Bike B-Roll

This Labor Day weekend was perfect for getting footage for the upcoming bicycle project. I go several shots of in the local area and broke in the new rigs from this summer. The Fig Rig worked well for getting shots while cycling. The camera slider also made for some really cool establishing shots of the bike pre-modding.

All in all it was pretty successful. Hopefully I can track down some good interviews this week.

Upcycle: Bike Light

I was looking for something cool to really set off this Zissou bike restoration. It needed to be old school and just plain awesome; so I searched eBay for some old bike lights, the old dynamo kits from the 1970's. Unfortunately most of these are pretty beat up, incomplete, and pricey. I decided to look for an alternative. I thought those cool old school flashlights, the silvery Art Deco style ones might be an option and I happened across this beauty. It's a Lightmaster Searchlight lantern from the 1930's. 

The pictures looked really good and it was only $20 (including shipping, those old batteries are hefty.) Last night I took the old battery cells out, dropped in a new 6 volt lantern battery, and hacked/modded a light bulb to run in it. I was able to completely update it without destroying any of the old parts. I used electrical tape instead of soldering wires so that way it can be reversed back to it's original state at any time.

 

It works great now! I can't wait to put it on the finished bike. One more part of the production finished up...

DIY Fig Rig

This is a rig that I designed based off of a tutorial from IndyMogul.com. I made my own custom modification to the camera mounting screw assembly. Their version had long bolt threaded through the PVC cross section secured by caps on each end. I used a 3/4" to threaded 1/2" PVC adapter on the top of mine, allowing me to screw different bolt assemblies onto the rig. Now I can just make various caps instead of a whole new rig.

It should be very useful for minimizing shake and wobble in handheld shooting.