It's a tough decision with a lot riding on it.. You've figured you have thirteen hundred dollars budgeted to wireless mics for your new wedding videography business. Depending on quantity and models, you can have as many as five wireless sets or, going with the "top" models, you can buy one and save up another hundred dollars for the second.
There are a lot of variations on this theme, of course. Maybe you're already in the business and have just figured out that your current inventory of two wireless sets won't cut it for doc-style wedding videography and you quickly need four more sets. What can you afford to buy now? What level of quality must you adhere to? What quality difference is there really, between the $150 and $350 sets; between the $350 and $700 sets?
This article holds the answer for you! Minutes ago, I hooked up four wireless sets - each a different model, around a solid Shure XLR mic (which I inadvertently called a Sennheiser in the audio test!), positioned myself about one foot from the mics and read off the test.
I wanted to get my wife in on this, so there would be both male and female voices, but she was too busy watching Larry King!
Finally, a weekend that isn't booked! So you take the family out to celebrate, leaving your precious video equipment behind. The crackhead who has just crawled through your bedroom window is appreciative! As he bags your gear, he figures his favorite pawn shop dealer will give him five or six hundred bucks for the tens of thousands of dollars worth of your gear he's stealing.
The scream of your burglar alarm is annoying him and he knows he's got to be gone in under ten minutes. He's not worried if neighbors take the license number of the stolen car he's using, he's already anticipating his next fix.
Our last article talked about some of the problems that allow this situation to exist. The solutions involve politicians and law enforcement - people who surprisingly may have more interest in perpetuating this environment than in finding a solution.
This article will show how you can take action today, to protect your possessions and tools of your trade, and spend less than $300.
For years, I've had a passing interest in safes. I understood that I needed to protect my video gear, but was hesitant to spend over a thousand dollars for a heavy chest when there was always a piece of video or editing gear I was salivating over.
Besides, the safes I saw were too big externally, while being too little internally. Then I stumbled upon gun safes. We bought one made by Stack-on, that was designed with two sections, each having its own door.
Rifles go on the right while the left section (with shelves) was for pistols and ammo. But the rifle rests and pistol shelves, like much of the office furniture sold today, was to be customer-installed.
No problem with the pistol shelves. They were just right for lenses, wireless sets, shotgun mics, etc. We tossed out the rifle rests and cut some shelving out of plywood. I set this shelving at heights that would let us store several video cameras and other larger gear, including our laptop.
Bolting down the safe
My office is a converted bedroom that has a closet. I cleared out a space for the safe and bolted it to the wall and flooring studs.
Now, maybe a professional, top-of-his-game burglar, could still get my gear, but he'd probably be found cracking a bank or jewelrystore safe where the rewards would be larger (or even more likely, he'd be found in the pennitentary, getting his "just rewards"!). Your average, everyday, crackhead burglar will likely waste his precious ten minutes cursing your video safe, and probably remove you from his "prospect list".
Item available at: Sports Authority, #964931, model # GC-924 $264.99
We're looking into video equipment insurance, and hope to have an article on this subject within the next couple of months. If you have anything you'd like to contribute to this (or any other) topic, please write or call. (See our contact page ).
My wife, Jean popped into my office one day last month to tell me about an advertisement she'd gotten via email. I hate spam and have vowed never to buy anything sold that way (I just hope they don't start selling groceries via spam!).
After assuring me that it was not spam, she went on to talk about this little USB device that you can plug into a computer, then plug a telephone into it and make all the free local and long distance phone calls you like. You even get a free phone number of the area code of your choosing.
Jean is the person who keeps Billy Mays and other TV ad men in business, buying that ten dollar whiz-bang device, then paying six dollars shipping on each of the eight "free" things he sends with it. We have a drawer full of useless devices that either quickly broke or never functioned well.
So, when she told me about Magic Jack, to say I was sckeptical would be an understatement. But having been recently chastised for failing to use our eighty-three-digit-long code for five cents a minute phone calls, I was in a defensive position, and so acquiesed and agreed to look into it.
Unable to find an excuse not to purchase the Magic Jack other than their terrible website, hokey home-video and the fact that they hide the price until after you've filled out your life history, I pulled out my credit card and paid the forty dollars.
