I went to Vung Tau over the three-day weekend and had a chance to try out my new cine hand jib, an adjustable hand crane from the folks at Cinecity. It’ll take a lot of practice to steady the gizmo, but I’ll be able to get some shots I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. The jib fits (barely) in a backpack, and it doesn’t weigh much. I’ve been using the Panasonic entirely in manual mode lately – manual exposure, manual white balance, manual focus – with much better results. I’ve also been using the YouTube uploader rather than uploading directly from QuickTime, as the latter restricts videos to 720p.
