Investing in my video business

Hello everyone in this weeks post I want to talk about a very exciting purchase I made on Friday evening that I hope will take the video side of my business to the next level. Since I have been doing video more and more I decided that I want to invest in a proper video camera. My Sony A7ii is a wonder camera for video and I love it but it has it's limitations. For me having a 30 minute recording limit is the biggest limitation. When I am shooting an event or wedding and I know that after 30 minutes I will have to stop and restart the recording and potentially lose an important moment or have to wait for a pause in the action to stop and restart the recording can be very stressing. The 2nd biggest factor in purchasing a true dedicated video camera is audio. While my A7ii has a mic input and i have a shotgun mic on the top of the camera I also have to use an external recorder to try to capture cleaner audio as I cant always be right on top of the action and depend on the mic to capture good audio. 

4K video is another option that I wanted to have. My A7ii can only shoot in 1080HD and since 4K is getting more mainstream these days I wanted to have that ability so shoot 4K video.

So what did I decide on you may ask? Well after doing lots of research  I decided on the Sony PXW-FS5 camera. For my run and gun shooting style this seemed to be the perfect fit for me. It's a lightweight, modular 4K cinema camera. It shoots full 4K video in 8 bit format but I have an option to upgrade to full 4K raw output to an external recorder at 12bit. 1080 HD video up to 240FPS in 10 bit 4:2:2 which is what I will be doing most of my recording at gives me a lot of flexibility.  As far as audio it has 2 XLR inputs with separate audio control for each input and will allow me a lot more flexibility. 

The camera also has a ton more features that I wont go into detail about now but I know this camera will allow me to do so much more and can open up a lot more jobs for me. 

I hope to get the camera in my hands this week and start playing around with it. Once I get is in my hands I will do some videos on it and upload it to my YouTube channel as well. 

This was an expensive purchase for me as the camera comes in at $6500 with the options that I choose but I hope to make it all back within the year or less. I will do another post on this once I have it in my hands and I can do a full review on it. until then have a great week and I will see you next Sunday.

Editing, Editing and more Editing

Hi everyone happy Sunday. I am releasing this blog post very late as I wasn't very functional for most of the day today. Jeannie and I got up at 4:30 am Saturday morning to drive to Charlotte for a shoot that she had that started at 8am. While we had an amazing shoot by the time we got home we were both wiped out and I crashed on my couch for a few hours and then went over to her place to crash some more. When I woke up this morning I was still feeling very tired so I got home and sat on the couch napping on and off for most of the day. It's 3pm now and I am feeling awake enough to get some work done.

So the topic for today's blog as said by the title is all about editing. If you read my blog post from two weeks ago I talked about how video work is taking over my business and the amount of video editing that needs to get done almost seems unending. I am getting close to completing the wedding video that I shot a few weeks ago. On Wednesday of this week I shot a corporate video that was an awards ceremony and i have to deliver that in a few days. That video is 98% complete as I am just awaiting a few clips from the client that I hope to have tomorrow and I can then finish up the video. On Friday I shot an EPK video (electronic press kit) for a photographer friend of mine to promote her business and I am now copying all of the data over for that as I type this.

Needles to say I have a lot of work ahead of me sitting at my computer in Adobe Premiere pouring through the footage from all of these events and putting them together to tell a good story. After I finish the wedding video I still need to make a 2nd video that will be a highlight reel about 10 to 15 minutes in length. The main video is almost two hours long.

So with that said I am going to end this blog post and get back to work even though there is a Star Wars marathon on TV and I would love to watch that instead but I need to get this workload decreased. Have a great week and I will see you next Sunday.