I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon enough to buy my own Canon 7D or any other DSLR with HD video capabilities. I have edited several short pieces for a client using the 7D workflow and while I have to say that the video looks amazing, that isn’t what this post is about.
Nancy (my wife/business owner) and I went to Miami, Florida to do a shoot with her taking hold of still photography and I taking an EX1 and playing DP for a few days. It’s always a great experience to get out of the edit bay and shoot something yourself. It not only gives you a reason to get out of the solitary confinement that is your edit space, but you can put into practice the best techniques you have learned from just watching through footage (all my clients love the rack focus… about 90% of the time). I get a bit more respect for the DP while out shooting because I can never get something to look exactly how I want it to when it comes in from certain DP friends of mine.
I learned a couple great things from our trip too. An uncle of mine has the habit of photography (and frankly owns a much nicer set of gear and equipment than us anyway) and referred us to the site BorrowLenses.com. Nancy ordered a 70-200mm lens, a flash and a flash diffuser. I believe we had it for about 8 days total (might have been 7 or 9) and paid about 33% of the cost to rent just the lens locally from a store in Salt Lake City. Our cost was a mere $123 (with the insurance added to it too). It was incredibly easy too. There was a FedEx in the hotel we were staying at in Miami so we finished our shoot and took it downstairs and handed it into to the FedEx desk. We grabbed our receipt and let the two day air shipping (free with our purchase) do its job. The rental period does not include the time it takes to ship either. You just need to make sure your package is shipped on the last day of service. I couldn’t speak of a greater experience with this company and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to experiment with some new lenses on their HDSLR cameras.
I also have had a great time using SmugMug.com (if you decide to sign up, please refer us in your sign-up with our e-mail address, [email protected]). It’s been easy to use and it has a professional presentation. For now I have signed us up as a trial (14 days for free, no credit card needed), but everything has worked wonderfully so far. Take a look at some of the pictures we took out in Miami, but keep in mind most of these, in not all, have not been edited whatsoever.