’t quite perfect and so would rather not release it.

I still sent it to the client because I knew that the content in the clip, the story if you would, was very engaging. And if you have a great story and decent audio, I believe you can get away with it if some of the shots aren’t perfect.

First, let me explain why the shots weren’t perfect. This was a corporate shoot and, very often in corporate shoots, you don’t have full control of what and how you’re going to shoot.

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