Video Accessories - for your camcorder and for your editing room

 Are you ready to accessorize your camcorder? Wouldn’t your new videotaping machine look great with a few bangles and baubles hanging off it…you could be the toast of the town.

 Nope, I am not talking about jewelry.  I am referring to those important accessories that can make your video taping experience little easier, a bit more practical, and hopefully, more professional.  Some accessories help you when you are actually taping, some are for editing, and some help you get to wherever you are going without losing your camcorder.

  For example, one essential camcorder accessory is a good bag or case. Not only does a good container protect your camcorder from various bumps and jolts, it protects from inclement weather. Moreover, if your bag is big enough, you can store your various other accessories, cords, batteries, chargers, etc.

The best camcorder cases are the ones that don’t look like they have a camcorder inside. For example, a gym bag, kids lunch bag or backpack. One of the best, - now don’t laugh – is a diaper bag. Thieves never mess with a diaper bag especially a used bag. Avoid the bags with a logo or manufacturer’s name on it. Bags with Sony, Panasonic, etc, printed on them, universally translate worldwide into “Steal Me Please!”

  If you already got a bag, try decorating it with your kid’s decals, spray-painting it, covering it with duct tape, anything to camouflage the valuable cargo within. It is what I call the ugly bag technique. Thieves are much more likely to target pretty shiny cases than ugly beat-up ones. Plus, the uglier and more unique the bag, the less likely another passenger will pick it up by mistake because it looked like their bag.

  Of course, if you traveling you need to worry about power. Before you leave, pick up a power adapter that will enable you to get AC power wherever you are. These range from $10 up to $50 or so. By the way, no matter how “safe” the power is supposed to be, don’t plug your camcorder and power supply directly into the plug. Use your battery charger and charge up the batteries. It is much better to blow up a battery charger and battery, than your power supply and camcorder!

  If you find yourself going through a lot of batteries when on vacation, you may want to invest in special power accessories. These can range from very large batteries that strap onto your belt to customized power vests and batteries. Yu can get these from companies like NRG, Bescor and Sunpak.   Because these devices hang from your hips, you do not really notice the weight at all when shooting. (You do notice it though when lugging the belt and its charger around in your luggage!).

  A good power belt or vest should provide you enough power to shoot for a day or two or even moiré without running out of juice.

  One last travel suggestion – buy your videotape before you leave. It can be very difficult to get additional tape, especially the newer DV mini-cassettes and s-video cassettes when traveling in third world countries. Of course, they will never be as affordable as tape bought from your local department store or purchased in bulk from one of the many mail order firms advertising in these pages. I always buy a box of ten one hour tapes before I go on a trip. Yes, I never get to use them all up but at least I never run out of tape. One of the worst experiences is being on a trip or a video assignment and not being able to capture a scene because you do not want to tape over a previously recorded videocassette.

  One of the most essential accessories for your camcorder is a tripod. The biggest difference between an amateur videographer and a pro is the use of a tripod. No matter how steady you think you are, holding almost any shot will cause some shaking. Once you amplify that by using full telephoto zoom, there is no way you can stand still enough. Even the best digital or optical image stabilization system cannot eliminate shakiness at extreme telephoto settings.

 You can get a good yet inexpensive tripod for under $50.  For most purposes, an inexpensive tripod will work fine. You do not need anything fancy. Just make sure it will support the weight of your camcorder. If you have tiny camcorder, you can get away with a smaller tripod. A large full-size VHS camcorder requires a larger, sturdier tripod and head.

Guide to Tripods - why and how

  If you do a lot of shooting, especially on location or while traveling, you might want to invest in a shoulder rest. These range in price from $50 on up and enable you to shift the weight of the camcorder from your hands and arms, back up to your shoulders where it belongs

We Buy Our Video Tapes, Filters, Tripods and other accessories from B&H Photo Video because they have great prices and excellent service

  Another way to keep your images from shaking but at a more expensive price is by using a camera stabilization system. With prices ranging from $200 to $700, these enable you to create extremely smooth shots while moving. These include products like the Glidecam, MightyWonderCam from Videosmith, Steadicam JR, etc. or even the Mighty Jib from Habbycam.

  In addition to stabilizing your standing video shots, these kinds of devices also allow you to smooth out moving shots, where the camera is gliding or flowing along with the action. I am sure you have seen video and film scenes where the camera follows the actor up a set or stairs or through a tunnel. These are done using these kinds of camera stabilization systems. If you really want to get some cool professional looking shots, get a jib type of product. Basically a camcorder on a stick, these stabilization products enable you to float your camera almost anywhere, ten feet up or along the ground. 

  If you are on a budget, and cannot afford any of these expensive camera stabilization products, try this. Use your tripod and expand the legs all the way out, down to the ground. Make sure the height extension is all the way down. Now with your camcorder attached firmly to the tripod head, put your hand right under the head assembly, where the tripod legs meet at the top. By loosely holding the top of the height extension tube, you can use the lower center of gravity to smooth out your motion while walking or climbing with the camera. It looks somewhat goofy, and takes a bit of practice, but you can get some cool moving shots this way.

  Do you like adding titles to your productions? Short punchy text that explains where you are and what was going on that day? If you use the standard titling capabilities provided my most camcorders, you are bound to be frustrated. Aside from the labor-intensive process of punching in letter by letter, you usually have few choices in fonts, placement and colors. Moreover, even worse, the text usually looks pretty darn awful.

  Consider buying and using a stand-alone titling device. These enable you to add nice looking titles, with a wide range of colors, fonts and even motion, to your tapes as you are transferring them or editing from one camcorder to another. These range in price from $100 on up, depending on what features they provide. In addition, they usually provide rudimentary editing effects like simple wipes and fades in and out. You can get these from Videonics, Sima, Datavideo and many other manufacturers.

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  A really cool product, albeit a bit expensive at $599 list, is Videonics StudioSketch. This cool little box enables the user to draw pictures, lines and comments over live or still video. Just like the sports announcers on TV or weather people, you can do your own real time video sketching.

  StudioSketch includes a variety of colors, shapes, pointers, and sports field and classroom background patterns. According to Videonics, “the ability to switch in real time between Effects or Sketch Modes makes it an outstanding video teaching aid. StudioSketch allows the presenter to sketch freely over Chroma Key or Freeze Frame effects, live video or built-in backgrounds. Studio effects such as Chroma Key and picture-in-picture along with real time sketching over video make StudioSketch a very low cost weather or news set.”

  Speaking of editing, there are a bunch of easy to use computer based editing products that do not require opening up your computer or learning complicated programs. Plus you can use them with your laptop or notebook to enable you to edit while on the road.

   For example, Dazzle provides a variety of products like the Digital Video Creator that connects to your computer via its USB jack and enables you to easily convert your analog video and audio to digital video that your computer can edit. In addition, check out Dazzle’s new $99 DV Firewire adapter for laptop computers. The Dazzle DV Editor is a PC card that just slides into your laptop computer’s open PC card slot. Connect it to your DV camcorder and you are ready to input and edit your DV footage on your laptop computer. A company called Ratoc has a similar product for $129.

Let us get back to your camcorder. Look at your lens…does it have threads on the inside of the lens to allow you to connect filters and lens converters? If so, the first filter you need to get is a basic UV filter. Yes, it cuts UV light a bit but more importantly, it protects your lens against flying dust, dirt, paint, etc. If something like that hits and damages the UV filter, simply throw it away and get another for a few bucks. However, if your lens get chipped by a flying rock or gets splattered by paint, you may be saying goodbye to your camcorder. Weigh the options, four or five bucks for a UV filter versus a thousand bucks for a new camcorder.

  In addition, if you have lens threads, you may want to get a few filters or converters. My favorite lens converter is a wide-angle lens. For some reason all camcorder makers compete to see who can make the biggest and longest zoom lens on a camcorder. They should be battling to have the widest lens. A wide-angle lens enables you to capture a much bigger scene. In addition, by using wide angle, it makes camera movement appear smoother and shakiness to much less apparent.  As wide angle greatly increases the overall focal range, you do not have to worry about important parts of your scene being out of focus.

  When buying a wide-angle adapter, check it out first. Put it on your camcorder and make sure it really does fit. Make sure that when you are fully zoomed out to your camcorder’s maximum wide angle that you do not see the sides of the wide-angle lens adapter. Like so much in this world, you get what you  pay for. Higher quality, better looking wide-angle lens converters will cost more than cheapie plastic converters.  You can get cheapie ones for $30 or less or get professional quality ones for over $300.

Other filters can be used to increase the range of your zoom. For example, a 2X lens extender transforms a maximum zoom of 20x to a maximum zoom of 40x. These can be powerful.

  You can also get a variety of filters types that add color, tints and special effects to your images. Remember though, when capturing your video using a special effect filter, there is no way to get rid of it later on. Personally, I like sparkle filters for special events that transform points of light into small stars. Fuzzy filters where the center is clear but everything else is foggy are also useful.  In the right situation, like weddings, dances, etc., these can be very cool. You can get good selections of filters from manufacturers like Vivitar, Kenko, Phoenix and Raynox.

  After you get the right camcorder, it is time to get the right accessories. Whether you spend four or five bucks for a UV filter or diaper bag camera case, or hundreds on cool tripods, titling and camera support systems, having the right accessory on hand, within easy reach, will greatly improve your overall videotaping experience.