Equipment Advice
We get asked all the time for advice about equipment. New media production, even using professional equipment, is far, far less expensive than broadcast production. Even still … better, more expensive equipment can set a new media producer apart from someone using equipment purchased from a local, consumer electronics store.
We started GeekBrief.TV with an inexpensive consumer camera and a relatively expensive professional microphone. It was clear a couple shows in that the inexpensive consumer camera wasn’t getting the job done, so we upgraded. It was a massive financial challenge for us and we sacrificed a lot to pay for it without going into debt, but we bought a high-end camera. I think it gave us an advantage.
The next episode of GBTV will be shot on our sixth camera. We moved immediately from consumer to “prosumer” and in the prosumer space, we moved from SD to HD. Our new camera is our first professional camera and it was freaking expensive. The costs are covered by the value of all the equipment and past cameras we’re selling, but still, it feels like a big investment.
We love giving equipment advice to anyone interested in working in new media, but the one thing we never advise is to go cheap. We recommend making sacrifices to purchase the best equipment a sacrifice will enable.
The hardest questions we get are related to price. We often get asked to recommend an HD camera below $300 or a wireless microphone system below $200 and our answer is we can’t! There are HD cameras below $300 and wireless microphone systems below $200, but we can’t recommend them because they just aren’t good enough for professional looking and sounding production.
The first year of GeekBrief.TV, we spent approximately $30,000 on equipment. We had to sacrifice a lot to pay for it, but we were passionate about our goals. We still sacrifice to buy better and better equipment because this is our life.
The best advice we can give about equipment is to not go cheap. Go cheap on your clothing. Go cheap in your food and drinks. Go cheap on everything in your life, but invest everything you can, without going into debt, on your equipment.
Read MoreiPhone Lighting Control
I’ve been getting some great advice from Jason “Cannonball” Jenkins about lighting. Jason is a professional lighting designer who is currently on tour with the Osmonds on their 50th anniversary tour. After he introduced me to a few hardware and software solutions that would enable us to control our lighting from a single control point, I read a short blog post on AutomatedHome.com about the company iControl receiving funding from the iFund.
I started wondering how cool and how hard it would be to create an iPhone App that would control DMX lighting via WiFi. The lights themselves could be wired to the network, and the iPhone would operate as a wireless controller complete with sliders for dimming individual lights.
I’m still early in my research, but I found a post about using an iPhone or iPod Touch as a visual controller. I found a company that makes an ethernet connectable DMX controller that has a Palm App written for it. I also found this DMX WiFi receiver that would probably be overkill in my setup. I also found a D.I.Y. for using DMX in a home automation setup.
If an iPhone or iPod Touch can be used in home automation, it could also be used to remotely control studio lighting. I’m not sure how hard it will be to pull all the parts together, but it seems like it could be amazing.
Read MoreAudio Setup
I’m an audio wanna-be. I love audio and I want to understand how to record great audio in the same way I want to understand how to produce good video. We’re setting up an audio podcasting studio for Geek Brief Radio, and this is some of the equipment we’re starting with:
- Two Electro Voice RE-20s
- A Mackie 1220 mixer
- A Mackie Onyx Firewire Expansion Board
- A dbx 1066 Compressor/Limiter/Gate
- A Mackie 4-Channel Headphone Amp
All of this is Alex Lindsay’s fault. He’s doing a podcast called Gear Media Tech. It’s all about audio gear, and it’s probably my favorite video podcast right now.
