Pocket Wizards: Not Just for Flashes
YouTube filmmaker (and occasional still photographer) Chase Jarvis is at it again, this time showing his technique for remote cams that follow the action.
If you have already dropped the coin for Pocket Wizards, you may as well go the full monty and get a camera trigger cord and a Bogen Magic Arm. This will allow you to stick your camera in some really cool places, as Chase's video shows.
More info, including still pix and a list of the related gear he uses, here.
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Posted at 12:51 AM.
16 Comments:
Great information and very inspiration. Thanks for the link.
I was having a look at the prices for the Bogen Magic Arm, and they're a lot more expensive than I was expecting! Do you know of any cheaper alternatives?
(I suppose I could get one shipped over from the US - that would be a lot cheaper for me....)
The prices I saw were about $120, or about £100 in the UK (which is currently the same as about $200)
That is sweet! Man, it makes me wish I could afford some PWs. I loved the shots from down low with the camera facing the rider. Now, how could you use off camera lighting in a setup like this?
Awesome ideas! Great find!
I really like the chest harness idea. Here is one of my shots from a while ago, very similar to one of the setups he did. I was thinking "that was my idea" :)
http://liquidinplastic.vox.com/library/post/self-portrait-cycling.html?_c=feed-atom
There have been some very nervous times with me and a super clamp... here is one where the camera is clamped to the rear bumper.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7758847@N02/1146468370/
Pardon my ignorance guys but what's a pre-trigger cable? What do it eat for breakfast and why do I need one?
PhiL
Chase is doing a really great job with his goal of "letting people see behind the scenes"!
Chase Jarvis is my hero. I love that he takes time to show us how he gets those amazing photos. Thanks!
If you're not into paying $100+ for a cord, I assume you can purchase a shutter release cord like this for $12, cut the cable in half, put a 3.5mm stereo jack (female) on the side with the switch, and put a 3.5mm stereo plug (male) on the side with the stupid proprietary connector for your camera.
You can still use the cable release this way (just plug one into the other) but you'll also be able to plug the 3.5mm plug into your pocket wizard.
Any ideas on how he attached that small arm to the car in the rolling/rig style photo in the video? It seems like it'd be hard to use a super clamp to attach to a front bumper or similar.
Chase is the man, but my only suggestion is to make sure if you really want a magic arm is to get the Variable Friction Magic Arm as aposed to the one with the lever like in his videos.
I have a couple magic arms, I really only use them for basketball though.
I also am an avid cyclist, and I always carry a point and shoot in one my jersey pockets. Not to rag this guy, his stuff is great, but it seems like he's doing too much work to get it. I've gotten the same sort of shots with my little Canon a520 handholding it and stretching in crazy positions. Of course when you are peddling for four hours and have nothing else to do, you get ideas. I guess I'd dig it more if he was on the bike instead of in a car following.
Also, check eBay. I don't know if they are still around, but I bought a Nikon cable release that was sent from Hong-Kong for $12 last year and it has a jack in the handle. I had to get an adapter at radio shack, but I use my eBay slaves to trigger the remote. Here's one I did with the d2x/10.5mm and a college kid on a ride that was up at a football tailgate party last year:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66312989@N00/240647894/in/set-72157594281702609/
That was done with a clamp and the eBay slave/Chinese cord combo.
Once again, I'm not ragging the Jarvis guy. I think the stuff on his website is awesome, even more than awesome, his lighting rocks, but this can be done with stuff the average guy can afford and for some reason I'd rather not know the camera operator was in a car all safe and everything.
This is my favorite point of view camera shot from recent memory. Check out Concrete Wave magazine, about two issues ago. It's a shot of a speedboarder going down a mountain by a photographer holding a camera while going at insanely fast speed very close to the rider following:
http://www.concretewavemagazine.com/cover_apr07.jpg
I do this stuff, and I have shots taken with my point and shoot while bombing a hill, but they fail compared to my biking shots as it's much harder to compose while on a skateboard. I can't imagine bombing a hill with a slr!
Philippe,
The pre-trigger cable keeps the camera "awake" so that it's ready to shoot. It's like holding the shutter release part-way down.
David, thanks for the link. I do lots of automotive shooting and plan on doing more with remotes, soon.
Another thing about magic arms. As I said I have two of them, one has a cam mount on one end and a clamp opn the other, the other two clamps. That way I can set it the camera, then put a clamp on the arm right below it and anchor that to another point. If you put your camera somewhere that gets whacked or has a lot of impact(like behind a basketball goal) I'd suggest an extra anchor. I've used remotes with just a super clamp and little ballhead thingy too, works great.
One of my goals is to take my stuff out and shoot a self portrait on a skateboard ramp with the remote trigger in my hand. On the rare occasions I have to skate these days though I don't feel like doing anything related to work while I'm doing it.
But on that note, it sure would be cool to have a strobist mini assignment in the way of self portraits triggered by remotes.
Here's a link for you. This is the same as my cable release I think, it has a little jack to plug into. Mine got here in a few days and had a bunch of groovy Chinese stamps on the package:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Shutter-Release-Cable-for-Nikon-D80-D70s-as-MC-DC1_W0QQitemZ170138937325QQihZ007QQcategoryZ43443QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD10VQQcmdZViewItem
Cost less than my lunch today.
p is 100% correct. Making your own trigger cable is very simple, and cheap. Just make sure you get a mono 3.5mm jack, which are a bit harder to find than stereo jacks. nonetheless, radioshack should have plenty of them. Thanks for the link Dave, I have started to get into this a lot more and it's great to see other people's ideas, especially the all-mighty chase jarvis's!
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