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There are two items that I would always have on a camera. A front lens clear filter and a portabrace cover. Both are vital for protecting the camera. The filter well, it’s not more than $50 and it protects a few thousand-dollar lenses from scratches and actual damage. When I first started photography I dropped my Nikon FM2 on hard asphalt and the only thing that broke was that cheap filter. Well worth it.
The portabrace I believe is one of the best protections for a news camera. Having a cover over your camera not only protects from scratches and from dents but it also protects if from the sun and from the rain. And believe me cameras gets stretched. From been bushed into a wall by security, from banging on to another camera trying to get that sound bite or to just simply carrying it sometimes. A portabrace is few hundred dollars but the camera is few thousand. I remember in Africa when I had an old BVW-507 that was a heavy but a robust camera that went through civil wars and riots, a plane crash, you name it the camera was there. And when you would take off the cover the camera looked like it never went out the office.
The portabrace cover also has a rain cover with it, stashed into a small pocket on the site; you just pull it up and cover the top of the camera, the lens, the viewfinder and the camera microphone. And by keeping the camera clean and dry not only it would last longer but also you get a better resale value out of it. But having a cover you still have to clean the camera often as dust gets through.
And lets face it, it does make the camera look sexier. A trick used in dangerous places is to cover the site tape deck window of the cover with gaffer tape. If you find your self in a situation that you are not allowed to shoot but you decide to do so anyway, if you have the two recording lights off (front and back of the camera) then nobody can see from the site that the tape is rolling. Also make sure if it’s night time to turn the display light off and if you can pull out the viewfinder cable so there is no light coming through there either. The camera will seem that it is off.
In my present job we have few portabrace items. We have a quick-draw case that came with the camera but I do not use it that much when I am shooting. I may sometimes use it for traveling. Also for traveling we have a medium production case, it will fit batteries, charger, tapes and all the pits and pieces. What it does not fit is a reflector or a boom pole. The boom pole fits in the tripod case and the reflector, well anywhere where you can fit it.
On daily shoots we use a sling pack that would fit 2 batteries, 2-3 tapes, two microphones and a camera light. I sometimes carry a waist belt production pack, which fits my Canon Wide-angle adapter, a tape or two and all my personal gadgets, a lens cleaner a leatherman and of course my cigarettes. You can actually fit a magazine in there for those long waits. The disadvantage is that you end up walking around with this bulky heavy bag around your waist. And it does make you look like a cameraman and sometimes you should not try not to look like one.
The other piece of equipment that I had a problem with was the Sony WRR-855 wireless receiver. When it was new it looked good; it would clip on the back of the camera battery frame with a twist of a hand screw and the XLR cable fitted just right. But Sony went cheap on this one as the clip holder is made out of plastic. When I was in Albania I drove with the MSF on this rough road out towards the border with Kosovo, and the plastic broke and it broke to easily. So now it is held in place with gaffer tape and I will be making a metal one to fit it in the place of the plastic. The gaffer tape is actually doing the best job, the only problem is that you can not remove it easily and the camera will not fit into the quick draw case with the receiver attached to it. The other problem I had was the XLR cable that came with it was too short and inevitably it cracked. Instead of getting a cable long enough for this job alone, I decided to have a much longer cable which is rolled and taped under the camera battery; in case one day I may need to turn the camera microphone (which also has a short cable) into a handheld one.
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