Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
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.
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. 😉
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.
I’ve had a job that I’ve done for the last few years in Sydney. Whilst it’s challenging and full-on, it’s a lot of fun and pushes me and my team to be better. We have to shoot, edit and deliver 6 videos in a single day.
“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.
With more and more of us shooting 4K footage, fast, large storage is becoming a must-have for those of us editing this footage. For the last few years, I’ve been using the Promise Technology R2+. It’s a two-bay thunderbolt 2 RAID array with a cool feature that it has a third bay that you can swap out. I normally have a card reader in there as it allows me to copy footage from cards at the fastest speed.
I was surprised when Seagate reached out and asked me if I’d like to review some of their Ironwolf hard drives. I mean, how much is there really to write about hard drives? I’ve generally been pretty agnostic about which drives I use for my editing and backup. But once I started reading about the feature of these drives, I found there was a fair bit of info I hadn’t considered before. It’s worth remembering that storage is more and more important for us creative types.
First, full disclosure: I know a few of the team at ThinkTankPhoto and I really like them, they’re a really nice group of people. So you may think it’s because I really like the people that I like their bags so much. Except I really like my dentist but I don’t like what he does to me every six months for my check up. I suppose this is my way of saying that I can be objective even though I am reviewing something that is made by people that I like.
In a previous article, I wrote about why I sometimes use V-mount batteries as they allow me to run multiple devices shooting 4K and sometimes even 4K RAW for an entire day on two or three batteries. I decided to go with two different models from CORESWX.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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