In testing some new equipment for our upcoming trip to Las Vegas for CES 2014, I decided to go ahead and put together a quick run-down of our equipment load-out for the year.
It's been five long years since my first equipment I bought for GN (for the record: A used A300 DSLR I picked up for around $250). As the site, team size, skill levels, and our quality expectations have all improved or increased, we've had to upgrade equipment a couple of times to match these changes.
Briefly stated, the current arsenal looks like this:
Canon XA20 Prosumer Camcorder (28Mbps @ 60FPS, 1080p). Uses XLR inputs for high-quality, low-impedance audio.Sennheiser MKE600 Shotgun Microphone. Mounts to the top of the XA20, uses XLR input for highly-shielded audio transmission. Works best at 5-8ft range and will be used in discussion panels and for redundancy.Roland R-05 standalone recorder (goes in my pocket while interviewing).Sony A65 DSLR for digital photography; using a fixed 50mm @ f1.7, a Minolta beercan 70-140mm @ f4, and a Tamron 17-50mm @ f2.8.[Deprecated] Canon Vixia HF20, which will now be used for run-n-gun B-roll on the show floor. It will now serve as our secondary camera and will no longer be used for primary footage.
Oh, and we've got new shirts.
If anyone's got questions about this basic field reporter setup, let me know!
- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.
