SEANFX

One of the reasons I enjoyed using my Kodak Zi6 was because of the double AA batteries. But when I first picked up my Kodak Zi8 I was worried about the new battery system the Zi8 uses. Not anymore. Now I can shoot for as long as I want.  I only need these three things.

Depending on your shooting needs your battery choice will vary. Also if you click on the image it will take you to flickr where you can view the hotboxes I put around the items in the image.

This is this setup:

1. Zi8
2. Griffen Dual USB Car Charger
3. Bescor 12 Battery with Cigarette lighter plug

One of the great things about the Zi8 is its new charger.  Plugs into a wall outlet but the cord goes from USB to a regular power connector.  You take that and the USB Car Charger and now you can hook it up to a 12 volt battery belt of your choosing.  How many of you have one of these 12 volt batteries just laying around?

Time to charge it up again!

Now you can shoot all day, well depending on your battery I bet you could shoot for days.  Now you’ll need to go buy more SD Cards.  The best thing, the 12 volt battery supplies enough power to keep your Zi8 fully charged for when your battery belt finally does run out of juice.

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Don’t have a shotgun mic but you still need to get a little closer to your source?

Here’s a simple solution for low budget filmmakers or audio podcasters. This is a combo of my video double sound kit and my podcasting kit.

In the image:

1. Zoom H2
2. 20 foot 1/8 inch headphone cable
3. Gitzo 3 section Fishpole mic boom
4. Mounting screw for the mic boom

Click on the image and go to the flickr page to see a more detailed description of the parts.

You’ll need the head phones for sure but that’s a given when recording audio. The nice thing about this mic boom is it has 2 standard mounting options included in the end where you normally mount the mic holder for the shotgun mic.

Just flip the mounting screw around and it should mount into any standard recording device you have that has that 3/8 screw mount on the bottom like the H2.

Here is the H2 mounted on the end of the Fishpole. As you can see you’ll need the head phone extension cable and headphones. But now you can extend the pole and get the H2 in over a crowd or close to the ground for some Foley work.

TIPS:

1. Don’t forget the head phones
2. Always make sure you press RECORD! ( With the Recorder so far away it will be easy to forget. It’s not like you’re wasting tape anymore.)

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If you live in the Midwest and just got hit with all the snow we did here in Chicago, it’s a perfect time to grab images for matte paintings.  Especially if you are doing snow scenes!  So it’s time to grab images of snow blown fields, piles of snow in parking lots, and shear cliffs that come from cleared driveways.

Try to get shots from low angles and high, close ups and wide shots.  That way you can bring a lot of images together in Photoshop.

Even if you can’t paint out the elements that give away the scale of the snow banks, you can use it as a lighting study or as a foundation of your painting.

Once elements are removed that give away the scale of these snow banks, it might be pretty hard to tell these are just piles of snow in a parking lot somewhere.

Don’t you think this could be some alien world or some place near Outpost #31?

I’ve created a set of images on my Flickr page called “matte painting raw” just in case you live somewhere where you don’t get snow.  I also have clouds in there too.  You just never know when you might need to do some sky replacements.  Feel free to use mine.  If you do, please send me link so I can check it out!

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If you’re like me and still don’t own a blu-ray burner you are still archiving on lots of DVD disks. At least I have a Duel Layer…

Maybe this is obvious but when doing a lot of backups in a series and you’re not sure how many disks it might take up.

Just write “1 of” ( 1 of 5 ), leave the second number blank the when you are done you’ll know how many disks you have and you can fill it then.

If you have any other tips share them with me.

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