Chris Bernard

+1 fuzzynormal Things are a bit nuts in the US right now. If you do happen to hit NYC B&H is well worth the trip.

Maybe checkout Maingear and their Quantum Shift X99 line. https://www.maingear.com/ Probably the best custom built PCs you can buy if you don't want to build.

Ed, if you are in London I'd check out Shoot35. Very decent Mattebox for the money. I had their original one and a smaller one they sadly don't make any more. Bright Tangerine looks like the one to beat today. If I could do it over I'd get a box that supports 4 x 5.65. I've found it really hard to find the 4 x 4 filters I'd like to use in the used market. Some filters like the Tiffen Indie IR ND line only seem to be available in the 4 x 5.65 range. https://www.shoot35.com/

It's early days but I do think narrative VR will emerge as a new genre that someday may even become the dominant one. We're still in the early stages. Sort of like when radio shows were first adapted for television and you just had folks reading in front of microphones. The design language that needs to be developed is how do you direct attention in the narrative and how do you help people have the experience when they are in an environment where they perhaps can't move around that much. I think there are ways around some of the production limitations, at least for mid-size and big productions with virtual sets, 3D environments or even the stitching together of environments that are shot conventionally, based shooting and relighting an entire room while only capturing 120 degrees at a time for example. I think the next big breakthroughs in this space will be VR narratives that supplement traditional storytelling. Imagine a bonus section of House of Cards where you could explore the White House for example or imagine a move like Inside Out where you could sort of go on the journey yourself. If you really want to bend your head imagine what it would be like to attempt to tell narrative stories with augmented reality. Or leveraging the potential social aspects of this technology to create shared narrative experiences. Think a virtual version of Sleep No More, an interactive theatre experience. http://www.sleepnomore.com/ I'll be paying a lot of attention to both of these realms, I think they will be huge and I highly recommend that if you ever get a chance to try these experiences that you should. Even Google Cardboard is fantastically cool.

Manfrotto 535 or 536 in carbon. Complete work horses and super sturdy. Both would fit in your budget. I used to put a Kessler Travel Slider on my 536 and it's rock solid. You could probably get away with a 30 to 36 inch slider on one of those and be okay.

I went through the same exercise in 2015. I wound up investing in the following and I've been happy. Tascam 701D 2 Tascam DR-10C, only available outside the US for now. I leverage my Sennheiser G3 system and mics with this setup but Aspen or OST mics would work great too. Pairing two of these with a G3 system can create a super compact audio system with massive recording redundancy that you can monitor and even feed into a camera. Used AT4053b and AT4073a mics. You have to be patient to find these used. Took me 6 months. For the amateur stuff I do I've been pleased with this gear. For pure quality I'd look at a used MixPre, I had one of these and sold it, I regret that. But I find the Tascam 701D super easy to use once you get it set up right and it's super bag friendly and camera friendly.

I would say it's not just bitrate but how long you want the archive to be useable in the future. As Geoff CB mentions, Cineform, DNxHD or even ProRes are probably the safest bets in terms of being able to open a file and get it into an editor 5 to 10 years down the road. These require a great deal more storage but an optimized file you can't open is pretty useless. This is a very real issue. I have video files from the early nineties I archived (Think Radius video boards if I'm going to date myself), that I wisely converted to Cineform years ago that are still usable). Although all that 3D 480P demo reel content probably isn't really needed by anyone today.

If you look at upcoming cameras like the L16 I think you are going see the a majority of cameras in phones and consumer and prosumer cameras are going to look very different than they do today. Will it technically be the same? No, but as JCS states computational photography is going to be wildly disruptive to the industry. It's like comparing bows and arrows to guns and bullets.

I ordered one of these and waited for the magnetic update. I haven't heard anything for awhile either.

Nicely done.

I owned the Nebula 4000. A total bitch to calibrate but it was super small and I've seen a number of people that can make it sing, but I never really could. I now have a Came TV Single, the fact that you can't tune it without violating the warranty is a serious bummer and its pretty big. I suspect with a lot of careful practice and tuning you could get good results with if you dare messing with PID on it but I find out of box that it's mediocre. If was doing it today I would look at the Beholder, which is tool less or the new PilotFly--presuming you can tune it with its new encoders. It's got a rich (for gimbal guys) ecosystem of settings that people share making it easy to configure. I would also never buy a gimbal that is not tool less at this point. With NAB around the corner it's probably better to wait but if you can't I would say in this segment that the PilotFly H2 is ticking all the boxes at this point.

I recently got one of these, the Sony CLM-FHD5. It's not cheap but it's 1080p and designed to compensate for shooting LOG on Sony cameras. It's super small and compact and I found it to be cheaper than the SmallHD and Marshall offerings when I bought it. If I had it to do over again I'd probably look at Small HD, it's a bit more flexible but costs quite a bit more. If size and portability aren't an issue I'd look at ATOMOS offerings where you can now get a recorder and 7inch monitor for 1k. The challenge is that none of the cheaper monitors seem to have the LUT loading ability. The Sony was the smallest, cheapest and most compact package I could find that had it. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1162970-REG/sony_clmfhd5_clip_on_5_inch_full.html

I have had the same issue with my A7Rii and was looking to add monitoring to support the HDMI record functions of my Tascam 701d. I really don't want to deal with external recorders so I'm testing out Sony's newest monitor. It's not cheap, but a bit less the Pix-E and Small HD options. Will try to post my findings when I get it. It seems like the best value for my set up my be the Pix-E with their audio adaptor but I must say I've been pleased with the 701d so far. Perhaps not as good at the MixPre D and a dedicated recorder but great for on camera or dedicated mixer so far with my model mic collection.

If you can't wait I think the Pilotfly H1+ is the way to go right now right now based on customer service, pricing and documentation. I wound up getting a Came Single and I'm experiencing a bit of buyer's remorse because I can't get into the PID's without violating the warranty--although it's a very well made product I can balance a camera on in 30 seconds. As I've gotten more experienced with gimbals I've got to say that all I see now in most gimbal footage is bounce. If the next generation gimbals can work through that, like the Nebula 4200 that will be a big step forward. I suspect the encoders and tool less designs along with solutions to eliminate or minimize the bounce will be the things we see in low-end to mid range gimbals next.

I am not an audio professional but most audio professionals I've encountered will tell that they prefer a wired mic over a wireless all the time and in general a boomed mic over a lav mic as well (Either shotgun or hypercardioid depending on surroundings). But sometimes you simply need wireless to get the job done. I have a G3 system and it gets the job done (Actually I've never, ever, had a problem with it) but cost me quite a bit but and if I was on a budget I'd look at Rode's wireless offerings, they are bulkier but they are easier to set up and use and priced really reasonably in my opinion. Sennheiser also has new equipment that is far easier to use but it is not cheap but will probably last forever. One investment I made is buying a set of adaptors for my wireless lavs that will let me feed them phantom power from a wire. This way if I'm on a shoot and I'm having problems with wireless I can still feed them into a mixer, or in my case a simple Juiced Link box. Sennheiser makes these adaptors for about $130 US each but there is a nice company in the UK that makes them for half the price as well. http://www.canford.co.uk/ The product I bought for my G3 kit is: http://www.canford.co.uk/Products/20-769_CANFORD-ELECTRET-MICROPHONE-ADAPTER-3.5mm-jack Also the stock lavs that come with wireless kits are nothing special, many folks update these.