Photoplus Expo and Giving Definition
October 28, 2011
This has been a thoroughly enjoyable week.
I ended up replacing my older follow focus for a much stronger one (for now anyway) and had a chance to test it out at the Photoplus show floor on Thursday. After my walk around experience at the Javits for Comicon, I felt more comfortable navigating their terrain than before.
Moving around the expo, I didn’t feel very inspired though. It was a situation that I’ve been in twice already with Createasphere and Cinegear, so this felt more of the same. Only with expanded space. Then I ran into the Canon booth where they had the 1Dx model, and while out of my tax bracket, I fell in love with its potential. Not necessarily that particular camera, per se, but with what its next generation sensor can bring to the table for a lot of indie filmmakers such as myself.
Not too far down the booth I ran into the new Master Series shoulder rig from Letus35 and Shane Hurlbut’s design team. Personally I never found much worth in a cage or many shoulder rigs. I tend to find them either obnoxious in their size in comparison to the camera itself, or cumbersome altogether. However, this was by far THE best rig I’ve ever used.
It felt much like how a filmmaker would design a rig, and not so much how a product designer would put one together. From my brief time with it, it’s very tight on your shoulder, short and stout and most of all, comfortable.
Unfortunately like most gear [for right now] it’s way out of my own price range. But, if given the opportunity, I’d use it in a heartbeat. No questions asked.
Day two almost didn’t happen. Other than the 1Dx and the Letus rig, I didn’t find much of a reason to go back to the expo. I figured to instead spend some time at the Occupy movement and find out what new things they would do to document.
That’s when I got an email from Shane Hurlbut himself. Apparently I forgot that I left a similar personal review of the Letus rig on Shane’s blog (as well as several of my shorts and commercials) and he wanted to meet me in person. This of course got me fired up, as I’ve followed Shane’s efforts on the DSLR film movement for a few years now. I guess now I had a reason to head back over.
Shane, Hien and myself at lunch break
So after heading over on Friday, meeting him post keynote address, I became even more inspired. Which in turn, drove me to shoot more that day and create this spec ad spot right after.
In this, I’m extending a huge thanks to Shane Hurlbut, ASC, Hien Tu Le of Letus35 and Tim Park of Mazama Films. You guys all really made my day, were extremely down to earth and helped reaffirm that I’m indeed on the right track.
