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7 LED lights for video or stills for under $50

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Lists are good, we like lists, especially when they aim to try and save us some money while letting us get the best value. This particular list comes from Caleb Pike at DSLR Video Shooter. In it, Caleb tackles LED lights, in particular, super low budget LED lights.

It can be difficult to know what to buy in this area. Some are cheap because they suck. Others are just really good value. But, if you don’t really have comparisons and some kind of frame of reference, it can be a bit of a gamble. It’s even a gamble when going with names you know and trust for super low budget gear.

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This DIY wooden rig makes your DSLR or mirrorless feel more like a cinema camera

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Since Nikon introduced video to DSLRs,the biggest complaint has been about the form factor of DSLRs. When Canon released the 5D Mark II, the demand for these cameras for video work surged. I’ve seen reports stating that as high as 40% of 5D Mark II sales were to video production companies. But, the ergonomics are just wrong. Today, there are many companies selling all kinds of cages and doohickies you can bolt onto your cameras to make them more useful.

But what if you could build your own? What if you could customise it to your own specific needs? That’s what Caleb Pike at DSLR Video Shooter wondered, and so he set out to build his own. He used about $240 worth of materials and components to build his rig, but you could probably build it for a lot less depending your needs and what bargains you find.

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Increase your DSLR or mirrorless audio recording quality for only $23

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DSLRs & mirrorless camera internal microphones are pretty much useless. They also have notoriously bad preamps when using external microhpones. No matter how good a microphone you plug into it, when you bump up the record level on your camera, you add noise. Lots of it. The typical solution to this is record to an external unit, like the Tascam DR-70D, and then feed a line from your recorder into your camera to make it easy to sync up in post.

But what if you could skip the external recorder and actually get decent quality inside the camera to begin with? Well, Caleb Pike at DSLR Video Shooter has the answer. A $23 adapter for using your microphones with your cellphone. In this case, that adapter is the Saramonic SmartRig. Caleb offers two ways to use SmartRig to get quality audio into your camera.

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How to create beautiful slow motion slider shots

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At some point or another, most of us that shoot video have to create a clip sliding past, or moving around some kind of static object. Perhaps something small, like a pair of rings for wedding shooters, or it could be something as large as a car.

In this video from DSLR Video Shooter, Caleb Pike walks us through the process with techniques and tips to get a smoother final video using some slow motion tricks.

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This is the $4 upgrade you should be giving to all your gear bags

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Fiddling around with little zippers on bags can be a pain, especially when you’ve your camera in one hand, with a bag clenched between your knees trying to unzip it with your free hand.

Caleb Pike of DSLR Video Shooter has a super cheap solution that not only helps to make this problem go a little easier, but also helps with efficiently identifying your kit when shooting with a crew.

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How to build your own overhead camera rig

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Whether on Youtube or elsewhere, we’ve all seen the overhead camera shot. While it might seem fairly straightforward, the process is actually quite a doozy to set up, especially if you want to ensure you have proper and even lighting.

Thankfully, for anyone wanting to build their own, Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter has released a video showing how he built his overhead camera rig for shooting hands-on and other product shots.[Read More…]

Getting a Complete Day Of Battery power For a camera and Monitor for $150

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If you were not satisfied with the 9 hours battery solution we shared last week, Caleb Pike shares an even better solution that not only lasts more than a day of shooting HD on a DSLR, but it can also power a monitor for that day.

The solution is build around a (bit shaky) NP-F970 Battery Adapter which is compatible with Canon in via a similar adapter to the one we showed last week.

Now Caleb is pretty upfront about the build quality of the unit which apparently is not that awesome, but on the flip side of it, it is very budget friendly. [Read More…]

How To Convert Photography Lenses into Cine Lenses

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If you’ve been making the conversion from shooting stills to shooting DSLR video you probably have an array of lenses from the stills days.

If you are solely doing video, there may be a lot of sense to convert your stills lenses to cine lenses. Caleb Pike has a great tutorial on converting your DSLR lenses to easily accommodate a video workflow.

Caleb starts with a set of 3 Olympus OM lenses: 35-70 F4, 75-150 F4 and 50mm F1.8 at total of about $200 and  lists a few major differences between the way DSLR lenses are built and the way cine lenses are built, he also explains how to adjust the lens for cine use. [Read More…]

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