My "On the Road" Video Recording Kit - Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, attending Symantec Vision, the IBM Storage Executive Summit, Interop, and EMC World just in the last two weeks! One of the things that I love about attending shows like this, in addition to meeting so many great people, is recording and sharing videos of the experience. Some of my friends asked about the equipment I use for mobile video recording, so I thought I might take a few moments and write it up.

As I wrote, this got longer and longer. So I’ve split it up into a series of posts:

Recent Examples

Here are some example videos made with the equipment described above.

Symantec Donating to Teacher Exchange

A bit yellow (there’s no white balance on the Zi8) but this was a very dim and noisy location with a hastily-recruited camera-woman (thanks, Gina!). If I hadn’t had a good mic the recording would have been ruined by the environment, but everything worked out fine in the end.

Drobo S Unboxing

This was shot with the Zi8 on a tripod and the lav mic clipped to my shirt. It was a quiet environment, and the long lav wire allowed me to move around freely.

Introducing Ciphertex at Interop

Another show-floor video where I used the Zi8 and Azden mic handheld. It was a bright but very noisy location with a moving subject – a real challenge for a handheld mic!

Meeting Thomas Jones at EMC World

Another recruited cameraman for a hand-held shot with the Zi8 and Azden mic. Thomas asked about the mic, prompting me to write all of this!

Stephen’s Stance

Good equipment can make the difference between an amateurish embarrassment and professional production when it comes to video recording. The combination of the Zi8 and my pair of microphones collect good enough source material to keep me in the latter category. Combined with the capabilities of Apple’s iMovie software, I can produce respectable videos anywhere I happen to find myself.

My “On the Road” Video Recording Kit