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Fisheye, Macro, and Wide Angel Camera Phone Lenses
If you are on location, you have probably noticed that if you want to take a picture of a sweet setting, some details on paper, or just really wanna screw around with taking pictures in between lighting setups, this might just be the set of camera lenses for you phone you were looking for.
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Tandem USB Connector
You can connect so many different USB devices, it would be a shame to limit yourself to just the amount that you have available in your hubs and available slots. The USB Lineup lets you plug in a device, and then continue plug in devices behind that… indefinitely!
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Nvidia Quado FX Series Video Cards
The Quadro FX series of cards have been specifically designed and calibrated to work in tune with the Adobe suite of products, including After Effects and Premiere Pro CS5. The boast a load of onboard video RAM, CUDA architecture and are just plain screaming cards.
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Alienware and NEC’s 42-Inch Wide Monitor Concepts
Although these are still concepts and not available on the market yet… they are pretty amazing, and I gotta say, once they set a price, these things are going to be amazing for editing on.
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Griffin Powermate
This is a pretty sweet little gadget. You can assign this little dial to do whatever you want, from being a plain old volume knob to being a shuttle for your NLE and anything in between… the possibilities are endless!
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Wacom Cintiq Tablet
Wacom tablets have been around for a while, but not many people know about the Wacom Cintiq. I don’t use one regularly, but trying them out at NAB in April made me want to change my workflow. Things like roto, paint, photoshopping and general tasks seem so much easier, especially when with this one, you draw right on the screen!
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My Suite Stuff’s AE Pillow
How could we not include My Suite Stuff in this roundup? Sadly, they are down for renovations, but never fear… they should be up soon enough for you to fill your snuggling needs with your favorite app icon pillow formations!
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Go Pro Camera
The Go Pro is by far one of the most versatile sports cameras I have ever used, and been able to handle. Shockproof, waterproof, 1080p, mountable to just about anything… and its super cheap! Such a great little tool to have around just in case!
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TruePower U Socket Wall Outlet
If I could, I would replace every outlet in my house with these. This is absolutely brilliant, and in ten years I think every outlet will have this in them. Imagine charging all your USB capable devices from anywhere in the house… without a computer!
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Camtrol
This is a great product for anyone that has a video camera… handycams to DSLR filmmakers can benefit from this insanely customizable stabilization system. It has handle gribs, full gimbal positioning options, and if you have a handycam type of camera, there is a remote for start/stopping recording!
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Nasty Clamps
This thing has saved my butt more times than I can imagine. I forget my tripod, or it won’t fit into the space where I want, all I do is attach my camera to the thread at the end of the Nasty Clamp, clamp it to an object and BAM! Shot assembled!
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CableDrop Cable Clips
Such a simple idea, yet so effective! Being a video professional, it is inevitable that we are to have an incessant amount of cables around us at all times… and the most aggravating thing is when they fall behind the desk. What to do? Well, here is the answer.
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eSATA Drive Dock
… or the toaster as I like to call mine, is an amazing tool, especially if you work on a lot of projects, where you end up just buying a hard drive for that specific client. You can keep all your drives organized by job and just pop them in when you need to work on that specific project! Works via USB.
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Tracking Markers
These can almost be free, just make sure you have a good set of them on hand if you ever need them. You could be out on shoot, need to lay them on the ground, stick against a wall, or whatever, they will make your matchmoving, tracking or planar tracking worlds easier, especially if they are easy to roto out.
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A Nice, High Capacity Flash Drive
Any flash drive will really do, but this one over at ThinkGeek.com is pretty tiny, and can go up to 32GB. Reason you want to always have this on hand, is if someone wants to hand you over some clips, transfer data from a laptop, or generally give you any kind of piece of the production at hand, you have a little piece of storage that will work on almost ANY computer.
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Some Kind of Slate App
You are more than likely using a smartphone by now, and if you are… you should try to pick up a Slate app for a couple bucks. It will help immensely on shoots where you need to sync multiple cameras, audio, keep track of takes and audio files, settings on the camera an whatnot. Linked here is the DSLR Slate iPhone/iPad app, but there are many more for other platforms.
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Mountain Dew
For those long editing nights where you have to go over revisions upon revisions… what’s the one thing you want by your side? A couple of liters of some of your favorite sugary soda beverage. Nothing gets me through a rigorous night like a good old fashioned sugar high.
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Sad Keanu Cutout
Last, but definitely not least, you need to have yourself a Sad Keanu Reeves cutout to keep you company and sit upon your monitor like a throne. Just remember on those cold, lonely editing nights, there is someone always there with you.
We are always ever expanding our toolbox. Whether it be with camera equipment, VFX gear, or gadgets to make our post workflow more efficient and endurable, I have found some of my favorite pieces of equipment from my own arsenal, as well as from my wishlist that you should definitely check out and consider adding to your collection.
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By Topher Welsh
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A little warning about MySuiteStuff…
My girlfriend’s mom ordered a couple pillows to give me for Xmas last year. She ordered them in early-November and it took until the following April for them to actually arrive. For whatever reason, they apparently were doing everything themselves (just 2 people) and I’m sure they had been hit hard with holiday orders, but 5 months is kind of ridiculous.
The worst part? I had asked for the AE pillow and my girlfriend’s mom had only ordered the PS and Ai pillows…D’OH!!
thanks guys for this collection…..i like it.;)
For now, being a student, I will just buy MountainDew.
Good collection. However, I was a little disappointed in the Slate app description. The particular one linked is only for iPhone/iPad/iPod. I realize it says they’re are many more out there, but it would be nice to have a link to someplace with a list of cinematography apps for those with other smart phones like Android or Blackberry. Otherwise, great stuff. Thanks for the compilation.
Well that’s for another roundup then, eh? hehehe
Is this all that Topher does? Roundups? Just wondering.
No, I run http://visualfxtuts.com as well, and do tutorials around the web for some other places too. I used to write for blog.videohive.net before they went to Tumblr, and I’ve done some tutorials over on Motionworks too with the After Effects A-Z Series. Hopefully I can get some tuts up here too, but everyone seems to love the roundups so I will make sure those are coming every Friday…
Topher doesn’t know more than this. His tuts are very kiddish,I have seen …nothing new …nothing special, that’s why he started writing articles. Even he doesn’t pour his own creativity in this…he just takes others works from internet and compile them as “roundups”. Even a 7 th standard kid can do this. If you don’t believe me, see his works…only roundups…. and he calls himself a VFX artist. Ahahahahaha…….!!
“Hopefully I can get some tuts up here too”
Tuts+ is paying you for your roundups…take it and do that only…..please…don’t bother us from your tutorials.Spare us…for God sake!
He is not Topher, he is a Chauffeur!
yes,Topher doesnt know more than this.
Hey “Chauffeur”
Lets be a little smarter with our words. It’s never wise to bash somebody that is helping you. Topher has put out a ton of tutorials full of very useful information. I think you need to actually go to his website and take a look around. Yes, pretty much everything he does on here is Roundups because he’s the best at them and that’s what I need him for here. He’s got lots of other stuff going on that doesn’t make it’s way to AEtuts site because I want to give lots of people the chance to create and share tutorials. Lets keep the comments positive.
I might do mostly roundups, but that is no reason for saying I don’t know what I am doing. I write roundups because the community loves them, and yeah, well… I’m good at them. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a skillset to back up what I do FOR A LIVING. I am a freelance motion graphic and VFX artist, which is what I do to put food on the table for my two kids and wife… so I can’t be that horrible at it.
I admit, some of my earlier tutorials are smaller in size, but they provide a lot of helpful tips. Its not about the length, its about what you take from it. To tell the truth, between working, running VisualFXTuts.com and contributing articles to the many sites across the web, I just don’t have time to make super in depth tutorials.
But I do look forward to putting some tutorials out here on AEtuts+ in the future… and to proving you wrong “Chauffeur”.
I would like to buy “Camtrol”
I actually have one… its freakin amazing. you can configure it like, any way you want… and its super stable.
When I was building my new PC, I was considering using Quadro cards… but, since I’m also a heavy gamer, and I wanted to take advantage of the downright awesome SLI optimizations and increased power, I went with 3 GTX 480′s working in 3-way SLI and all OC’d.
You can’t get much more cuda power than that xD
To date, I haven’t seen ANY visual lag in either gaming or while doing heavy video editing.
Combined with a SSD, OC Intel i7 980X OC’d to 4.6ghz, and 24GB for OC’d ram… I can’t ask for a better rig.
I’m currently saving up for a Wacom Citiq… However, I worry about editing HD video on it. I’m jut not convinced it’ll be able to handle a full HD clip straight from my camera. For now I carry around a custom built laptop (with an I/O capture card) and a Wacom Intuos 3. If you can’t afford the Cintiq, or you don’t mind painting off the screen (it takes some getting used to.. but after a while it’s like 2nd nature), I highly recommend the Intuos line.
Tracking markers are, BY FAR, the cheapest and most used (and useful) accessories I’ve ever bought. However, you can easily make your own by printing out the design on a paper and laminating it or gluing it to a square piece of cardboard. You can even create markers by using a combination of standard black tape and white tape to make small “X”s on the areas you want to track.
I’m drinking a Mountain Dew (In one of those nifty “Throwback” cans) as I type this. Awesome.
The thing is, its not a computer, its just a monitor/tablet. So, it all depends on your specs of your machine as to whether it will play back well or not.
At NAB they were demoing RED 4K files on it inside AE, Nuke, and Combustion and they were playing amazingly. But it was also on a SCREAMING system.
Ah! My mistake!
I could’ve sworn it was a tablet PC. I’ve been under that assumption since I first heard of it years ago.
That’s what I get for not doing my research!
It is still pretty pricey though.
I like that Monitor. But it’s pretty useless in some cases, when you can’t display your 1080p footage in a native resolution.
The Tandem USB-Connector is nice, but when you split an USB-Port over and over, it looses much of it’s capacity (like HDD, Printer and Mouse on one Port…)
Also I can’t understand why I should buy an extremely Quadro FX card, and then film with wide-angle-adapter shit from my iPhone.
And when you think about, these Tracking-Markers aren’t that useful. Black/white isn’t really good when it comes to keying. Best markers in my opinion (for greenscreen) are orange Post-Its – you can easily remove them with some channel-work within your compositor (for example, when some charakter crosses them, it isn’t as ridicolous as rotoscoping those b/w ones).
Regards
The Cintiq I think is more used for AE, CG, instead of video editing, and works well for when it comes down to doing matte painting, modeling, or roto work…
QuadroFX cards are amazing, especially if you are working with the CS5 suite… I agree it doesn’t make sense to buy it if your main camera is an iPhone.. but I highly doubt thats the case…
Those lenses are just fun to have around if you like to film things or take pictures with your phone.
I disagree on the tracking markers. Those are the same ones that Eric Alba ( http://ericalba.org/ ) uses and it all depends on the situation you are going to be using the markers for. It might make more sense to have blue or green markers to secondary key them out, but if they intersect with your subject, you are going to have roto work ahead of you regardless…
I don’t speak from the Cintiq – that’s really amazing, I tried one myself
I mean the NEC Display from Alienware. I mean – for editing and/or compositing, I have to see my footage in native resolution.
I think we could eternaly discuss about tracking markers. I like to get them clean out, without roto – and this is possible, even when your subject overlaps them – but it’s tricky. B/W-markers will always bring roto work, even if they aren’t near to the object. It gets it’s job done, but it isn’t a time saver.
Regards
Excellent. Brilliant tutorial – thanks.
Hi Topher! Nasty Clamps and the True Power outlet look great, thanks for the clever tips. But Mountain Dew… That drink went out in the 90′s I think. Too sugary and caffeinated for large doses. You could buy the little 6 packs of MD to ration out but I think 5 Hour Energy Shots are the way to go. Lots of B vitamins. http://www.5hourenergy.com/
hahaha… Yeah Mountain Dew can a little much, Zipfizz and 5Hour Energy are great for that stuff… hahaa
Nice, but everywhere I ask…..no one has a ‘Wide Angel’ adapter
Topher: Hey! This is Matt Monroe (a/k/a: “Mister Nasty Clamps”) giving a quick shout to say thanks so much for including my funky lil’ photography accessory in your list of 18 awesome gadgets. I appreciate the kind words — glad to know that the Nasty Clamp has saved your butt on more than one occasion — and it’s an honor to be included with such cool stuff as the Camtrol, Co Pro Cameras, and Wacom tablets.
I’ve gotta’ admit that my favorite item on the whole list (aside from Nasty Clamps) is the Sad Keanu Cutout, and I can imagine an entire industry centered around computer accessories that feature slightly depressed celebrities. Hmmmmmm… Now THAT would be an interesting business venture.
Again, thanks for the kind words.
Matthew G. Monroe
Chief of Nastology
I MISS U.ALL THE BEST…
Mountain Dew is good but I prefer I cup of tea and a bottle of water..!!Thanks for the very awesome post,I really appreciated it.Good job and keep up the good work always.
Mountain dew haha I love it!
Those gadgets above are absolutely great..Mountain Dew taste good,hahah..!!Pillow is indeed very important also,no doubt..!!I really appreciated this post.
great………….