13 Products You Need to Add HD Video to Your Business

Photo District News by Dan Havlik

Getting started with shooting HD video is a lot like the weather. Everybody’s talking about it but nobody’s sure what to do about it. This is partially because shooting HD is more intimidating for photographers than anyone wants to admit. For starters, there’s all the extra gear you need, and we’re not just talking about the dozen or so HD-DSLRs screaming for your attention at the local camera store. To help you figure out what you really need to add HD video to your business, we spoke with photography and video educator Eduardo Angel about the essential pieces of gear—in order of importance—to get you rolling.

1. Lenses
If you want to get serious about shooting HD for brides and other clients, you’ve got to get serious about your lenses. In other words, don’t be a cheapskate.

“You want fast lenses and sharp lenses and the quality is really important,” Angel says. “You get what you pay for.” He added that lens quality is crucial for cameras with full-frame sensors—such as the recently announced Canon 5D Mark III and Nikon D800—because they capture so much detail. “Those sensors are so huge and HD video is so sharp and so big that everything shows. If you don’t have a sharp lens, then you’re really out of luck.”

At the same time, he noted you don’t need as wide a maximum aperture in your lenses as you do for portrait photography. “F/1.4 or f/1.8 is a myth. The subject is moving in video and keeping something sharp at f/1.4 when it is moving is nearly impossible.” read more...