This is a great App for your iPhone it runs in real time, very useful if you are filming several locations in one day, type the persons name in the “dir” column and you have a record of the interviewee , date and time it was shot. This I might add is more useful for the editor who in many occasions is not with you on the shoot. 

Along the top you will find ROLL in my case this would correspond to what SxS or MxM card I was using, then you have SCENE which can be changed and lastly you have TAKE which changes every time you activate the clapper. You can change the FPS from 25 to 50 if you are filming 720 50P and you can also change the camera number.  

I love the concept and it works to a degree but it can be fiddly to activate the editing screen but for £1.79 it’s a snip for such and advanced pocket clapperboard.

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I have 2 of these cracking lights they are produced in the USA by FloLight and are 5600K daylight balanced. I have seen them advertised by Prompterpeople.co.uk  in the UK and now come in 500W (£399) and 1000W (£699) flavors.

These lights are well built, sturdy and heat free. Remember the burnt fingers using the old Red Heads, a thing of the past and the best news is the ability to add velcro to the back of the barn doors and velcro your scrim or colour filters…NO HEAT.

Another nice feature is the ability to dim the lighting from 100% to 25%. I tend to bounce the lights if I have a white ceiling giving a smashing 5600K diffusion with no shadows. One further feature is the 4 pin 12v XLR allowing you to run these lights on 12v batteries, great for outdoor work. A word of caution I find these lights very harsh if used direct with no scrim if filming an interviewee, in fact I will go as far as to warn you not to use these lights direct into someone’s face without diffusion.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

This is one piece of equipment that has been a god send and is a must if you do a lot of pieces to camera. We use an Apple MacBook Pro to deliver the script but a word of warning Apple change specs constantly as new flavors of laptops appear but to my horror the latest 15″ unibody version does not have a video adapter so the only way to get a composite picture out of the new MacBook Pro is to use the mini display port to VGA adapter and convert this using an AVerMedia AVerKey Lite (£29) to go from VGA to composite video.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

Many of us with Sony EX-3s are contemplating jumping ship to the new JVC GY-HM700…why ? This will depend on a few factors but one of my sore points with the EX-3 has been solved with the introduction of the MxM (previously the MxR) SD-HC insert.

It makes what was previously a major hole in your budget having to buy a 16Gb Sony SxS card into a joy with the advent of the MxM card. Cost all in is about £70 per 16Gb against £500 for the Sony SxS card. So with the storage issue solved is it worth jumping ship the answer is not yet. Only a small handful of people have so called reviewed this camcorder but left us all with the same questions… how does the JVC perform against the EX-3 in low light and image performance?  I hope to answer these questions and more as soon as I get my hands on one.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

User review of the Sony EX-3, a week with the Panasonic HPX-301E, review of the Sony HRV-Z5E and a user review of the new JVC GY-HM700 and how it performs in low light and it’s user friendliness in Final Cut Pro.

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions

I was recently alerted to the existence of WeePurchase.com – a sort of web version of the Apple iStore – basically it’s a website that allows you to set-up a shop and sell electronic data (be it sound, video, text etc) for small amounts of money.

Check it out at:

http://www.weepurchase.com

For all your video production needs in Scotland, get in touch with Small Video Productions