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Confessions of a VDSLR Shopaholic
  • Confession of anonymous GH hack operator...

    Buy GH1 or GH2.

    Buy 20mm pancake. Buy a compact bag. Compact is beautiful.

    Buy FD lens, then Ai-s, then 43 lenses, then... go full blown spending on more lenses. Buy a sling bag.

    Sell some lenses. Buy more lenses.

    Apply a hack. Buy more lenses.

    Try different patches. Oh... 24p so sweet. But... get a real video tripod.

    High bitrate. Great. Time to upgrade laptop or desktop?

    Tripod... ok. But get a super cheap shoulder rig. Super. Love Made-in-China!!

    Hmmmm. Stablizer is pretty cool. Get it too.

    Hey. Don't forget about audio. AUDIO!!! YOU HEAR ME????

    Read anamorphic patch. Awesome. Buy anamorphic adapter. 2x, 1.5x, then 1.3x.

    Buy more lenses. Screw compactness. Get a bigger bag. Be a man!!!

    Ah... film look. FILM LOOK!!!! Get 52mm filters. Mistake. Get 62mm filters. Dumbass mistake. Get 72mm. No. 77mm. No. 82mm!!!! Don't forget step-up rings.

    I don't really need FF. But OMG... it's so freaking cheap!!! Get it!!!!

    Arrrrggg. Ugly Flares!!! Hey my shoulder rig has FF rods. Matte Box would make it look ummmm... pro? Get a really big bag. OMG... get new filters.

    Ok... Vitaliy is making Special Strike Team for HDMI patch. Uncompressed recorder is...

    Ok. Cool. State of the Art. External HDMI recorder. Oh it has HDMI pass-through. Get HDMI 10" monitor!!! Go go go!!!

    Lighting is art. No good lighting. No good shot. Period. More Made-in-China LED lights. Load'em up, sir!!! Move it move it move it!!!

    Ya liked version 1? Surprise!!! Here comes MarkII.

    Wake up in middle of night... when an army of Aliexpress sellers call from China. They are so pissed off, "US Dollar.. suck... you suck!!!!"

    Stop paying mortgage.

    File bankruptcy.

    Create my own blog site. Start talking about HD & gears stuffs. Become famous. Go to Hollywood. Date Megan Fox. Start uploading my hot girlfriend video to Vimeo
  • 131 Replies sorted by
  • LOLOL, guilty as charged.
  • @stonebat

    May be move it to Skill? :-)
    With numbers it'll sound even more funny :-)
    I think it is called GBA (Gear Buying Addiction). Dangerous, contagious illness similar to LBA.
  • I'm stacking up my gears under my desk so that my wife can't see'em.
  • @stonebat

    It looks like soon you'll need new, bigger dick desk. :-)
    But I feel that wife will prefer striked version :-)
  • lol.

    actually I've found follow focuses to be very useful. Much easier to mark focus through the frame blocking and then just hit the marks as you film. A lot easier than trying to focus by eye through a little LCD or EVF.
  • One day... the d!ck will have interchangeable mount. Some guys will have mount with... pinhole looking flesh cap.

    I came up with an idea. Without using FF, take a footage in reverse timing.

    Focus supposedly ending point first.
    Start recording.
    Focus toward supposedly starting point. Pass the point.
    During post-processing, reverse the clip playback.

    Oh... don't forget to tell a talent to act in time backward.
  • LMAO! guilty as charged of GBA
  • LOL This so true!
  • Two years later... still haven't shot anything real besides 'test footage'... :P

    Yep.

    Just. Do. It.
  • Sounds vaguely familiar...

    Hopefully, somewhere in that gear lust, you're off shooting worthwhile stuff.
  • OMG. Stop me now.
    I bought the GH1 already hacked with 14-140. Plus an audio recorder. Then I got an adapter for my old OM1 50mm.... Then I tried a friend's 20mm. Then I HAD to have it -- and I love it.

    Now, I'm actively researching: 1) rigs 2) LED lights + light stands 3) microphones and headphones and boom poles

    Can I stop now?
    Is there a 12-step program for GBA??
  • No you can't stop it!!! We live once. Motion is beautiful. Capture the beauty. But it ain't free.

    I didn't list what I bought though. Hehe. The list shows what I would have bought if I hadn't suppressed my desire to own every gears. Like some members here, I've been trading camera bodies. Buy low. Sell high. At the end I got GH17 and GH2VK bodies for almost free.

    Lenses
    20mm pancake, Lumix 14-45, FD 50.4, Ai-s 50.4, Vivitar 28/2.0, Hexanon 40.8, Vivitar 55/2.8 macro, plus adapters

    Lighting
    Z96, CL-LED256, lighting stands, backdrop set

    Filters
    52mm & 72mm Fader ND, 52mm Tiffen Diffusion, 52mm CPL

    Audio
    USB Dual Pre, AT875R mic, Sennheiser headphones, mic stand, XLR cables

    Misc
    WF-717 video tripod, Editman Cage, jinfinance FF & lens gears, Cinematics mattebox, Lowepro 202AW, Extra batteries, Extra SDHC cards, lots of cheap small accessories from ebay.

    No fancy lens. No anamorphic adapter. No ext EVF and LCD. But gawd... who knows?
  • How's the Dual Pre working out for you? Are you recording direct into the GH2 and monitoring with headphone through the Dual Pre? It seems like that should work but I'm struggling with headphone levels....
  • I use GH2's audio level meter to avoid clipping. Then the headphone out just to guesstimate the audio quality. The headphone level... When I raised it too high, it did affect the balanced audio output.

  • @stonebat

    Thought the Nokton was your next new 'toy'? ;-p
  • Gentlemen, Gentlemen,... Let us not forget that the GH2 & Various other pieces of gear in this topic generate quality far above their price point. May I suggest a list that counts the cost if there were no GH2? (or 5DMKII for that matter- but then again - MKII's are already more expensive...)

    This is the only way to feel better and rationalize- (Spend 10k - but - you know what- you normally only get the camera for that!!- Now- go out and buy a police scanner so you can run 'B' roll when you are near some sort of interesting event!)

    Darn- Scanners cost heaps! :(
  • BTW - I bought the Wondlan Sniper1.3 Zacuto knock off and it's pretty darn good. Got the black/blue version. Good deal for roughly 200 bucks. The Zacuto costs 8 fucking hundred!
  • Ah, stonebat, you funny... roflzed and loled for a good 10 mins at work. Y U NO MAKE RAGE COMIC?
  • Nah. But I'm thinking about forming a group of shopaholics... and faking buying every new gears we talk about.

    e.g.
    "Wow that looks great!!! Awesome. I'm getting one too!!!"
    "Oh man... mother of FF at only $200!!!"

    The group will grow only bigger. Eventually we will have everyone faking and nobody buying.
  • @stonebat

    I don't even know where you'll be in next few months with such ideas :-)
  • >Nah. But I'm thinking about forming a group of shopaholics... and faking buying every new gears we talk about.

    e.g.
    "Wow that looks great!!! Awesome. I'm getting one too!!!"
    "Oh man... mother of FF at only $200!!!"

    The group will grow only bigger. Eventually we will have everyone faking and nobody buying.




    hahaha, I'm in!
  • You think you have problems, i bought all the same gear as above and now compelled to use it for on water event footage even though it's totally not suitable. One problem, how does one fit all this stuff into a waterproof housing and still operate it?
    I'll let you know this weekend, i just arrived in San Fran via OZ to film 2 events and the waterproof housing is a big plastic bag and duct tape...haha (post a photo soon)

    Shooting with matte box and flags from the back of a jetski, this is gonna be fun!! We'll soon find out how good these Chinese products are.

    I must be stupid, i left a perfectly good HMC 152 and housing at home because i want to use all this new stuff :-(

    R
  • Musicians (well guitarists anyway) commonly refer to Gear Buying Addiction as Gear Acquisition Syndrome (= GAS). The chronic sufferer will often start their forum post with something like, "I have GAS real bad."

    I'm not sure how well that reads outside of the USA, but either way, the spousal unit will usually be unhappy.

    :-)



  • @chip @rambo @v10tdi You are welcome to Party Of VDSLR Shopaholic.

    Our mission statement... WE DON'T BUY. LET THEM BUY.

    Then we watch them suffering.... Haha. Release the hounds!!!