tHe WeddiNg ANd eVeNts issue
13 Products
You Need to
Add Hd Video
to Your
BusiNess
Video educator Eduardo Angel helps us rank the
essential gear for shooting high def. By dan Havlik
Getting started with shooting HD video is a lot like the weather. Everybody’s talking about it but nobody’s sure what to do about it. This is partially because shooting HD is more intimidating for photographers than anyone wants to admit.
For starters, there’s all the extra gear you need, and
we’re not just talking about the dozen or so HD-DSLRs
screaming for your attention at the local camera store.
To help you figure out what you really need to add HD
video to your business, we spoke with photography
and video educator Eduardo Angel ( www.eduardoan-
gel.com) about the essential pieces of gear—in order
of importance—to get you rolling.
1. LENSES
If you want to get serious about shooting HD for brides
and other clients, you’ve got to get serious about your
lenses. In other words, don’t be a cheapskate.
“You want fast lenses and sharp lenses and the qual-
ity is really important,” Angel says. “You get what you
pay for.” He added that lens quality is crucial for cam-
eras with full-frame sensors—such as the recently an-
nounced Canon 5D Mark III and Nikon D800—because
they capture so much detail. “Those sensors are so
huge and HD video is so sharp and so big that every-
thing shows. If you don’t have a sharp lens, then you’re
really out of luck.”
At the same time, he noted you don’t need as wide
a maximum aperture in your lenses as you do for por-
trait photography. “F/1.4 or f/1.8 is a myth. The subject
is moving in video and keeping something sharp at
f/1.4 when it is moving is nearly impossible.”
He suggests aiming for a lens with an f/2.8 aperture
since it offers a good combination of low-light capa-
bilities and dramatic background blur. His personal fa-
vorite is the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. “It’s great for
interviews because you can be far enough away from
your subject, that you won’t intimidate them. It also
gives you a lot of range to frame the scene without
having to move the camera much.”
2. CAMERA
Though many people might tell you to start with the
camera, Angel doesn’t think it’s as critical as it once
was. “We used to buy a camera—a Hasselblad body
or a Nikon F—and slowly add lenses and that was our
system. Now the camera is the most disposable part
of your gear. Camera life expectancy is 12 to 18 months
and they’re affordable enough that you can swap bod-
ies and continue using everything else.”
As with still photography, the type of camera you
choose depends on what type of HD videos you plan
to shoot. If you’re planning to capture locations, ar-
chitecture or other wide subject matter, go with a
full-frame camera because it won’t magnify your
lenses. If you want to shoot interviews of wedding
guests, you might be better off with a DSLR with an
APS-C size chip to get closer to your subject. The most
important rule, however, is to maintain uniformity
across your system.
“You’re going to need more than one camera for
shooting video and if it’s not the same model, you
should match the same sensor size, which helps in
post production and editing. I try to keep the same
aspect ratio for everything I shoot. Also, don’t start
mixing and matching brands because then you’ll
have to match file formats later and more time is
wasted in post.”
