As a video production company, industry tools are changing constantly and one area, in particular, that has been growing at a VERY fast rate, our cameras. This past year alone, there have been almost too many new cameras to count. We aim to hang onto our camera’s for a few years then try to move them out and replace them for newer ones while they still have some resale value to them. This helps us with a few things.
First, it allows our Portland Maine video production company to be as competitive as we can be with our image quality, which means our clients are getting the very best imagery possible.
Second, it ensures that we are always with, or ahead of the curve with the current crop of camera’s, which is a very important thing for production companies. If you hang onto camera’s too long, then they are worth very little in the used marketplace and the investment to step up to the newer camera’s becomes a much bigger gap, which sometimes seems to be too great an investment to make. This can leave you hanging on to cameras for longer than you should, in turn, will hurt your company down the road.

Technology

I’ve seen a lot of companies not keeping up with technology, which means they are filming on what our current standards would consider dinosaurs of the camera world. I know the old saying “it’s not the camera, it’s the person behind it that matters”, but if you give me an old XHA1 that I used to film on and our Canon Mark3 or our new Canon C100 and tell me to shoot the exact same thing with each camera, the newer cams would blow the socks off the shots of the XHA1. I like to think of it like this, if you are a talented cinematographer with the best tools in the industry, you’re going to produce some pretty amazing stuff! We opted to go with the Canon c100 to accompany our canon 5d mark3’s for a few reasons. First, Dynamic range. The C100 has roughly 12 stops of dynamic range, which in laymen terms means it captures more into the shadows and more into the bright whites at any given time. This gives it a much more Hollywood/cinematic look… Second, are its low light capabilities. This thing is simply amazing! You can shoot around 12,000-18,000 iso with it being a relatively clean image and the grain is a nice small film looking grain that is very pleasing to the eye, not the big micro blocking look associated with some of the older or cheaper camera’s.

New Gear

Having a newer camera’s is also a big benefit if you are trying to get any type of freelance work out there. I’ve received tons of work from New England Production Companies that hire me based on my work paired with my higher end camera kit. For some companies with older camera’s, it’s cheaper to hire me on high-end jobs instead of investing tens of thousands of dollars on newer camera’s, this gives me an advantage I want to hold onto. I could go on and on about the great features of this camera but again, bottom line is, if you have talent behind the camera while filming with a great camera, you’ll be putting out some great stuff that clients will LOVE, which in return will get you more work.