On Friday, May 9th, I was fortunate enough to have been given access to cover the rally for Senator Obama held here in Eugene, Oregon as a solo video journalist.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been through a trial by fire like that in many years – reminded me of my daysas an unpaid intern at one of the local newspapers back in the day.

I was able to shoot for the citizen journalist organization – The Uptake.

I busted my hump to capture content shooting with what I later discovered was the smallest camera being used by the working press. I found it slightly amusing to look at all the gear the mainstream media was shooting with including what I now term “Hair and Teeth” on camera talent . Add to that multiple production crew people and no wonder TV news is going in the toilet. And the looks I got shooting on the media platform with my little cameras in relation to the various shoulder mount and larger sized cameras such as Panasonic DVX100′s & HVX200′s, SONY V1U’s, etc put a smile on my face as well.

I did find some limitations in my choice of gear that I shoot with, but I’m beginning to find that using the SONY HC7′s with the Azden SMX10 mic is very compact and less intimidating to the subjects I shoot when I interview them.

The combination of shooting hand held and on my Bogen 3001 tripod with fluid head was a dream – All my gear was carried in my photo backpack – I was mobile and easily moved around while asking man on the street type questions. Going to post in Vegas Pro 8 was straight forward.

At the end of this project – I discovered the pro’s and con’s of working with these cameras, but given their limitations, I still prefer shooting with these types of cameras over anything bigger for the time being – especially when delivering to the web.

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