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Cameras
Lenses
Current:
Canon mount:
Nikon mount:
- Samyang 14mm T3.5 Cine (B&H, Amazon)
- Nikon 28mm f/2.8 (hardly ever use this) (B&H, Amazon)
- Nikon 50mm f/1.2 (B&H, Amazon)
- Nikon 135mm f/2 DC (B&H, Amazon)
Sony Mount:
Rig
Lens Adapters:
- Canon EF to RF “Basic” Adapter (Amazon, B&H)
- Metabones G to E Mount
- Fotodiox ND Throttle F to E Mount
- Aputure LensRegain EF to MFT
- FTZ Nikon adapter for Z to F mount (Amazon, B&H)
- Generic adapters for PL, Mamiya 645, EF, etc.
Cage: Universal Cage (Amazon | B&H). Here’s my review of it:
Baseplates:
- Desmond DAC-02 60mm and Kirk QRC-1 Quick Release Clamps, Sunfoto
- OConnor Universal Baseplate – the best baseplate in the world
- Pro VCT-U14 – I recommend an original Sony or JVC
Follow Focus:
- Current: Gondor, from CAME-TV (Don’t recommend it!)
- Wish List: Arri MMF-2 or better.
Matte Box:
Rods: Generic, steel and aluminum, 15mm LWS
ND Filters
- 4×5.65: Formatt Firecrest IRNDs (B&H, Amazon), Cavision graduated (I don’t recommend Cavision)
- 4×4 and circular: Hoya, Haida, Lee, etc.
Battery Solutions
Batteries:
- 135 Wh FXLION x2 (Gold mount), 95 Wh Rolux (V mount) – these work fine.
- Wish List: Anton Bauer
- Anker power banks
- For Panasonic, Wasabi batteries.
- Various P-tap to dummy battery adapters
- Cheap knock-offs from Ebay
Adapters:
- Wooden Camera Gold Mount Plate for the A7s (works on all a7 series cameras, really well built). I use dummy adapters for the Z6 and BMPCC 4K/6K as well.
- For the Shogun: Dolgin D-tap to D-tap cable – is dependable.
Chargers:
- Sony chargers (crappy slow chargers!)
- Canon chargers
- Knock offs from Ebay – you need at least two chargers!
Support:
- Wooden Camera Battery Slide (Excellent product)
- Generic railblock, cheeseplate, accessories – mostly from Ebay
Tripod and Head
Fluid head: Cartoni FocusHD and SCG T8
Ball head: Arca Swiss Monoball P0 with panning system (B&H, Amazon) – a beauty but doesn’t play well with third-party plates.
Tripod:
- Benro A3570T aluminium legs with a 100mm to 3/8″ adapter/riser. (Discontinued model)
- Flyfilms 100mm tripod for studio/teleprompter use – I do not recommend this, very flimsy for field use.
- SCT 100mm tripod – not as good as their head.
Wish List: OConnor 1030D with a Sachtler Flowtech 100
Video Recorder
Atomos Shogun with Intel 530 240GB (B&H, Amazon) and Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD drives
External Monitor
- On-camera: Atomos Shogun
- 24″ Production: FSI DM240
Microphones
Shotgun: Sennheiser ME66/K6
Wishlist: MKH-series, but yet to decide.
Wired Lavaliers:
- Audio Technica 3350 (Do not recommend these at all, poor EMI shielding!)
- Rode SmartLav+ (Do not recommend these due to average audio quality, but fine for YouTube vlogging)
- Wishlist: Sanken COS-11D
Cables: MX (Indian brand)
Zepellin and Pole: K-Tek + K-GPS Kit
Audio Recorder
Current: Tascam DR-60D (I)
Wish List: Sound Devices
USB Adapter: Shure X2U XLR to USB Adapter (I use this to directly record into computer)
Monitoring Headphones
Miscellaneous
Lightmeter: Sekonic L478D
Rechargeable AA Batteries and Charger: Eneloop Pro/XX
Cleaning Kit: Zeiss and Giottos Rocket Large
Bags:
- Walk-around photography: Pisen (Nat Geo clone, but tough as hell)
- Work: Thinktank Retrospective 30
- Storage: Pinnacle (local manufacturer) hard case and custom foam
- Backpack and for carry-on flying: Osprey Talon 44 with a locally-made custom camera enclosure for the full rig
Color Chart: DSC Labs OneShot Pocket
All kinds of lights, from LEDs to Tungsten/Halogen and DIY Fluorescent banks, photo stands, C-stands, rigging adapters and gear, and an iPad teleprompter.
Check out Wolfcrow Studio for our range of lights and modifiers.
Macbook Pros, Windows Workstation, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Adam A7X for monitoring.
Software
Editing: DaVinci Resolve Studio
Audio: DaVinci Resolve Studio and Apple Logic Pro X
Effects, Grading and Finishing: DaVinci Resolve Studio
Photos and Images: GIMP
Player: VLC and Quicktime, whatever works.
Online Video: Vimeo Pro and YouTube
Music: Logic Pro X
Computer
Workstation: 1950x Threadripper Build
- Primary grading monitor: FSI DM240
- 4K GUI Monitor: LG 32UD59 (Do not recommend)
- 2nd GUI Monitor 1080p: Dell
Calibration: XRite i1Display Pro (B&H, Amazon)
Secondary Work drive: Areca 4-bay 5026 Thunderbolt (B&H, Amazon) with Seagate Barracuda 3TB drives, total 12 TB in RAID 10 (usable 6TB). I get about 1 GB/s at best, and on average about 400-500 MB/s.
Storage NAS: Synology DS1817+ (Amazon) with various 10TB Enterprise drives. No RAID or JBOD, just separate drives.
Wacom Intuos tablet (B&H, Amazon)
External disks I use (all USB 3.0):
- Samsung T5/T7
- Seagate 4TB
- WD 1TB
- HGST Touro 1TB – my favorite 7200 rpm drives for editing. The others are all 5400rpm.
- Transcend 1TB
Midi Keyboard: Korg microKey 37 (Amazon, B&H)
Current mobile phone: iPhone 8 Plus.
4 replies on “My Gear List”
Thank you so much for all of your amazing guides. I absolutely love the fight night short film. Which would be the better camera for taking photos and videography, the Gh5 or Nikon Z6 with Atamos Ninja V? Thank you again for generous contributions to the videography/filmmakers community.
You’re welcome. For both I’d pick a Canon or Sony.
Hi Sareesh.
Thanks for all your articles and videos. They are often enlightening and always fun.
On the sound side, and speaking as someone who has been doing sound for more than 40 years (studio, live, film and artistic), I have some suggestions.
For mics it has to be DPA, lav and shotgun. The DPAs are neutral, robust and the off axis roll off is even. You can hide their lavs anywhere in a set or on a body and the sound will match the shotgun naturally with little post. I use pretty much nothing else, apart from Soundfield Ambisonic and a few Schoeps and Neumann. Oh yeah and DPA lavs are trundling around Mars as I type.
As a recorder, if budget allows, an Aaton Cantar. Expensive but robust, logical, well thought out and impeccable sound. If budget is tight a Zoom F8. Damned fine for the money and they will actually listen if you suggest a firmware change ( if you speak to the right person).
As for software, Fairlight is great and comes with Resolve. But I find myself using Reaper much more of the time. An amazing bit of code and I can mix in immersive, Ambi or Atmos or whatever. It is light on computer resources (more channels and plugins than anything else) and it sounds great. It’s cross platform and cool.
Keep up the good work and stay as sane as present viral circumstance allows.
Thank you for the DPA suggestion, Matt, I’ll check them out. Sadly, there’s no way to test microphones in India (dealers don’t have most models), which is why I’ve reserved my decision.