New Camera: Rebel T5i
Yesterday I took delivery on my new Canon Rebel T5i / 700D w/ 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM kit thanks to my mom and grandparents for providing me with incredibly generous cash gifts for Christmas and some mild saving on my own. With it, I’m hoping to begin producing some quality video podcasts as well as begin shooting stills again outdoors (when it warms up again here in Connecticut). I pretty much immediately began shooting test footage to begin getting the look and setup dialed in. Unfortunately I have 2 issues that prevent me from getting professional results in my test footage.
- The lack of a lighting kit:
I’m going to need to invest in 2-3 light stands and lights (probably soft boxes) as I have crummy warm Compact Florescent bulbs in my home office / lab / work space that are in a ceiling fan fixture with very little diffusion which looks terrible on video in the test footage I shot. I was able to correct the color issues via a custom camera light balance, but the position and quality of the light is terrible which can’t really be corrected in post.
- Audio:
I have access to 2 omnidirectional compressor vocal microphones and a monodirectional “shotgun” microphone that can be mounted either on camera or on a mic stand via shock mount as well as the microphone that is onboard the camera (which is typically only good for sync audio). ordinarily the camera mounted shotgun microphone or one of the omnidirectional vocal mics placed very close to the speaker’s mouth *should* yield good results, however, in my tests, the fan noise from my computer’s graphics card was rather annoying and I would prefer to not subject my viewers (listeners) to garbage audio – which means at the end of the day that I’m probably going to have to invest in a shirt-collar-mounted lavalier microphone.
So unfortunately it looks like it might be a little while before I can actually get into the swing of production with this new camera. However, that doesn’t stop me from continuing to test and figure out what works and start blocking segments and such, so look forward to all of that soon. Also for what it’s worth, none of this is making me any money and I don’t really have any more to invest at the moment, so the audio and lights will just have to wait until I can save up just a little more disposable income. Meanwhile, please stay tuned!
