Out with the not-so-old

I did something today that I never dreamed I would do. I put my camera on eBay. Banished to a realm of cyberspace along with everyone else's junk and useless stuff that nobody wants anymore. My poor camera. But there is a perfectly rational explanation as to why I did this, so hear me out.

Not that long ago, JM (producer of Pray For Dawn, actor extraordinaire and close personal friend) had a role in a local feature film called Bad Behaviour. One day he called me up and told me to guess what they were shooting it on, and after going through a list of various cameras I gave up. "A Canon 5D," he said. Okay, great. What the heck is that? I looked up this camera online expecting it to be some gargantuan machine that looked like, well...y'know, what they shoot major Hollywood movies on. Instead I could only find pictures of a DSLR camera, the kind you see slung around tourists' necks. I thought there had been an error in communication until I read further and discovered that these new cameras were a cheap way to shoot really good movies, so I immediately became interested. I learned that the quality from these cameras was almost on par with 35mm film, and that really got me interested. I mean, I loved my camera (Sony HVR-A1P) and had built it up with all sorts of gizmos to make it into a really decent tool, but the more I read about these DSLRs I couldn't help but be more and more curious. Then the turning point for me was when Robert Rodriguez, my role model supreme, used a Canon 7D to shoot a music video. I've modeled much of the way I approach filmmaking from his methods, and now that he was embracing DSLR technology I seriously started weighing up the pros and cons.

Taking the plunge (and at the behest of several people wanting me to shoot movies for them!) I purchased a Canon 7D for myself. It was a little scary, being that I was used to the standard format of video cameras, but I was ready to tackle something new. I went to eBay - the source of 90% of all my equipment - and found a great deal on a brand new 7D. A few button clicks later it was done. And it's one of the best decisions I ever made! This camera is just brilliant. I've quickly fallen in complete love with it. While my A1P is a great camera, and has been there through my first commercial, first music video and a short film that caught the attention of a few big industry people, it just couldn't compare to what I was shooting with the Canon. I no longer needed an adapter to achieve depth of field. Or a monitor to see what I was shooting with said adapter. The resolution was better, and the new camera was MUCH better in low-light conditions. Plus a lot of the gadgets, bits n' bobs I had bought for the Sony fit the Canon perfectly. I figured I could at least keep the Sony for whenever I needed 2 cameras (which is often) until I had an epiphany.

Looking again on eBay I found out I could get over 2 grand for the Sony, yet another 7D would only cost me just over $1600 (only needed the body as I already have 4 lenses now.) I spent several days thinking of any single reason why keeping the Sony made sense, but aside from pure sentimentality I couldn't come up with anything. So today I took the photos, wrote up the listing and offered my beloved camera to the world. It's a week-long auction, so I have 7 days to reminisce the fun we've shared, the great work it's done (it even shot Paul Hogan - something I bet the ATO would love to do) and ready myself to post it to what I hope will be a loving owner.

Still, when I think about the twin 7Ds I'll soon have at my disposal, how fast I can shoot movies with a 2-camera set-up, and how much faster it'll be to capture footage (just download a memory card instead of having to record the footage in real time) I can't get too upset. And the speed at which technology moves these days I'll probably be offering my Canons to the highest bidder in a year's time anyway!

Hopefully I can include in the auction listing that they were the cameras that shot the worldwide smash hit horror film, Pray For Dawn.