While thinking up a title for this post, I suffered delusions of grandeur and toyed with calling it ‘Backstage at VDM’, but lets face it – all that goes on round here is me slopping around in my pyjamas (mainly my boyfriends knits and tracksuit bottoms), eating enough homemade mince pies to feed my extended family for Christmas while tapping away on my laptop and occasionally standing on top of my coffee table, camera in one hand, light in the other to get the perfect shot (true story, that happened yesterday). It really isn’t that glamourous so I thought ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ was far more appropriate. I often get questioned about my camera, lighting and editing equipment so I thought I’d throw all my answers into one post as a bit of a reference point, so when asked next time people will get a friendly point in the right direction. Where to start…
I guess one of my most important and cherished pieces of equipment is my camera, which has seen more pouts, polishes and powders than you can shake a stick at. It’s the Canon EOS 600D and it find it fab for picture and movie capture alike; it has a handy flip around screen so I can see what’s going on while I’m rambling away which is very handy. In terms of finding your way around the camera? Trial and error baby. I purchased the body-only and flit between three lenses (two of which are my Dads from when he had a camera hobby, aka ‘Mid-Life Crisis #1’, score!). The biggest and most imposing one of all is the Canon EF-S 17-85MM F/4.0-5.6 IS USM which I tend to film a lot of my videos with (example here), and take pictures when I need a larger frame (example here). The lens I use most for pictures on the blog as it’s great at more close up shots is the Canon Macro Lens EF-S 60mm F/2.8 USM (example here). And then I have the Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 which I sometimes use to film videos as it blurs the background nicely (example here), or to take outfit pictures for the blog (example here). Lenses aside I also have the Canon RC-6 remote, the Lenspen Cleaner (simple but a seriously fab device) and the Lowepro Rezo TLZ 10 camera bag which certainly isn’t sexy but keeps my camera nice and safe when it’s clunking around in the depths of my bag.
Two more recent purchases come in the form of some big-ass studio-type lighting and a proper tripod (I was using my Grandad’s wobbly one from the ’60’s before that). I went a little wild and purchased the PhotoSEL LS21E52 Professional Softbox Studio Lighting Kit (link here), which annoyingly comes in a set of two mahoosive lights. I sold one and kept one for myself and use it to light videos and photos which I find much more flattering than flash, plus it means I can film videos even in the dark depths of no-natural-light winter. Tripods are about as boring a purchase as you can get – I have the Manfrotto MKC3-H01 Compact Photo-Movie Kit (link here) and it serves its purpose perfectly well. In terms of what editing software I use, I’m an Apple Mac girl 4EVZ, so I use iPhoto and iMovie to carry out their respective jobs.
It’s worth pointing out that all my blog stuffs toted up come to around the price of a Celiné bag (*cries*), but it’s taken me almost three years to amass it all and it’s definitely worth testing the water in the blogging pool before taking the plunge and investing in pricey equipment. In the early days of VDM I snapped away with a Fujifillm Finepix and an IKEA desk lamp and it did me just fine. Now, where did I put those mince pies…
Comments