Law & Order SVU

This morning I had to shoot a wedding at the New York City State Office building which is oposite the Supreme Court. I had passed by yesterday and made a passing comment on how every time I see the Supreme Curt it reminds me of Law & Order. So then today when I rolled up for the shoot I see them setting up to shoot a scene for SVU. On my way back to the subway I caught Olivia "Liv" Benson (Mariska Hargitay) shooting a scene and snapped a few pics.

Expensive DSLR Accessories & Cheaper Alternatives

Before I begin I must state that in most of the cases below, the more expensive options are better quality however the cheaper options I have listed are great alternatives for filmmakers on a budget and do the job more than adequately for a large percentage of people out there.


VIEWFINDERS

These are a must have for shooting in bright sunlight and also help to keep your camera steady whilst shooting handheld. I have been looking for an alternative to the Zacuto (which is amazing yet super expensive) for quite a while and I certainly want going to shell out $79.95 for the Hoodman H-LPP3 HoodLoupe which looks like it was made in someones basement. A couple of weeks ago I found the NEEWER Hoodeye HD viewfinder on Amazon and have been really happy with it.

Zacuto Z- Finder Jr.
$236.95



ALTERNATIVE: NEEWER Hoodeye HD
$52.45


RIGS

Most camera rigs are expensive even for the most basic, entry level models. If you're looking for something to give you a bit of stability and ability to hold the camera at low angle for shooting something like skateboarding, then the Opteka X-Grip is great value for money. Compared to something like the Can Caddie you cant go wrong.

Cam Caddie Starter Kit
$109.95


Opteka X-Grip 
$34.95


MEMORY CARDS

I've been using the Transcend cards ever since I started shooting video with DSLRs and they have been great and usually get good reviews. The class 10 is way cheaper than the Sandisk Class 6 too. Can't beat the price!

SanDisk Extreme 16GB SD Card - Class 6
$43.50



Transcend 16GB SD Card - Class 10
$24.14




LED LIGHTS
Here is one that has a massive difefrence in price... LED lights. LightPanels makes the model below which retails for over $400 but you can pick up a very similar light from ebay or Amazon for under $50. When I first used the LightPanel model I thought it felt very cheap for something so expensive.

Pros of the cheaper models: Price and the fact that you can use various camera batteries as well as AA batteries.

Cons of the cheaper models: The mount is usually plastic and breaks easily (but I use mine hand held or on a stand i made in 5 minutes for 90% of shots)

LightPanels MicroPro
$404.90



Opteka VL-126 LED
$59.00



DOLLY/SLIDERS
One more piece of equipment that I have recently started using that is a much cheaper alternative to what else is currently on the market. The Motion Slider is a bare bones camera slider. it can be mounted on a tripod and can have a tripod head attached or have the camera directly mounted onto it.

Pocket Dolly v-2.0 Basic 
$499.95

Motion Slider 36 Camera Slider
$159.00 

GoPro Helmet Rig (with Canon 300HS)

This is the rig i constructed on a rock climbing helmet to mount a GoPro pointing towards my face and have my Canon Powershot facing outward while i flew down the water zipline at camp.

Google + got it right the first time

If only Facebook would get their damn IA guys to take a look at the new Google + page layout and see that it makes perfect sense to have a clear and separate link to videos instead of burring it within the photo page... common sense really isn't that common at Facebook.

Facebook

Google +

Knicks v Boston - Game 3, 2010/11 Playoffs at MSG

4 of us bought tickets to the Knicks game 3 last Friday night. We paid $260 each on Stub Hub and we're right up in the nose bleed section. After 2 close loses in Boston in games 1 & 2 we figured they had a good chance of getting a win in game 3 at home at MSG... this was not the case. They played terrible (mostly defensively) and ended up getting some pretty nasty jeers & booing from the crowd in the 4th quarter.

Biggest Tripod Ever!

I was walking from Grand Central the other day when I saw these guys shooting a 360 degree panorama with a Canon 5D on a cherry picker. I'd love to see the actual footage but unfortunately the PA I asked had no idea what they were using it for.

Charlie Sheen LIVE: My Violent Torpedo of Truth

We scored some free tickets for Charlie Sheen's 'My Violent Torpedo of Truth' show last Friday night at Radio City Music Hall. I was pretty curious to see what this guy could do on stage to keep a live audience entertained and I had also always wanted to check out Radio City (which is amazing by the way). I will admit that the (rather brief) one hour show was indeed entertaining however Charlie was only directly responsible for about 50%... The other 50% came from the heckling, booing and general audience participation... If you can call it that. The signs at the entrances stated that anyone that heckled would be tossed out of the show and although we did see a couple of people get booted early on, I don't think they had the manpower to keep up with the onslaught from the crowd. I'm fairly certain that he was high or drunk or both and smoked cigarettes on stage for most of the show as he struggled to recall the details of many of his largely pointless anecdotes. All in all it was interesting and at points quite funny but I'm really glad I didn't fork out $120 for a ticket.

Mini Road Trip - Woodstock, NY

Shaggy, originally uploaded by jzaindustries.

We had been trying to plan a short snowboarding trip for a few weeks but when we finally got around to it most of the hills had just closed for the season. We decided to do a mini road trip anyway and someone suggested we check out Woodstock in upstate NY.

So 5 of us left straight after work on Sunday evening and after about a 2.5 hour drive we arrived at Twin Gables B&B (http://twingableswoodstockny.com) around 10.30pm. It was a pretty chillaxed occasion with not much going on but eating drinking and sleeping... perfect!

This guy came up to us and started preaching about the effects of Himalayan rock salt and how we should go straight to aisle 5 in the local supermarket and pick up a box right away.

We were convinced but by the time were in aisle 5 we were all like... "What the hell are we buying this stuff for again?!?".

Vegas - Roaming the Strip (Video)

So apparently Trip Films thought my vid was good enough for 'Video of the Day'. Check out a better version on Vimeo by clicking the image below...

Australia Day Snow Storm in NYC

Last Wednesday was Australia Day and a night of patriotic celebrations at the Sunburnt Cow and other bars across New York City. This also meant that there were some very concentrated groups of people in the city who were actually loving the fact that we were seeing yet another massive snow storm. Most of us haven't lived here long enough to get annoyed at whatever inconveniences 15 inches of snow may bring... instead we cherished it and many of us spent a large part of the night either throwing it at each other or rolling around in it.

How to retrieve your car from a pile of snow...