Very,very,true. I am a retired still photographer. MOST of my fellow photographers, back in the 1970s,80s,90s, only shot 35mm. Over a short time i shot,35mm,2 1/4, 4X5 and 8X10, and lots of Strobe experience. I got hired because of my knowledge of larger formats. Even my extensive strobe experience,got me hired by other photographers, just to do their strobe work. I was even asked to be a professor of photography at a University, of which i turned down. I was a working photographer, not a teacher. My 2 cents. The more , you know,the better you are.
From the perspective of a DP shooting films for others, totally agree (that's the category I fall into). But truthfully most of my clients never ask for a certain camera to be used, they just know that what I've made them in the past is the quality they want, or if they're a new client they look at my reel. I own a Sony FS7 and have almost never needed to shoot with something else to get the product my clients have wanted (who are mostly mid and top tier corporations). But from the perspective of someone with an unrelated day job trying to make a passion project, i'd say gear mostly falls to the lower end or even bottom of the priority list. I'd say the order of that list is: idea > acting performance or substance of an interview > sound gear > strong editing skills > your network > lights > camera gear Case in point being It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Thank you for making this video! I love your turn of phrase how to not let gear stop you from starting, and that better gear does make a difference when you have the budget. Rentals are great when getting started. Another awesome video!
I agree! The “idea” of gear doesn’t matter was very motivating to hear when I first began making short films with a canon t3. But once you realize that you will not be exclusively getting paid to make films any time soon and will have to stay afloat with weddings, short docs, and corporate interviews,etc, gear starts to matter.. a lot 😅 Great insight!
Great episode! My takeaway.. Finding efficiency in gear and using that to your advantage. What tools you choose will affect your workflow, but the experience you gain will always be gold.
Totally agree with you Luc. Knowledge is power and having the experience and technical knowledge of a wide variety of equipment will better enable you to pick the best equipment for the job and to problem solve when gear goes down in the field. I used to have a bad case of gear acquisition syndrome when I was first starting out a spent too much money on gear that I didn’t’ need or even end up using very much. I can’t say that I’ve bought very much gear recently, but I still keep up to date with the latest equipment being released and try to get hands on experience with new equipment whenever I can. At the end of the day the equipment that you own should make your day to day life on set easier, all other bespoke equipment required for a job can be rented.
Gonna give my opinion on "gear doesn't matter" before I even watch Luc's take. To me, it means, "Don't let gear stop you from creating". Some use gear as an excuse to hold themselves back from pursuing certain projects. But if you truly want to create the thing, you'll find a way to make it happen. Having gear IS necessary, but not having it shouldn't be what stops you from creating your projects.
Your videos have improved my filmmaking more than the classes I’ve taken and books I’ve read because your advice is straightforward and practical with clear demonstrations. Thank you. Just one little concern…the discount code for Audiio doesn’t work. $59 is a much nicer number than $99.
I love the idea of minimal gear for what I’m doing, but I am that person who will bring everything I have cause I never know what I’ll run into. I’m the maximal gear kind of person.
I totally agree. It's no different to any art form; these are tools and there is a reason why professionals buy expensive tools in every industry; it's the quality and robustness.
I think one of the challenges I run into quite a bit in my career is that people (my bosses/clients) will often want me to use more or a higher profile version of gear than is practical for shoot time and budget without understanding where the difference in results will come from. On most of my shoots where I'm not producing I operate as a solo dp working under two or three other people who don't have any technical camera skill. (Client > Creative Director > Producer > Me) So on the crew side I'm essentially a one man band. In this type of scenario I can typically get my best results with a small backpact setup. (Mirrorless camera, Small gimbal, tripod, straight into camera audio, folding mavic style drone, simple panel lights) Keeping things small means I can run all the gear quickly and easily solo, keep setup times lower, and keep us moving quickly. However what I often find is a client or a CD will push for me to use a bigger cinema camera, or a full dolly setup, our cinema Movi Rig (nicknamed the cockroach around here), or our DJI inspire 2. And I'm capable of using all these tools effectively, however what I have trouble getting them to understand is that these more "Pro" versions of tools are oriented toward having a larger more specialized crew where someone can fine tune and dedicate time to each position, if I cockroach up in the movi I'm locked into that suit for hours and I'm no longer going to be as effective at running lighting without wasting time ditching the suit, or if I'm using the inspire that takes more time and attention than popping a mavic up for five minutes, and all these things would be great to use, I love using them, if I have the crew and time but those things seldom scale as easily as the toys do. My advice is that having a cheaper base line understanding of what a lot of kinds of gear can do is awesome for a cinematographer, but unless you're specializing in a position you don't need the best version of something money can buy, those things tend to be less user friendly and cost time over the more pro-sumer level version if you don't have the crew.
This is the flip side of things for sure. But you clearly know how to use bigger set ups and are choosing to use something more minimal because it works for you, which is the best approach. How to convince clients is another matter, and there's no easy answer there...just slap a matte box on it!
As someone who started out from no camera gear and watched too many camera tech reviewers “influencers” who try to influence you to buy through their links, do not take this advice. Start out slowly, learn your camera and dont buy anything you’ll barely use.
Wise words . I run most of my videos myself with just a one camera and a microphone. But the times I have time to plan and I need more help, I take help from friends with drones and gopros etc
We had a guy who worked at kessler who funded the music and production studio I co owned back in indiana. He has that kessler slider, and you can get way less heavy stuff now. But we did live session videos for bands all the time, and that slider we used for a wide, and a couple hero close ups and boy having the only movement in the video repeatable was great. We even matched cut stuff. Super big and bulky, but it was locked in our studio and was never moved, so why not?
Damn right! You've inspired me and I'm setting up my studio now. I come from a cinematographer's schooling, l I'll give you a shout-out as soon as I'm functional.
First let me say, I spy an expandable circular stool. Those things are dope. Mine has saved my toes from serious problems after long shoots where I needed to be low to the ground. And I will chime in with this: Gear matters, and like you said Luc, knowing WHY the gear matters, matters more. If you don't know WHY a piece of gear really matters, then it actually doesn't matter, and you're just a dude with gear. I am just finishing my second sports doc and gear limitations created some compromises that I would like to eliminate next time. So, yeah. Gear matters.
Im so sick of hearing that..gear 100 percent mutters..yes skill is still number 1 and heart..and thatd where this saying comes from and is supposdd to mean...but doesnt come off thst way..i totally agree gear matters
Saying gear doesn’t matter is like saying time doesn’t matter. But I can’t get opportunities back, and the most important interviews I’ve ever shot feature people who are now deceased. Given the tradeoffs, I don’t feel like I can wait until later to do the best job I’m able to do.
EXCELLENT video!!! I'm currently using the A7IV + FX30, that is the best (camera) gear that I can have now. But I have a chance for a good upgrade between December and the start of 2024... Do you think the FX6 is still worthy in 2023/24? Or... do you have any suggestion? (Sony system because of the lenses)
like my job you dont nead lots off gear to do it you just nead the right gear to make it easyer and know how you use it propaly!! im a welder fabricator i just like trying to film stuff like my rc cars and me making stuff so just a cheep old camera and a trypod is all i have just now and i dont realy nead much else yet as i have to carry it all when we are out rcing as well as spaires and everything else i nead for the car's so the less gear the better!!!
Nice! But I bet if you needed more complex tools you'd be able to use them, right? You're just choosing to be minimal because it works, not because you can't do the other bits - or am I wrong there?
Exactly!!@@LucForsyth works for me, the less kit i nead to take the easyer and quiker i can do the job in the end but if i realy need to use more complex stuff i can i just don't see the point if i dont nead to, i always look for the easyer way to do things to get the same result.
All gear are tools, some are better for certain situations, look and feel but knowing their strengths and weaknesses are incredibly important. Case in point(though you wouldn't want to use this on ANY professional project even in it's day), Jordan over at peta pixel (formerly DP review) did a bunch of those videos on a Pentax K-01 (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-W8fJWjmqAgQ.html) And you can still see the limitations of the glass and also of the camera but skill does mitigate those but it will never eliminate them. You can build a house out of just mortar or only bricks but it won't be as strong as the two together and in the correct proportions. Same with gear and skill.
it's done! Just full at the moment. I'm not going to reopen it until I finish the next major unit, which is looking like a full BTS job shadow in Mexico...aiming for a January re-launch. Sorry if that's a long way off, but I want to make sure I make it the best it can be and that I can actually handle the numbers in terms of really being able to interact. Thanks for the patience!
so legit. I love a motorized slider but I had dragging one around. I used to have to drag it along for travel shoots and the case was so big and heavy just for a slider movement. But, that said, it does really elevate production so I'm often torn.
this is my rage storm. 😡haha jk I agree with this 100%, if gear didn't matter Hollywood would shoot their movies on small mirrorless cameras, I think what people get mixed up with is buying gear to look like a film maker vs buying gear that will actually make you money. When I make purchase I literally look at how will this possibly make me more money and increase production value. if I can't really find any legit reasons to buy, then I move on. like if you buy something and find you never use it on a job, maybe it was just a purchase you thought you were supposed to have, but it never fit into your actual day to day work flow.
Agreed! Never waste money to look like a pro, rent things, figure out what works, what's in demand, what can make you cash, and then make informed choices.
It's not that gear doesn't matter. But these days you can produce quality content with very little and that's something worth insisting on. Telling people gear matters is telling them not to experiment and grow as an artist. Gear matters in professional budgeted productions.
I've always just been an enthusiast, and my tool for years had been a Canon PowerShot camera, so even with manual controls, it didn't have the flexibility I needed to focus quickly on certain stuff, or the necessary lens to focus on a subject that even the basic 18-55mm lenses do. I worked with it as much as possible and did some short films/skits with it, so it didn't stop me, but as you say, the gear does matter. As soon as I was borrowed a camera with a 18-55mm lens I *immediately* was able to make way better shots than I could ever before. Even more when adding a telephoto lens to it. It's very important to have the right tool for the job.
The 'gear doesn't matter' idea is directly related to the 'the best camera is the one you have'. It's a slightly pushy point, that's meant to wake up people from their obsession with technical aspects of filmmaking which can be prohibitive, but is in NO way a dismissal of such technical equipment as a whole, which of course would be silly. The underlying point is that film language develops when people shoot-and-cut, shoot-and-cut endlessly - it's how we learn. And en route to finding our film voice... the gear... in effect... doesn't matter because our real eye is naturally more important and the gear always secondary to what we see through it. But ultimately, yes, of course the gear matters - because if we do indeed have a good eye, we'll need good glass ;)
Hey Luc, first comment on your channel. I've been binging your content for a few weeks now and now I'm getting into the rhythm of watching your new uploads as they come. Thank you so much for making them, I hope you continue! This video comes right on time, it's a great motivator as I'm working up the courage after months of research to get a number of things to turn my R5C into a proper rig this Wednesday (rig, video tripod, monitor, lavs and so on). I'm currently working real estate but want to be a real DP (documentary ideally, but anything will do haha). I just wanted to drop a message and thank you, since I've been a passive consumer of your videos, and I have to say I really connect with your approach and motivational perspectives, I do wish for more depth and detail sometimes. My wife is Canadian too and we'll move "back" (for her) to Quebec some day!
Thanks for making this video Luc. It needed to be said. Renting gear to learn it is an excellent tip! Learn it before you need to use it. BTW...Keep the stache.
Dude I’m absolutely loving your channel. Also started with Nikon… still shooting with it now and trying to make it work for video. I love your stances on used gear, not buying crap you don’t need, and avoiding trendy stuff and always being in service to the story. Thanks for all the knowledge!
