Testing 5 "Budget" Alternatives to Overpriced Film Gear

in this video we're going to take a look at whether or not some of the most popular quote unquote budget pieces of film making gear can do a really professional job or if they're all just a waste of money hearing film making gear and affordable in the same sentence usually makes me a little bit suspicious and over the course of my career as a documentary cinematographer I've spent more money than I want to think about building up a professional kit I mean my main camera is worth more than my car by a lot which maybe says more about my car than my camera but still if I added up the cost of everything it would probably be enough for a down payment on a house instead of the small apartment I actually live in and rent the problem is that most budget gear just won't stand up to the stress of professional work and since I don't believe in buying cheap stuff that's just going to end up in a landfill in a year or so I usually have no choice but to go with the expensive versions even if they feel crazy overpriced but through the magic of running a YouTube channel I recently got my hands on a few pieces of budget gear that I genuinely loved and now live in my kit fulltime and so I wanted to see if some of the other most popular lowcost Alternatives I've seen promoted on YouTube could hold up in the same way so I made a list of some of the common lower budget alternatives to expensive items and then reached out to the brands to see if they'd let me try them out and actually a surprising number of them said yes and so today we're going to run through five pieces of gear that cost less than the pro versions to see which of them holds up and which of them I'd actually invest in [Music] myself so let me start out here with one of the things that actually gave me the idea for this video in the first place cuz in the film industry and probably most other Industries there are usually a couple of standout products that become like household names for things that do a similar job like how we say Kleenex instead of facial tissue or Coke instead of sparkling Cola beverage well in the production world cadles are one of those things if you don't know what a caddle is it's basically a giant bean bag with a strap that you can use in a bunch of different ways to support your camera they're amazingly versatile and they're a standard part part of a lot of documentary rental packages I love cine Saddles and what they do but the only problem is they cost $400 I'm sorry that's insane for a bean bag I mean it might be a military spec bean bag but it's still just a bean bag and in the last few months especially on Instagram I've been getting absolutely blasted by heads from a company called Sac spelled sakk which makes a similar product that looked like it would do just as well as a caddle but for less than half the price so I ignored the bombardment of ads I was getting and I reached out to the company directly to ask if I could have a look at one for myself to see if it would really be just as good and a few weeks later this guy showed up in the mail a sack works exactly like a caddle wood and you can use it as a stable surface for ground level shooting like a low-l tripod or what I do most often is hang it around my neck and then use it as a rest for my camera rig not only is this more stable than a pure handheld shot from the chest or the hip but it takes the weight out of your arms and it means I can shoot for a lot longer it's kind of like a poor man's easy rig but with the added advantage that you can get it in and out of cars and it takes up way less space and speaking of cars when you do have to throw a camera in the back seat uh that's another perfect time to use something like this because it keeps everything stable and secure while you're driving just put the seat belt around it and it's a really locked in little platform there's a lot of uses for these kinds of bags and if you're doing Run and Gun stuff and long days of handheld work they can be a real Lifesaver and for all these things the sack works great but the real question is whether or not it's as good as the more expensive product is trying to compete with and the answer is no it's not as good which I realize is maybe not the most optimistic start to a video about budget Alternatives but I do have to say what I really think and I promise it gets more optimistic later I have a ton of experience with C Saddles and I can say that it is a lot more flexible where the sack is pretty rigid which means it's a lot harder to conform to the exact shapes you want the caddle also has a strap that's easier to adjust and a lot more comfortable and the fabric is more premium and tough feeling if I had to choose between the two of them I'd probably pick pick the C saddle every time but if I was paying with my own credit card then things get a little bit more complicated because the sack does all the same things and for way less for me as someone who does this full-time and makes 100% of my income with the camera I wouldn't buy the sack I'd pay the extra for the caddle because it's just built better is it built $200 better though no probably not if you're a little earlier on in your career or you don't use your gear in crazy high pressure environments like I do and you want to get let's say 70% the way there for less than half the price the Zack is great and it can make your life way easier this is a lowcost solid alternative but just as good as the pro alternative It's s I know but I swear it gets better so let's move on and since that interaction was the whole reason I decided to make this video in the first place maybe this is a good time to go over just a couple ground rules quickly no money exchange hands for any of these products and I'm not including any affiliate links to any of the things so there is no Financial motive for me whatsoever there is one and only one sponsor of this video and that's audio but I'm not going to talk about them until later other than that though I didn't get paid by these companies and no one gets to see the video before I released it I asked for the gear and they sent it to me which I won't lie is a real perk of running a YouTube channel but for anyone who might think that getting stuff for free makes me say good things that's just not true because I'm highly selective about what I mentioned on this channel and I honestly say no to about 90% of the promotional offers I get and if I wouldn't buy it myself I'll tell you just like I did with the sack even as I say that I know that there's a small fraction of people out there that are going to get mad in the coms ments and they'll call me a sellout or a shill or whatever and they'll say they don't trust anyone who gets free gear but I've been doing this for 15 years like way before I ever had a channel and honestly I'm at a point in my career when I have all the gear or at least most of the budget I need to get the gear that I need for the job so for the few people out there getting ready to write out angry comments just calm down and then probably write them out anyways cuz the internet's got an internet at the end of the day all right disclaimer and rant over next up I want to talk about something that caught me most off guard when I was pricing out my first Cinema rig years ago which maybe sounds familiar to some of you watching and that's how expensive it is to power them and I'm talking about batteries here just in case that wasn't clear because when I decided to start running bigger monitors on my rig instead of the stock LCD screen so I could actually see what I was doing I realized pretty quickly that I was going to have to switch my power source and start using bigger batteries with the dtop output and that really boils down to vmount or gold Mount I went with vmount just because they're a little bit more common which makes them a bit more versatile for powering lights and accessories and directors monitors and whatever but gold Mount is probably more common on really big sets because it's supposedly a more secure locking mechanism doesn't really matter though because they both pretty much do the same thing at the end of the day and they're both shockingly expensive to get started with like right now I power my fx9 with these Anton bow Titan batteries and these things are like 4 something dollars each us and the cheapest charger they make is another 300 with the more professional fast charger that I use running around $11,000 so that means to get enough power to shoot for most of a day which for me is somewhere between four to six batteries depending on the day you're looking at between 2, $3,500 just for power now for me working on really big shows that money is probably worth it just to have the very best battery sell technology even if it sting but for a lot of people especially when you're starting out that might be more than their camera cost to begin with and even for me there's all sorts of things I use V mounts for where I don't really need the absolute highest quality batteries on Earth but at the same time a lot of offbrand batteries are just so cheap and not worth the money cuz they're just going to end up in a landfill in a couple of years which is something I'm not down with now luckily we're living in a time of crazy technological advancements in camera gear and batteries are no exception like these mini 99 C's from C TV now I knew when I was making this video I wanted to find a lowcost battery option to include on the list and of all the categories this is the one where I was most skeptical but after taking these on two shoots now including an international doc production I've been pleasantly surprised actually I think at the time of recording anyways these batteries aren't actually available yet to the public but KTV said I could have a look at them for this video but they're going to be less than $200 I think just under 180 actually and I'm happy to say they are not cheap and disposable feeling at all these are like professional grade batteries to me and they even have some features that my much more expensive batteries don't like dual USB ports and this little info screen that lights up and actually tells me accurately how much battery and power I'm drawing the Anton Bower does tell me some readings but has much more minimal information and there's only one USB a port on here so I can charge uh things a lot faster using these and I can charge 2 things at once so surprisingly more useful but maybe the biggest reason why these things are an exciting option for me is because they charge via USBC only by being able to charge via USB all you need is a fast charger from Amazon and you can top these things up to full power in Just over an hour I can see doing this in my car or a plane or in a bunch of random places where it'd be really annoying to get out a normal charger and set up a charging station and on top of that it means you don't need to buy a charger which also saves you hundreds of extra dollars I found a ridiculous number of uses for these things and even this little tie which I thought I was going to cut off right away has also become really helpful because I can hang it off of a tripod like I'm doing right now on the fx3 and running a cable straight into camera so that I don't need to change batteries during this long take of a YouTube video so if you're just getting into vmount systems or if you're looking for bigger batteries to run your lights and accessories and you don't need like the Ferrari of batteries to do it keep your eye on these mini 99 C's because I think they're going to be released really soon am I getting rid of my Anton Bowers no no obviously not the mini 99's are going to be used mainly to power my fx3 and my lights like I said but even if you're mainly running higher-end batteries like me most of the time these are perfect backups that don't need a charger and can run all of your accessories they're really well built and extremely useful for a fraction of the price and I 100% would buy these with my own money okay next I want to talk about lights because we really are living in a golden age of lighting technology when it comes to film making I would almost never have been able to haul big tungsten lights into most of the locations I work in and even if I did they draw so much power I would have needed a generator to run them LEDs have changed all that and now there's no reason not to bring in additional lights on your dock shoots but you know all that already but of all the types of LEDs available to Doc filmmakers apart from your big chipon board key light style like a 300D or 600D or whatever tube lights are one of the most useful tools a DP can have in their kit tube lights are great for making big soft sources and the good ones can be color matched to anything and you can get them into all sorts of tight spots they don't weigh that much they look great and they have internal batteries so you don't need to bother with a lot of cabling and up until recently for me anyways the king of tube lights have been the quars or the Titan tubes and maybe I shouldn't say were the Kings because if you have a massive budget I'm sure you're probably going to stick with the Titan tubes the Titan 8 light kits are probably the most common on big sets and I have no issues with them actually I've got a ton of experience using them and they're great except that they cost $8,300 which is like 10 grand in my adorable Canadian dollars and while I love gear that's just not going to happen for me when it comes to tube lights in the Indie world there's really only one brand that jumps to mind and that's the nanlite Pavo tubes so I reached out to the nanlite rep and told them I was making this video and they sent me out some of these to try these are the second gen 4ft Pavo tubes 30X to be specific and that's pretty cool of them so thank you these aren't new and I'm sure you've heard of these before there are also a ton of other companies that make tube lights out there that cost even less than these but for me these Pavo tubes hit the perfect sweet spot of price versus build quality because like I said I hate disposable Tech and because of the high press nature of a lot of the shows I work on as a DP I can't take risks with gear that isn't reliable just to be totally transparent I also used to not really trust the first gen Pavo tubes because the build quality just wasn't there and I didn't think they'd last very long and I still sort of feel that way about a lot of entry-level lighting gear but nanlite seems to be pulling a bit of an aperture move here by leveling up from the budget world to the more Pro or Pro Market whatever you want to call it they're well designed they're well weighted they feel solid in the hands and I feel good about the fact that they're going to last for years and not end up as e-w like some of the mega cheap ones out there a set of four of them is going for $15.99 right now on B&H and if you need the full eight lights and the Pelican case and all that it's still under 4 grand Which is less than half of the price of the Titans and from my experience with them you're not really giving up anything in terms of design or functionality unlike the sack these I absolutely would spend my own money on over the Titan tubes and I keep all four of them in my lighting kit permanently now I just kind of wish I hadn't waited so long to try them out for myself because I really could have used them on a bunch of shoots last year and speaking of high quality Investments on a budget this is a good time to talk about audio the sponsor of today's video because I really do think they're the best deal out there for filmmakers looking for royalty-free music look you've heard of all these Services before but whether it's for a personal project or a job or a client or online content like YouTube getting good music to use without getting suit is a challenge all filmmakers face these days to solve this problem all sorts of companies popped up offering royalty-free music and if you're anything like me you've probably seen their ads all over YouTube for years now but the problem I've always had with them is that they're really expensive and most of them cost hundreds of dollars a year that I didn't love paying then last year I teamed up with audio and realized that it doesn't have to cost so much to get the music you need actually for viewers of this channel who use the code Luke 199 you can get a lifetime membership for a royalty-free music for just 199 bucks which is the same price most of these Services charge per year I can't even remember the last time I was allowed to buy a lifetime membership to something maybe it was Da Vinci resolve I Don't Know audio is going to keep expanding their catalog constantly so buying in early for one low price that you can keep for the rest of your life seems like a no-brainer to me I personally haven't needed any other source of royaltyfree Music since I started using audio so like everything else on this list it's something I genuinely use in my professional workflow it just happens to be a way better deal than everything out there in my opinion okay back to the video once you start traveling with grip equipment and larger lights it gets harder and harder to figure out how to transport it all like right now my minimum interview kit has at least a tripod three light stands a light Dome 2 a boom pole and now the 4ft Pavo tubes as well I used to cram it all into the longest duffel bag I own but I started to break things in that bag cuz there was no protection and it would just get crushed under the plane so I started looking on B&H for a more Burly production bag that would roll through an airport and the first first one I thought about was the $649 think tank production manager which to be fair looked awesome now I love think tank as a company and I do already own a bunch of their bags like pouches and a backpack and another roller style bag but that's like $900 Canadian dollars with import fees and taxes and I'm sorry but that's Madness for a big suitcase the only thing I could find though that was affordable but looked like it might do the same job was a rolling SE case made by newer who I'm sure you all know is one of the biggest budget manufacturers I was slightly nervous about this one because I was gearing up for a pretty intense shoot in the desert in Arizona like I said and I knew that if it sucked I wouldn't have the time to replace it before I left I've had hit and miss experiences with newer stuff in the past but I wanted to try it out in the real world before making this video so I reached out to them anyways and luckily the gamble paid off I'm not going to hold this suitcase up because it's like 50 in Long like over my head but it was able to load up with all of the awkwardly shaped things in my kit and it handled it like a champ I felt so much better about having my tripod and lights and all that stuff under the plane in a beefy padded box instead of a duffel bag and the wheels made it way easier to move so if you're a shooter like me who has to travel a lot with grip gear and tripods and tubes and boom poles and flag kits and other long fragile items I think you'll be as happy with this one as I am so yes I'd buy this one with my own money though if I had an unlimited budget or if I own a rental house the think tank will probably hold up better over time okay so let's wrap this one out with one more product that solved a problem that was previously very expensive and that's how to Output wireless video feeds without spending thousands of dollars on a pter system or whatever and a monitor on a big set that might make sense but for Shooters like me who only need to Output to video Village or a director's monitor some of the time those prices just don't make sense now there are some free ways to do this usually it's an app that'll sync your phone to your camera and some of them are okay but they're honestly not great I used monitor Plus for a while with my Sony cameras and it worked some of the time maybe most of the time not some of the time and other times it was just way too finicky and I ended up giving up on it if you upgrade your firmware the Sony Imaging Edge or whatever that app is called works a lot better now but I still wouldn't use that for sending a Dependable signal to a director but for a long time there was no middle ground it was either really cheap or way too expensive until these guys showed up and that's the Hol land Mars 4K system these aren't new or anything and I actually already gave them award for the most dis eruptive film making Tech in my gear of the Year Awards last month but they're so good it's worth mentioning again the beauty of these is that yes you can pair them to send a signal to another monitor like you normally would and even with the cost of the monitor it's still going to be way cheaper than higher end options but I'm personally using them in another way most of the time I just use this the transmitter and then I send it to an iPad that I use as a monitor when it's time to shoot I put the iPad inside a heavy duty case with a neck strap and then you have a highquality lowle director monitor you can just hand off to someone without having to buy more screens even if you don't have an iPad you can get a used iPad Mini for super cheap on Facebook Marketplace or much cheaper than a video monitor with these Wireless functionalities anyways if you just use the transmitter and an iPad then you're looking at sub 500 bucks including the iPad and that's a great deal for someone like me if you already have an iPad or a monitor the transmitter is 350 bucks and that's what I'd go with if I was spending my own money I can't stress enough how much a director is going to appreciate you if you drw an iPad around their neck that they can watch the camera feed from and it makes you look like a total Superstar I just got back from a shoot like I said where it was the first time I was working with that new production company and so for the first few scenes we shot I gave them the iPad to reassure them to be able to see what I was shooting as I shot it removed a lot of their fears about whether or not I was getting the coverage they needed and it gave us all a ton of confidence that we were on the same page I also used this setup a ton as a reference monitor when I was setting up a lot of high-end interview setup UPS while recording the new Advanced lighting setups for the re-release of my documentary cinematography course coming up next month and it meant that I didn't have to run back and forth the camera every 2 seconds so it seriously sped things up if you work on a Hollywood set you're probably going to stick with what you know and that's cool but for all the small Crews and dock teams out there this is the best affordable option I found that I trust i' definitely buy this one with my own money no doubt so there we go five affordable options to overpriced film making gear of them all I love the Mars 4K system and the Pavo tubes the most these are incredible value products I was also pleasantly surprised with the newer bag and K TV batteries which I would be happy to buy myself any day and the sac the company that started this whole video in the first place well the sac is fine it does what it needs to do and it's fairly priced but unlike the other items on this list there is a noticeable difference between the sac and its more high-end competitor the cine saddle I'd never tell you to buy cheap gear because cheap means it has to be replaced but four out of the five things I talked about today are now permanently in my professional kit after testing them out in the desert and they just happen to be affordable without sacrificing usefulness in build and is always when I say affordable we're talking relatively affordable because let's face it none of this stuff is really affordable but that's just the film making business anyways I hope that one was helpful and if there's anything I forgot that you would have put on this list comment below for the benefit of all the gear nerds like me out there and if you're into all this kind of stuff my documentary cinematography course goes deep into gear and it's opening again March 6th so check out the link in the description because the last intake sold out in Just 4 days see [Music] you

Channel: Luc Forsyth

Views: 77,135

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Id: z80lX9Ea-7M

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024