Film Gear I was "Influenced" to Buy That I REGRET

we all want the shiny new toy the piece of gear that we think is going to change everything but the only thing that we end up with is a piece of film gear that is useless and collects dust and you know what of course I know this because I've done it so many times in the beginning of my film career it took me making this mistake over and over again to finally realize what a waste of money looks like so today I'm going to talk about some gear that in my opinion is better to rent than buy and we're going to talk about some gear that you definitely shouldn't cheap out of so let's get into it the first piece of gear that I want to talk about that might stir up some controversy definitely in the comments below but for me it was one of the first pieces of gear that I bought that I realized was a complete waste of money the piece of gear that I'm talking about is a gimbal now you might be asking yourself why is a gimbal a useless piece of film gear and in my opinion it's not necessarily useless however during the course of my career I bought plenty of gimbals and I've only used them maybe a hand handful of times on Specialized shots I think that gimbals ultimately end up being a waste of money because when you think about it the cost of renting versus buying a gimbal is astronomical right now you can rent the brand new DJI RS3 Pro for under $50 versus buying this gimbal which could cost you in the neighborhood of $800 an up now if this is something that you are actively using on almost every project then this is something that you definitely need and you should buy my suggestion is really evaluate the kind of shots that you need for projects before you go out and invest $800 in a gimbal that I promise you is going to collect dust unless you use it all the time like I said before in the beginning of my career I I really thought that I needed gimbals for everything and I I went out and I got you know the Ronin M and then the Ronin s and I always thought that I would use them in all my projects but to be honest with you it just ended up being another piece of gear that I would have to make sure that I would charge a battery or or bring on a on a shoot with me and maybe a piece would come missing or I would have to do extra setup time all of it ended up taking away from what truly mattered on a lot of my sets now again I think for specialized shots you need a gimbal you can't do it without it but that's why you need to evaluate do I need this in my everyday workflow or this is this something that I could get away with renting a couple times a year all right so the next piece of gear on this list I hate to say it but I've had a ton of experience with and that is cheap C stands trust me when I tell you guys I know how bad it hurts to spend money on a stand it sucks I hate it every time I get a new light or I get a new product that I have to make sure that I buy a stand for but to be honest with you guys if you guys try to cheap out on this one of two things is going to happen either it's not going to last very long or it's going to break and it's going to break the equipment that it's holding and like I said I only know this because I have experience with it I have tried every SE stand imaginable that was less than 100 bucks and time and time again I was disappointed all they ended up doing was causing me headache time and ending up in the garbage finally when I went out and I spent a decent amount of money on a SE stand that was good and reliable I quickly realized how valuable these SE stands are and I vowed to myself I will never buy another cheap SE stand again and the way that I thought about it that kind of made me feel better about this purchase was these SE stands are like an insurance policy for whatever they're holding up if you're going to spend all of that money on this expensive film gear you need a good insurance policy and that insurance policy is a good SE stand and then on top of all of that we didn't even touch on the fact that these SE stands could be a liability on set especially if they fall over or they break and they hit someone in the head or they hurt a crew member you could be sued for a lot more money than you could ever even dream about saving than if you were to shoot this on a cheap sea stand in my opinion I just think that you know save your money buy one or two SE stands stands instead of a pack of four or five SE stands it's much better to just get quality over quantity on this one now some of the SE stands that I personally recommend are the Matthew C stands and then a couple of other companies that make really great products I'll link all of that in the description down below so you guys can check that out now I know this video is mainly about film gear that you should avoid and not waste your money on but I recently just found this pretty cool light and cand combo from this company called I footage the 200 BNA is an extremely color accurate High colored light that is lightweight and portable it has the ability to add lighting effects such as fireworks TV welding pulsing and more this light also comes with Bowen Mount so you could attach things like soft boxes or Fel lenses to this light and the one thing that I love about this product is the fact that it comes with a really great stand for this light the a400 is a round based monopod now I wouldn't bring this on big Productions and I think this is definitely for smaller Studios or even just like a little YouTube setup like a I have here in my studio but I think it's great because it has such a small footprint and it's extremely easy to set up and use and surprisingly this stand could hold up a pretty heavy payload which is great especially if you want to attach something like a softbox or a Fel lens to this light but for like a little YouTube Studio setup like I have here in in this room it's great and and I would also suggest that if you have like a small little film studio and you know it's going to be kind of like a a set it and forget it type of of lighting situation this is a per Perfect Light in Stand combo which brings me to my next piece of gear that I really want to talk about and that is tripods a good tripod can last you most of your career but a bad tripod is a complete waste of money and just like CS I have had my fair share with bad tripods and you know I would think to myself do I really need an expensive tripod and am I really going to go out and spend you know 5 600 bucks on a tripod that just holds my camera that I feel like I'm barely ever going to use and I couldn't be further from the truth here's the thing about a tripod just like a SE it's an investment into your equipment that it holds up you spend a ton of money on your camera and your rig and your monitor and whatever you have on your rig your tripod is the insurance policy for that camera and if you don't go out and spend a few hundred on a good tripod that's going to be reliable it's going to be easy to use and it's going to be durable and be able to hold up your camera I have bought cheap tripods in the past that literally get tapped and they fall over and I went out and I got myself a nice tripod and it changed my life because every time I shoot an interview or every time I want to shoot something outside I feel safe which is worth every penny so my suggestion to you guys is save your money up and make sure that you get one really good tripod that's going to last you the duration of your career the tripod that I've personally been using for the last couple of years is the small rig free Blazer it's got some really great features and a couple of things that I really like the only issue about that tripod is that it doesn't go very low to the ground so if you need something that needs to be like a very low shot this is probably another the tripod for you but I will link a ton of tripods that I recommend in the description down below so you guys can go ahead and check that out one big regret that I have in the beginning of my career was going out and spending a ton of money on one of those fancy electronic sliders and when I first started that was like the thing to get because it got all these really cool detail shots and really cool motion stabilized shots but to be honest with you guys I've used that thing maybe a handful of times since I bought it and I quickly realized like not only is it a pain in the ass to set up because you got to set up the slider you got to set up the battery you got to set the motion on the thing it takes so long to set up and I quickly realize like throughout my career unless you're working with a really big crew that can set all that stuff up for you it really doesn't make sense for a solo filmmaker to run around with a big heavy electronic slider it really doesn't it's much better to get those shots that you need go handheld get better at shooting handheld or if you need to rent a gimbal or even rent the slider if you absolutely need the slider but I would out and I spent $2,000 on electronic slider quickly ended up being sold for a quarter of the price and I lost a ton of money on it and to be honest with you guys this is another one of those piece of gear that I think is much better to rent than buy now of course if you have the exception of shooting product or food photography all the time and this is something that's going to really come in handy on your every day shoot then sure go out and buy this thing but to be honest with you it's just like the gimbal in the sense of like you got to evaluate how many times that you think you're going to be able to use this thing and then go see how much it costs to rent and I believe that these sliders are going to cost you anywhere between like 75 to 150 bucks to rent versus spending $1,500 to $2,000 on buying them so again just good rule of thumb evaluate how many times you're going to use it and go see how much it's going to cost to rent it okay now the next piece of gear again is probably going to stir up some controversy and I'm probably going to get a ton of comments down below saying that this isn't true true or you know whatever it is but in my opinion I think a piece of gear that I wasted a lot of money on was a drone now just like the Gimbal and the slider it really depends on the kind of content that you make if you're doing real estate or travel videography or something that films a lot of Nature Documentaries a drone is a must have but for most filmmakers I guarantee you that you've used your drone for a handful of projects and ultimately the projects that are paying you to use that drone are probably not even paying you enough to use that drone again if you're a drone operator if you're a drone pilot this is something that you do all the time yes definitely go out and buy it but if you don't already have work for it or you're not getting asked to shoot a lot of stuff with the Drone I guarantee you it's going to collect dust I mean I bought the mavic Pro 3 when it first came out and I was super excited to get this thing up in the air and start using it and I thought to myself you know what I'm going to use it on every single one of my documentary prod projects I'm going to start shooting stock footage with it I'm going to make my money back somehow some way and the truth is I really didn't I used it on one or two projects that really needed it which I could have hired a drone operator for that and saved money or I could have tried to rent it and save money and then it collected dust this is one of those things that I I really feel like you have to evaluate is it worth it to rent versus buy and the other thing that you have to think about is depreciation it feels like DJI comes out with a new drone every single year and since I bought the mavic 3 there has been a ton of mavic Minis that have come out the three the four that I think that I would have been better suited for if you're thinking about buying a drone and it's not something that's going to pay for itself really think about renting it and also think about like do I really need all the specs of the most expensive drone and that's a great rule of thumb to think about for any and all film gear that you're thinking about buying do I really need all these specs for the project that I'm shooting on or do I want to just buy it because it's the shiny new toy now the last piece of gear on this list unfortunately I've had a ton of experience with and that is buying cheap hard drives and ssds and media cards I'm going to bundle all three of these together because the truth is you should just never do it go out and buy a good quality hard drive SSD media card for your camera all of this stuff is so important again a lot like the SE and the tripod it's an insurance policy on theot footage that you're shooting and not even just the footage that you're shooting it's the insurance policy for your client we have big projects that we go out and shoot sometimes $5,000 projects 10 20 30 $100,000 projects we cannot afford bad media that is going to either waste our time or put a bad taste in a client's mouth and lose that client forever and again I'm only telling you guys this cuz I've done it I went out and I bought a cheap hard drive to store footage in for a client that I had to send it to and you know we shot the whole project we shot it in 2 days we put it in the hard drive and I send it out and between the time that I sent out the hard drive and they got it I deleted the footage because I didn't have any other storage space to put it on I didn't have anywhere to put that extra footage or back it up anywhere but I thought to myself it's on a hard drive it's already in transit it's safe it's good Well turns out that they got that hard drive out and because I bought a cheap $80 hard drive from Walmart they got this thing out and for one reason or another it was corrupted they couldn't access the files and they're like hey can you send out another hard drive well no I can't send out another hard drive because I just deleted everything they were absolutely Furious and it was a huge mess and a nightmare so my suggestion to you is when it comes to Media spend the extra money and get yourself that piece of mind and please do not forget to back up your footage that's it that's all I have for you guys today I really hope that gives you guys some insight on which gear to buy and which gear to rent and hopefully some bad gear to stay away from and if you guys are interested in learning more about film making and the gear that you need to produce high-end cinematography my team and I have been putting together a course for the last couple of years and we plan on releasing it this year and if you guys are interested in that I'll put a link right up here or down below you guys can sign up to the email list and be the first to be notified as soon as this course drops I want to thank you guys so much for stopping in hanging out and uh see you next week deuces

Channel: Alex Zarfati

Views: 18,997

Keywords: Documentary Filmmaker, alex zarfati, Documentary Filmmaking for beginners, How to make a Documentary, film gear, film gear for beginners, film gear under 100, bad film gear, filmmaking equipment, cinema camera, cinema lenses, fx3, fx30, bmpcc 6k pro, zoom lens, prime lens, lighting kit, film tips, filmmaking tips, filmmaking course, filmmaking for beginners, gear review, camera gear reviews, film gear review

Id: eaFemV1Ne1I

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024