60 Seconds at Sydney

[Grahame Hutchison]

I have taken my new video camera along on a few photography outings, but found it difficult to work between the DSLR and the Video camera (mainly/exclusively favouring the DSLR).

Driving home of Friday evening an idea popped into my head, why not mount the video camera on the telephoto lens and shoot digital and video at the same time. This turned out to be easy, just rotate the telephoto lens tripod mount to the top of the lens, and mount the video camera on top. Make sure the video camera is straight and level, and it was out to the airport on Saturday morning to test it out.

Just remember to turn the video camera on when you go to shoot (and off when you finish), and you can look through the DSLR viewfinder with your right eye, and look at the pop out video camera monitor with your left eye. You can adjust the video camera zoom to suit, and the video is quite steady because you are holding the DSLR with both hands.

The Canon Legria HF R38 Video Camera is full HD, only weighs 250gm, has 32 optical zoom, and 32Gb of flash memory on board (and a slot for another memory card if required).

The result can be seen on "60 Seconds at Sydney", and you can hear the DSLR clicking off in the audio.

I was reasonable happy with the result, considering it was my first try at combining both media. I have a few ideas to improve the setup and technique.

[Nathan Long]

It's easy to see when you were going for nose shots Grahame...