Why You Want to Shoot with an External Recorder/Monitor

Here's an in-depth article on the ins and outs of pairing a monitor/recorder - like these from Atomos - with your DSLR camera. Beyond the obvious benefit of a larger preview of your footage, a field monitor and recorder "can't improve the level of detail that your camera initially captures, they leverage the fact that your camera often captures more detail than can be recorded using the internal codec." Less compression is a benefit! Read on for more details:

...$1000 isn't a trivial amount of money but, for a great many photographers, it's an amount they'd justify spending on a lens. Just like a lens, an external recorder can help expand the range of things you can do with your current camera. It's also brand agnostic, so unlike a lens, it's very likely to work regardless of what camera you buy next, and will help boost the quality of everything you shoot, not just the things you can use a new lens for. And that's got to be worth it, hasn't it?..[read the full article]