Small cameras can tell big stories

Can you get high quality with smaller cameras?
Watch the video below . . .



OVERHEARD:

Even though I shoot with a Sony Z1U, recently I've been crooning over the A1U. My Z1U camera bag is so large, and so is the camera. I can't take it everywhere with me. I'd love a camera and accessories that I could pack into a regular-sized backpack. Just because I could take it more places.

Angela Grant, Multimedia producer, San Antonio Express-News on her blog, Newsvideographer.

Really small cameras can tell really big stories

I made this film for Angela and every video journalist like her who may need to convince their peers and their bosses of what is Web possible with a lightweight cam like the A1. Hopefully we can save a few backs and a few bucks out there.

The ability to tell really big stories with really small cameras is something that is fascinating to share with colleagues.

I work with editors-in-chief and their staff in many newsrooms and classrooms around the world to develop training and design new workflows and the challenge is to not only raise the quantity, the number of videos a newsroom is able to post online, but the quality of those stories as well.

Web video is an incredibly rich medium, one that print-trained journalists can succeed in.


This video was filmed with a Sony A1U, a Manfrotto monopod (With the tripod legs that stow inside the pole - Costs 114 Euros in Berlin) and the Rode NTG-1 shotgun mic. I don't care much for the shotgun mic that comes bundled with the A1)

Oh, and for waterproofing the filming at the Falls I brought my small bicycling backpack, a two-cent plastic bag and a non-lubricated condom. That is not a typo. A waterproof condom is very handy for using shotgun microphones near water and even underwater. (Thanks to David Dunkley Gyimah for extending my underwater sound recordist knowledge. Always practical, he is.)