Defining a new class of DTE recording, the FS-5 Portable DTE Recorder weighs only 12 ounces, brings Direct To Edit® recording technology to your HDV or DV handheld camcorder, and enables you to add custom metadata while you’re recording. Focus FS-5 Portable DTE Recorder Go from Acquisition to Editing in One Step.

Featuring a backlit color display, an easy-to-use menu system, a hard drive, and a removable, rechargeable battery, the Focus FS-5 is the perfect DTE companion for your HDV or DV camcorder. Audio, video, timecode, and control information is passed through a single FireWire cable, allowing you to record to disk or to disk and tape simultaneously.

Designed for use in even the roughest conditions, the FS-5 includes a 10-second electronic shock cache to ensure that you never lose footage. Advanced features such as timelapse (DV mode only), retro disk recording, scene marking, and clip categorization make the FS-5 perfect for handheld shoots. When recording is complete, your footage is ready to edit instantly—no capturing, file transfer, or file conversion is required.

http://www.focusinfo.com

It’s a bit like a big boy’s Meccano set when you take it out of the box, you look at it for a while trying various parts to see if they fit, then when you get the courage to build the beast you find out that 2 people are needed when presenting it to the tripod otherwise you are in serious danger of losing a finger or two!

A Jib arm takes a fair bit of practice.  Alistair, Angela and myself were filming at Barr’s soft drinks just outside Glasgow, part of the shoot involved filming the bottle conveyer line so we assembled the Jib arm, mounting it on a tripod (this needs 2 people) with the tripod on dolly wheels (locked in position). We did various shots in the factory, one of the better ones looking straight down on a macro shot at the bottle tops traveling through shot.

Outside the factory we got one of the employees to walk into shot towards the front revolving door while we did a vertical crane shot from the grass to about 10 feet in the air. Crane shots need 2 people, one to pull the weights at the back and someone to hold the front handle and watch the shot in the LCD viewfinder (Sony EX-1).

The HAGUE PRO – JIB K14 does not come with a carry bag as part of the kit but you are strongly advised to buy one as you will soon lose the bits if you don’t. The up-to-date prices for the Jib are as follows…

• HAGUE PRO – JIB K14 = £499.95 (Fits 100mm/75mm bowl)
• Weights = £39.95
• Padded Transit Bag for Pro-Jib with space for accessories. Size 19 x 22 x 162cm = £149.95

All in a total of £689.85 and you still need tripod legs and dolly wheels !

Was it worth the expense…?  There are some jobs where you need to bring out all the “metal” — it adds that je ne sais quai to certain productions and helps to build up the cost as well.

Find out more at www.b-hague.co.uk

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.

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.