Sunday, December 26, 2010

Cinevate Franken Medusa Video Rig

Now, THERE'S a blog title! Actually, it just describes the frankenstein-esque character of this rig, however it works. Since I'm a one-man-band out in the wilds when I do my nature video shooting, I need a setup that can do everything at once.

In a nutshell, this rig enables me to shoot and record with two dslr cameras at the same time. A Canon 7D is shooting extreme closeups with its 100-400mm telephoto lens and a Canon 5D Mark 2 is capturing the overall scene with a 24-70mm wide angle lens. Later on I can combine the footage of these two cameras while editing with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. To sync it all together I now turn to Singular Software's Plural Eyes program which saves me many hours of painstaking toil aligning the various camera tracks.

Here's an example of the dual footage that I shot out my living room window today (with a few cats watching intently) -- a squirrel raiding our birdfeeder and nearby a Downie woodpecker munching on some suet.

Shooting with the Cinevate Franken Medusa from David Rilstone on Vimeo.



Cinevate is the company that manufactures the components found in this rig. Located in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, I found the staff and even the president himself, Dennis Woods, extremely helpful and involved in helping me put this camera setup together.

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