New Camera, New Opportunities

Courtesy of Emmanuel Pampuri

Since the start of the year, one of my biggest aims for TotallyMedia was to purchase a higher-quality camera. As for any videographer, this is an extremely exciting prospect. It offers me the chance to access new features or recording settings that will consequently enhance the overall 'look' of the finished product. However, while that may sound like an easy task to accomplish, finding the right camera at a reasonable price with desirable specifications has proven to be fairly challenging to say the least.

Back in January, I applied for funding in order to upgrade my current equipment. With up to £3000 available for start-up businesses, I had my eye on a Sony PXW-X70 camera as well as other items. No matter who I spoke to on my university course, all the lecturers seemed to recommend the X70 due to its recording capabilities and price. Fortunately, after submitting my application, I was invited to pitch to the nest team explaining my business, why I should be awarded the funding and what I intended to use it for. Overall, I was very happy with my presentation as a lot of work had gone into planning a strong argument and designing the PowerPoint slides to promote the TotallyMedia brand.

Example slides from the funding pitch

Despite my best efforts, I didn't manage to receive any funding which, I'll admit, left me somewhat disappointed. I had multiple upcoming high-profile filming events for which I had hoped to use the Sony X70. My only other option was to loan filming equipment from the university's loan store when I needed it. However, I knew it wouldn't be feasible for me to loan equipment from Portsmouth to be used at locations such as Birmingham and Worcester (and return it within a few days). For the time being, it seemed that I would have to find an alternative method of improving the quality of my projects using my current equipment.

Courtesy of A&S Broadcast Limited

Towards the end of February, TotallyMedia was to film a highlights video of the National Basketball League Cup Finals at the University of Worcester Arena. While I had no new camera at my disposal, I still wanted to find a way of improving the video quality. Thankfully, during February, I'd started to archive footage and files from previous projects by purchasing a Dropbox account so that I had far more space on my hard drives for media storage. Therefore, this client project offered an opportunity to film at 50 frames per second (as opposed to 25) for the first time.

Filming at 50fps was a feature on my camera that I had always wanted to try. The only thing keeping me from ever using this setting was the size of the video files. With twice as many frames being recorded, the video quality appears smoother (which is highly beneficial when filming sports) but also means the size of recording would be twice as big. Even with the additional Dropbox space, I calculated just how much space I would need for the project recording at 50fps (approximately 95GB). Thankfully, by the end of the finals weekend, I had plenty of space for all of the rushes, which totalled at around 80GB, and as for the finished edit, myself and the client were very happy.

You'll be glad to hear that very recently, I finally purchased a new camera that I'd been researching and eyeing-up since January. While it isn't as expensive as the X70, it does offer a perfect balance of everything I need at an affordable price. However, throughout the course of this venture, I realise that I've taken away a lot more than just the camera. For example, I organised and presented a business pitch, archived old footage allowing me to film at 50fps and produced a high-quality video project with the prospect of future work with the client. It's amazing to think that all this happened in the time it took me to find, save up for and buy new equipment. Overall, I've managed to summarise the lesson learned from this blog post into one short phrase:

'Just because you can't have something now doesn't mean you'll never get it.'