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5 useful gear and camera tricks to get difficult shots the easy way

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There are certain techniques that ubiquitous to commercials we often see on TV. But achieving some of them can be quite tricky and/or expensive to achieve. They often utilise difficult-to-master techniques or require expensive equipment like motorised camera sliders.

Well, in this video, commercial filmmaker Joris Hermans blasts through five camera and gear tricks that he uses on actual shoots. Tricks that let us get some of those shots without requiring any extra gear. Well, maybe just a little cardboard and some gaffer tape.

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Stop shooting bad b-roll – here’s how to take yours to the next level

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Regardless of what you think b-roll is or how you might use it in your productions, b-roll has become a hot topic lately. It’s something that just about anybody who shoots video needs to incorporate if they want their work to stand out. And while exactly what b-roll is and how it should be used are discussions for another day, how you shoot it is relevant to all potential definitions.

It’s easy to get lazy with b-roll, especially if you just see it as a way to break up boring monotonous shots or a transition between sequences. But even then, it needs to tell a story or expand on what we’re hearing and seeing in other shots. And it’s easy to shoot it badly. In this video, filmmaker Thomas Alex Norman shows us how we can adjust our shooting techniques to make the best b-roll we can.

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Build this DIY fully stabilised DJI RS2 camera mount rig for under $500

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If there’s one thing that many of us would love to be able to do, it’s attaching a fully stabilised gimbal camera to a vehicle. It lets you get shots that would otherwise be impossible. But such a task is not cheap. Commercial rigs cost $20,000 or more and that doesn’t even include the cost of the actual gimbal.

Bestboy Adam, though, has come up with a pretty neat DIY solution in this video that you can put together yourself for as little as $500, including the gimbal, using a mix of items from various manufacturers to which you can attach your DJI RS2 gimbal (or probably any, with the right brackets) to get that nice clean stabilised driving footage.

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This open-source DIY 6-axis motion control rig is almost entirely 3D printed

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The only thing cooler than a 6-axis motion control rig is a DIY 6-axis motion control rig. And the only thing cooler than that is an open-source one that anybody can build and modify to suit their own needs. And that’s exactly what this is from Chris Desrondiers at Do It Whenever? An open-source 6-axis motion control rig that’s made entirely from 3D printed and off-the-shelf parts.

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This spinning Lego camera rig looks like a portal to another dimension

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We’ve seen all kinds of Lego stuff here on DIYP: cameras and lenses, TV show recreations, quarantine projects… YouTuber Brick Experiment Channel has created a pretty wild camera rig. It spins so fast that the footage looks as if someone’s opening a portal to another dimension.

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The Zhiyun Crane 2S is a powerful 3-axis gimbal that’s small enough to fit in a backpack

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I’m going to open this post with a very subjective, but completely honest, opinion. The Zhiyun Crane 2S (first look review here) instantly became my favourite gimbal as soon as I took it out of the box.  Ever. That’s it. Review over. Ok, not really review over, but it really has become my new go-to gimbal for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

The Crane 2S is the followup to Zhiyun’s extremely popular Crane 2 (review here), launched in September 2017. Although already a very capable gimbal, the Crane 2S offers some very noticeable upgrades over its predecessor. So, let’s talk about those.

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The Magic Ring II is a grip frame for your gimbal with built-in D-tap power points

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Sometimes, you need to go a little “extra” with your gimbal rig. Sometimes, you need the two-handed holding power that only a solid frame can provide. Digitalfoto’s new Magic Ring II, is one of them. But it’s a little different to most. It allows you to attach a V-Mount battery to its base that passes power through the frame to devices up top.

This means you can attach monitors, transmitters, audio recorders or other devices onto the top of the frame without having to worry about how you’re going to power them or monitoring a bunch of separate smaller batteries. Being able to mount a V-Mount battery underneath also helps to lower the centre of gravity as it takes some of that extra weight away from up high.

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The Vaxis Atom 500 lets you transmit video up to 500ft from either HDMI or SDI

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Hot on the heels of yesterday’s Hollyland Mars 400S Pro announcement, Vaxis has now announced their new Atom 500 SDI wireless video transmission system (which still supports HDMI, too) and on paper it looks pretty impressive, offering less than 80ms latency and a 500ft range with internal antennas. The new release is an update to the company’s previous Atom 500 HDMI wireless transmitter, which didn’t offer any SDI support.

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Hollyland’s Mars 400S Pro wireless video transmitter lets you live stream to YouTube

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I’ve been a big fan of Hollyland’s Mars 400S ever since getting one last year and you can read my review on that model here. But now Hollyland has announced the new Mars 400S Pro, with improved latency, the silent fan feature found in the Mars 300 Pro, and new live streaming capabilities straight out of the receiver into software such as OBS.

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Aputure’s new colour-mixing Accent B7c LED bulb is every practical light you’ll ever need

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If you’ve shot video, or even sometimes if you’ve shot stills, you know what a hassle practical lighting can be. It’s always too bright or too dim to easily balance with the rest of your lights for the ISO you want to shoot at. Or, it’s completely the wrong colour. So, you have to get tricky with white balance, or gel things, or have a bunch of different types of bulbs on-hand to match to other light sources.

Well, no more. Now you just need one type of bulb to match with everything. Aputure has finally launched the Accent B7c, an RGBWW colour-mixing practical LED light that lets you simulate just about any colour or brightness you’ll ever need.

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