After a long day of shooting it’s always nice to take a look at your footage. Wait, something’s not right. Where is the picture? Why is there no audio? Why is there no footage at all? We have all been there. You spent hours shooting something only to discover something wasn’t working with your equipment. There is one sure fire way to prevent hours of frustration.
Check your equipment! Most things that go wrong on a shoot can be avoided by checking your equipment thoroughly before the shoot. This is extremely important, especially if your using a digital medium. Make sure everything is working properly, and the best way to do this is a test shoot.
A test shoot should only take about twenty minutes, but what your looking for is that everything is functioning the way its supposed to. So just take your camera and shoot around your house, checking white balances, audio connections and levels, lenses and the overall condition of your camera and accessories (audio gear, lights, etc…). Also, make sure you have a full proof method of dumping your footage.
The reason I’m writing this article is I recently had a Panasonic AJ-PCS060G (P2 card reader) malfunction on a shoot. I’ve had exceptional performance form these drives in the past, but they tend to get screwy once you actually dump to them. I have always just used it as a card reader, it makes me uneasy not being able to see the footage before I format the card. Alas, rented equipment can never be relied upon. It seems that the last person to use it dumped right to the drive. Now they are designed to do this, I get that, but I’ve heard from other videographers the same concerns. What happened was when I connected the Panasonic AJ-PCS060G to my computer two drives showed up, which is what’s supposed to happen (one drive for the Panasonic AJ-PCS060G and one for the card in it). I transferred the card (or at least I thought I did) and thought I was good. Well shame on me for not checking because it wasn’t the footage I had just recorded. For some reason the footage that was dumped to the Panasonic AJ-PCS060G wouldn’t let my card be read, and I was just copying the footage on the drive from the previous user. Better yet, I wasn’t able to format the Panasonic AJ-PCS060G and get rid of the footage. If I would have checked before the shoot I could have found a replacement, but in the end it was just a hard learned lesson. You don’t have to make the same mistake, check your gear!!!
Similar gear malfunction stories? Let us know in the comments.
Wes Waddell
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When I goof up, it always bites me in the ass! As you clearly address in your article, you have to check, recheck and then check again. This is very good but always run spellcheck and grammarcheck!
I like you begin with “Check Your Gear” and end with “Check Your Gear.” Gear or Equipment?
Nice articles!