Dear Santa
Oh wait… that time has been and gone. Oh well just have to wait until the end of this Year I guess!
But in all seriousness, recently I have been thinking more and more about the costs involved in setting up a pro camera rig (or semi pro depending on who you want to believe). I enjoy window shopping and like many find myself watching countless hours of Youtube “influencers” selling me some companies products. Of course I am slightly jealous being a gear-geek I would love for companies to send me some of their products to “review” and possibly keep, but that’s unlikely to happen with my own personal online audience presence!
Below is an online shopping list of things I would personally buy right now if I won the lottery (I don’t play) along with a Macbook that didn’t have a knackered space bar.
That’s not an exhaustive list and doesn’t even include the cage for the camera, V-mount batteries and holders and, and, and….
“But Steve, dear boy, why don’t you rent” I hear you cry, well despite having a good rapport with the local rental company here in Wellington, they have a limited inventory in terms of the above and, actually at this price point if I were to rent the above and all the other stuff I need I would probably be spending about a 1/3 of the cost of buying!
I made a spreadsheet the other day and by the time I was done and dusted it landed just shy of around NZ$60k. Now given that most of the people on Youtube are American this is not a huge amount of money apparently but for us little Kiwi’s sitting at the arse end of the World it’s the price of a reasonable Family car, that said there does appear to be a fair few bird photographers here in NZ who are sporting $24,000 lenses coupled with a $8-9k camera, so perhaps I’m just poorer than everyone else or have squandered my money on tractors, sheep and calves over the years.
Canon 20D
My first Digital camera was the Canon 20D. At the time the US$3k that I think I spent on it seemed like a massive amount of money, but I was younger, renting, unmarried with no dependents and earning good money. I’m not sure what that $3k equates to in “today’s money” but therein lies the problem if you ask me. Inflation increased year on year and according to business and economic practices it has to do so…. or does it? But this site is not about the why’s a wherefores of the World and it’s finances (I don’t think there’s enough space on the web for me to write what I think about all that), but suffice to say that incomes don’t seem to be increasing at the same rate that inflation does and hence these days you can very quickly get to $60k putting a list of kit together.
So will I spring for the $60k… no I can’t no matter how much I would like to. If Black Magic reaches out and suggests I try out their new Pyxis 12k with inbuilt ND filters and AF which I feel sure is coming at NAB this year, then I’d obviously have to think about it for about 30 nanoseconds, but it’s doubtful this will eventuate with them or any other manufacturer so it’s onwards and upwards with my current camera, the R5MKll which was used predominately to shoot my latest showreel and I will try and get the cash together for a decent tripod and head so I don’t spend so much time stabilizing my footage in Resolve.
On another note, somewhat related to my showreel, I do wonder why I bother to actually write anything to accompany the stuff I put out on social media, I mean you put something out that you have spent quite some time filming, grading and editing and mention that you are open to Constructive critique and all you get is a Facebook thumbs up, in fact I actually see that most of the time you get a thumbs up when you post something about something going wrong, like a drone breaking, or you breaking your neck, but if you post something cool, and something that you are really proud of….. tumble weeds.
Strange and I really don’t know what to think about all that, is it that a Thumbs up means it’s great, or that it’s great you broke your neck, or your drone, or that you’ve failed miserably at something…. All a bit strange if you ask me. I always try to encourage people and lift them up with their work if I can, but perhaps that’s the wrong approach and in fact it’s better to be nice, but not be too encouraging otherwise the person in question might give up.
As no one reads this stuff I write I might even open up comments on this post, perhaps someone will give me a thumbs up…. or some other digit pointing upwards.
