[Steven Falconer]

there are high frane rates nd high shutter speeds avalable on HDSLR’s but you seem to wat the very hghest end footage at the very lowst end cost.

That’s difficult (as if you didn’t know), as was mentioned before….

Look into renting a phantom seems to be your best bet for quality.
if the producers can’t/won’t pay for a proper high speed camera then they can’t/won’t afford the show.

sounds prettty harsh but high prices and low budgets are pretty harsh you, the customers (& all of us and our customers) have to deal with it.

If the customers/prodcers can’t/won’t spring fromr a helecopter they done’t get get helecopter shots from you.

pretty simple, you can say sad but true, it’s unfortunate etc, blah, blah, blah, etc. but no money: no helecopter, no on location, no team of A list stars.

They acan asks for Peter Jackson to direct, 48 fps 3d, only accadamy award winning actors & actresses, and a superbowl premere combined with being played in theaters before every movie shown anywhere in the world. AND they can ask for for free …. that doesn’t mean you can (or should) gve it to them

[Steven Falconer]

I use an sennheiser mke 400 mounted on the shoe and when I’m looking at extra coverage I used my zoom in tandum.

the sennheiser is usually pretty good (even with the agc) but the the handheld zoom combine with it makes a pretty good combo.

If you are so inclined lots of people rave about majic lantern. I’m a pretty advanced procrastinator so i haven’t tried it yet but I’m almost convinced.

[Steven Falconer]

I used photo shop to resize stills to be used in a video sequence.

1st make a photoshop “action” then run it as a batch. It will resize & reresave all of the photos while you are doing something else.

If you have never made an action or run a batch yiou can lookin the help file and there are lots of step by tutorials online.

Hope that’s helpful

[Steven Falconer]

You didn’t say what kind of conditions your shooting in (indoor , outdoor, tight spaces?) but if you have a bit of room & an electrical outlet & a wifi connection (which you could create with a $20 wireless modem)I have a sort of chicken wire & bublegum solution.

You connect your 550d to a laptop/netbook & run the EOS utility & asome virtual desktop software on that machine & turn on the wifi.

At the other end (the location where you are) just ahve another laptop/netbook running the virtual desktop software and wifi to view the origianl laptop/netbook and you can see the footage, activate the camera, and even pull focus from a remote location.

It’s time consuming, labour intensive and far from perfect, but it will have a long range and it’s pretty cheap. You probable have or could borrow all the equipment needed, which makes it free.

Just a thought.