ProVideo Coalition.com: HDSLR Shooter

For those of us in the industry who spend most of our life engaged in activities that many of our friends and family don’t really understand, shopping for us can be a daunting task. Although warned to just get gift cards, sometimes our loved ones insist on getting something more personal. The result can be a gift that never sees the light of day, is re-gifted or we have to make that awkward request for a receipt which never sets well…

It occurred to me that what we need is a guide to assist those who refuse to concede to gift cards. This gift guide is full of inexpensive yet useful tools. Many of these delights are under a hundred dollars and would be a welcomed addition to any HDSLR filmmaker’s tool kit. So if you see some things on here you might like, then email this story to your friends and loved ones who may be seeking a unique way to show you they care this holiday season.

Hoodman RAW CF Cards

According to my friend Matt Roe, associate producer on the HDSLR feature, I MELT WITH YOU, the best performing compact flash cards were from Hoodman. Considering these were all they used to shoot an entire feature that had a ton of exteriors in and around Big Sur, they had to be tough and resistant to humidity, sand, and the usual mistreatment that goes along during production. According to Matt, they only had about 25 cards, so that means that each card was used multiple times before the end of production, and Hoodman Raw CF cards proved reliable with no data loss and super fast transfers. According to Hoodman, SSD flash is the most stable, reliable and expensive flash you can put in a CompactFlash memory card. SSD flash lasts through 500,000 cycles of life. An 8gb 179.99 4gb is 89.99 http://www.hoodmanusa.com/

Lexar Professional UDMA Dual-Slot USB Reader

This is a great product that will always be a welcomed by any shooter. Even if they already have one, card readers are one of the first things to get lost, and this unit is one of the best on the market. This high speed UDMA Compact Flash Card reader was designed with pros in mind. Lexar Professional UDMA Readers are ideal for use with high-speed cards, and they give fast download speeds every time. The Lexar Readers come with a two-year limited warranty. Price $42.99 http://lexar.com

Western Digital’s Elements Hard Drive

Some of my colleagues may scoff at me for using consumer grade hard drives, but to be honest, I’ve never had a bit of trouble with my Western Digital Elements hard drives. I now have two, and I have to tell you beyond being portable, they are very inexpensive. Yet they are still fast enough to keep up with the highly compressed HDSLR footage. They were marketed as a media source to store and play your video collection, and I just wanted it to get some stuff off of my RAID drive. However, circumstances forced me to use my Western Digital drive as the source drive for a project. I was surprised by their speed and agility while cutting. I can honestly say, I’ve never had any lag during render or play back, and considering their portability and price point, they are always my first choice. $199.99 http://www.wdc.com/

Adobe Premiere Elements 9

If CS5 Production Premium is out of your price range this year, and your HDSLR shooter is struggling to cut their footage, then Adobe Premiere Elements might be a cost effective solution. Just like Premiere CS5, Elements 9 can edit HDSLR footage natively. It can render down to the standard formats including Blu-Ray. Once your shooter is able to sit down and take his footage off the card and start cutting with no transfers, you’ll be worshiped and adored with gratitude. Premiere Elements 9 is both PC and Mac compatible. Price: 99.95 http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel

Magic Bullet Quick Looks 1.3

This plugin for Premiere or Aftereffects is one of the most fun color grading tools available. If you’re like me and shoot flat, then you’ve got to push out the saturation and contrast in post to get a finished look. Magic Bullet Quick Looks has a variety of presets. Once you add the filter into the clip, the big beautiful Magic Bullet grid pops up with thumbnails of your clip with a myriad of color effects to give your project big feature looks fast. Choosing is fast, and rendering the effects is even faster thanks to CS5. $99 http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/quicklooks/

The Evoluent Vertical Wireless Mouse 3

Today more than ever, video professionals spend hours and hours at the computer, cutting, writing and promoting. If you’re like me sometimes the pain in my hands and wrist can be unbearable. I happened upon this product in one of the forums as I was trying to find what mouse other editors use. This little charm came up, and after checking out the design and specs, you’ll see why I’m so excited. According to Evoluent, they consulted a variety of people including doctors, therapists and ergonomists during the design process. The end result is this side ways mouse that keeps your forearm wrist and hand in a more natural position preventing pain during your time at the computer. $99.95 http://evoluent.com/

NAB 2012: New EVFs

Adam Wilt | 05/03

Two new viewfinders to compete with Zacuto and Cineroid, plus a bizarre prototype from Band Pro.

Just when you thought you need only decide between Zacuto and Cineroid for add-on EVFs, NAB gave us two new choices. Also, Band Pro showed their own high-end EVF, and it’s a weird one.

NAB 2012: Trucolor Ohm Space Light

Bruce A Johnson | 04/20

400 watts of LED replaces a 6K? Sounds good to me.

Next time you need to flood a room with soft light - in whatever color temperature - you should give the Ohm a look.

NAB 2012: EZ-Jib

Bruce A Johnson | 04/20

EZ to use, EZ on your wallet

I’ve always been intrigued by jib arms, and usually put off by their high prices. EZ-FX might have a solution to that problem.

You must be registered to comment. This is an effort to reduce spam. Please REGISTER HERE.

Wow, that The Evoluent Vertical Wireless Mouse 3 looks like an interesting interface. I might put something like that right in front of the keyboard and not on the side.
very nice

Posted by Synaptic Light on 11/25 at 08:34 AM

Hoodman and Western Digital made the list?

um…those are the brands I tell people to avoid. And others back me up.

It kinda makes me question all the other recommendations, and wonder if I made a bad choice buying the Lexar UDMA reader.

...just sayin’

Posted by Bryan Fowler on 11/27 at 09:02 AM

Thanks for reading Bryan. What problems did you have with the Hoodman CF Cards and the Western Digital Drives?

Posted by Clint Milby on 11/27 at 06:09 PM

Hey Clint,
Thanks for the reply.

Well, the hoodman cards were fine, but they gave the same results as the Sandisk cards for 1/4 of the cost. I didn’t feel they were any more rugged than the the Sandisk cards, and had the same reed/write speed. (according to some website that tested them. With the 5Dmk2 we never got close to maxing either of them out.)—we’ve shot with them in the rain, heat, and cold.

I’m not saying Hoodman will fail, just that it’s 4 times the cost, for little to no benefit over other CF cards.

The Western Digital drives. I’ve just seen way, way to many of them fail, cause computers to crash or seriously slow down when plugged in, and just give poor performance overall.

It’s not worth it to me to save $30-50 but be nervous that the drive will fail because I moved it, or looked at it wrong. (maybe my look is more powerful than previously calculated.) =)

But that’s just my opinion of course. I know plenty of people that have done great stuff using WD drives. I don’t know anyone that uses Hoodman CF cards though. Maybe I need to meet more people.

Bryan

Posted by Bryan Fowler on 11/28 at 09:56 AM

Thanks for the info Bryan. I’m not following your logic. First, you say you wouldn’t buy the Hoodman CF Cards because they cost much more despite the fact that they ARE rated higher/faster than even the SanDisk Extreme Pro. The truth is the Hoodmans are less expensive than the Sandisk Extreme Pro. Here are some specs from both the Hoodman and the Sandisk websites:

*SanDisk Extreme® Pro CompactFlash® Card 90MB/s 16GB
$335.99

*Hoodman UDMA RAW COMPACT FLASH 100mb/s 16GB
$299.99

There is a slower option:
SanDisk Extreme® CompactFlash® Card 60MB/s 16GB
$246.99

*In the 8GB class, Sandisk doesn’t have an Extreme Pro, just the Extreme which is again only 60mb/second at $145.00

*The Hoodman 8GB shares the same specs as its big brother at 100MB/second. $179.00

I personal don’t like using anything larger than 8GB card. I think it’s risky to have so much footage on one disk. If it’s lost or damaged, the losses are that much greater with the larger cards, but that’s just me.

Now here’s where I’m getting lost. You say it’s ok to exercise frugality with regards to CF Cards, but when it comes to hard drives, money should be no object..? You continue to say that WD drives are risky, and one should spend more money to insure reliability. Of course we are probably all guilty of being inconsistent when it comes to purchases. Spending thousands on a camera body, but not spending a dime on lenses, or spending a fortune on editorial software but skimping on the workstation. However, I would have to say that if I had to make a choice, I’d be a bit more cautious in regards to my cards. I’ve shot on slow cheap cards, and I can tell you I’ve had some problems.

I can’t really speak to these issues your friends have with Western Digital. I can only share my experience. I’ve been using the WD drives for a couple of years, cutting directly from them using a USB 2.0 connection with an imac (windows partition) at my office and then using the same files on my HP work station at home. I have never once had any performance issues that were either directly or indirectly related to the drive. Of course, I could just be lucky. If my luck runs out, trust me, I’ll be the first one scream it from the mountain tops, but until that day comes, I would be amiss not share my experiences with you and our readers.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m buying a gift for someone, which again was the purpose of this article, and I was buying media cards, I would want to have the comfort of knowing that my gift didn’t fail them in the field. Therefore, in regards to the Compact Flash Cards, I’d give a Hoodman, and in regards to drives, I’d give a Western Digital.

*Prices sighted were from the following sources: http://www.hoodmanusa.com/products.asp?dept=1007
http://shop.sandisk.com/store/sdiskus/en_US/DisplayCategoryListPage/categoryID.11442500

Posted by Clint Milby on 11/28 at 07:21 PM

Hey Clint,
Thanks for the reply.

Let me approach it from a different angle, with headings for fun. =)

HOODMAN CARDS
I feel that the extra cost of the Hoodman doesn’t benefit me while I’m shooting video with my 5d. (If I was shooting stills, that might be different)

To my knowledge, the 5d recording video doesn’t come close to maxing out the 60MB/sec Sandisk Extreme card can handle. So the only time a 90MB/sec card would be nice is shooting high speed stills, or transferring.

So that’s why I don’t spend the extra money on Hoodman. I don’t shoot high speed stills, and my UDMA reader can’t do 90MB/sec anyway =) I don’t care if they are rated at 1TB/sec. if my 5D will only give the card 4MB/sec

I agree that Hoodman CF cards are a quality product. I sold mine because I didn’t need that much speed for video.

I’ve never had a Sandisk CF card fail. They perform wonderfully for me. My 4 32GB cards cost me $120 each from B&H
I sold my Hoodman CF card after not noticing any difference in the Hoodman vs Sandisk Extreme.

FRUGALITY
I don’t recall saying money should be no object. I did however say, “It’s not worth it to me to save $30-50 but be nervous that the drive will fail because I moved it, or looked at it wrong. “

WD DRIVES
Over the past 4 or 5 years, I’ve had 3 WD drives fail, 4 crash my computer when using eSata or FW. (These were all client’s drives)
Another Editor has similar stories. Once a client of his came in while I was there with a “dead drive” It was a 2 week old WD drive. Most of those same clients still have WD drives, and they have been working ok now.

I’ve had 12 Lacie drives, and 5 G-Tech drives, and one Caldigit raid. The others I still have. One Lacie failed after 7 years of use. I feel like that’s a good run.

SUMMATION
Again, those are just my opinions on CF cards and Drives. Those are the reasons I wouldn’t buy them for a friend, or request them as a gift. (well, I’d be ok with a Hoodman card, unless it meant I could have had three of another kind) I do feel that I’ve had a bit of experience with both of them.

Hopefully the magic of the internet won’t make me sound like I’m upset. I’m just wanting to share my experience.

In the end, nobody knows what CF card, hard drive, or underwear we use. They just watch our films…right? =)

Posted by Bryan Fowler on 11/28 at 09:16 PM

Bryan, if you know of a deal where I can get three cards off the same class for the price of one Hoodman, can you please link it here? That’s a deal I’d like to know about!

Again, the Hoodman 16gb is cheaper than the Sandisk Extreme Pro by $35. Maybe they were more expensive at the time you bought yours?

Of course you’re right, at the end of the day it’s about the painting and not the brush. However, this article is about brushes, and which ones would make a good gift.

“It kinda makes me question all the other recommendations…”
Beyond stating your opinions you raised questions about the integrity of the entire piece simply because I didn’t endorse brands you use. The price difference between Hoodman and the Sandisks is negligible. In the case of the 16GB class the Sandisk is more expensive. I’m sorry you’ve had issues with Western Digital, but despite your problems, which again are outside of my experiences, I stand by my endorsement. I hope you can respect my position in this matter and simply agree to disagree.

Posted by Clint Milby on 11/28 at 10:28 PM

You guys forgot the *best* gift of all… the Canon travel mugs! http://www.canonmugsshop.com/
Can’t afford that 70-200/2.8 L lens? Get ‘em the mug instead!

Posted by Christian Glawe on 12/03 at 01:56 PM

This vertical wireless mouse is so beautiful and interesting, its the first time I see it, I think I don’t even know how to use this.

Posted by Lista on 12/06 at 10:23 AM

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