The other day I received a fantastic email from a new found fan asking for information on the camera I've been using for the productions seen on jamesonhamo.com.

Hi James,

My name is Charlie Hoehn. For the past hour and a half, I analyzed the shortlist for the Island Job to see what the winning applicants had in common (i.e. what they did right). I have to say I was most impressed with your application, as a whole, than any other. What really sets you apart is the incredible blog you put together. It's truly engaging and you did a fantastic job on it. What I really loved was the video of how you made the Peeping Tom series. That was so cool! I really hope you win man, you definitely proved that you can pull this off.

Now for the question. I'm a video editor myself, but am in serious need of a hardware upgrade. What type of HD camera are you using? The quality looks phenomenal and the colors are so vibrant. If it's a camera that you'd highly recommend, I'm seriously going to look into it.

Best,
Charlie
http://charliehoehn.com

So Charlie, here's a quick snapshot of some of the gear I've been using in production thus far.

In order of use:

1. Camera Body: Canon 5D MKII

   The Canon 5DMKII is predominately a stills camera but it's the first DSLR from Canon which has video capabilities. Not just any video capabilities but 1080p HD quality video, encoded directly to H264. You can record up to 4G files at anyone time which equates to about 10 minutes of footage. Which is more than enough for the short videos I've been making thus far. It's absolutely stunning color quality and definition can be attributed to it's large 35mm (full frame) sensor, which also allows for fantastic depth-of-field control.

2. Steadicam Merlin

   When I jumped into video production with the 5DMKII I thought I'd do it the right way from the get go. I bought the steadicam straight away and has allowed me to get that gliding footage. It takes a bit of practice to get use to, and I'm still learning but the results have been fantastic thus far.

3. Canon 15mm Fisheye lens

   Probably my most used lens for video to date, simply because everything is in focus, and it gives a fantastic perspective when shooting the "walking james" shot. See the beginning of to-cumbria-and-back for an example.

4. Canon 50mm 1.4 lens

   At 50mm you have to be pretty precise what you're doing while filming. I mainly use this lens for video portraits. It provides a nice close crop of your subjects head however allowing a little environment to creep into shot.

5. Canon 70-200mm 2.8 lens

   I've only used this once in video so far. It was used for the far reach shot of the SCUBA "me" in my application video.

6. Canon 1.4x Teleconverter

   Add it to the 200mm to make it 280mm. Great tool to have in the bag.

So I hope that's been helpful and if anyone else has any questions feel free to shoot me an email at james sultanastudios com.