Camera for hire

I have an aging, bashed-about Sony DV camera. It’s one of the domestic single-chip models, but it was carefully chosen, and I have a small selection of accessories for it – a half-decent wide-angle adaptor, a couple of microphones, mounts and clamps. If you’ve seen my shows, you’ll likely have seen shots from it – it’s not at all broadcast quality, but it’s ‘good enough’ for minicamera and point-of-view shots, so I’ve tended to clamp it in dramatic positions and not worry too much about it. It’s a handy thing to have, anyway – I’ve some lovely footage of my nephew, and having it to hand allowed me to do the pilot project which spawned this NESTA gig we’re now gearing up for.

It’s really not a good camera. I’d love something like the Z1 John’s just bought (though I’d really really like a Panasonic HVX-200), but this is what I have at the moment. Mostly, it’s good enough.

This does not, however, explain why, this morning, I loaned it out… to BBC Scotland. A chum there rang me last night and explained that they’ve run out of cameras – could he borrow mine?

Umm… what?!

Now, it’s not quite what you think, in that it’s not being used for a show. Nor even by the TV arm of the BBC. But still…

What do you mean ‘the BBC have run out of cameras’?

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