So, you’re a filmmaker gearing up for a project. You have a kit list as long as your arm, but you don’t have a spare £20,000 kicking about to buy it all. On top of equipment costs, you’ll need to cover talent, insurance, location hire and travel fees. Post shoot, you’ll have production, licensing and finally, distribution costs to deal with. It’s no surprise that hiring gear tends to be the most viable option for budding filmmakers, often being the only solution when it comes to realising your vision.

With this in mind, we thought we’d put our own kit list together, selecting what we would use if we were shooting an indie project, and then raid the warehouse. Next, we’d set everything up in our new studio space here at HAC Towers, and get a lovely selection of photos (any excuse to get the NEO 3s out) showing you what our kit is all about, how it’s packaged, and what to expect when you open the box. Finally, we decided to price it all up on Hireacamerea.com and work out what it would cost to hire. Enjoyable for us, informative for you, everyone’s a winner!

The Kit List
Canon EOS C70
Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM
Canon RF 50mm F1.2 L USM
Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L USM DS
Rotolight NEO 3 3-head Lighting Kit
Aputure C300D Mk II and Barn Doors
DJI RS2 Pro Combo
Manfrotto MPRO Carbon Fibre Tripod
Sennheiser MKH 416 Shotgun Mic
Sennheiser EW 100 ENG G4 Wireless Lav Kit
Zoom H6 Field Recorder
Rode Boom Pole
Lastolite Trigrip Reflector

Equipment Total Value: £18,536

Choosing a Camera

Why the C70? The trickiest choice we had to make was the camera. We could have gone in all sorts of different directions here – from the DSLR-esque form factors of the Panasonic GH6 or Fujifilm’s X-H2S, to the chunky-bodied Blackmagic RAW performance of the Pocket Cinema 6K Pro. In the Sony camp, the small and brilliant a7S III is hugely popular with shooters far and wide, or perhaps the workflow options provided by its cousin the FX6 would better fit the bill. Finally, for hybrid power, Canon’s R5 C and Nikon’s Z 9 are hugely accomplished video cameras that take breathtaking stills too, offering true bang for buck.

Ultimately, we decided to go for something ‘Cine’ in spirit, rather than hybrid or DSLR. We figured most would prioritise the workflow advantages of a cinema camera above all else, with their boxy shapes and modular designs set up to leverage multiple accessories, multiple shooting options, audio inputs and general flexibility.

Step into the spotlight, the Canon EOS C70. Not a ‘conventional’ cine camera by any means, but a boxier cine-inspired mirrorless design covered in mounting points, whilst small enough to park on a gimbal even with weighty lenses attached. The C70 has a Super 35 dual-gain sensor capable of 4K 12 bit RAW, features built in ND filters, 4 channel audio (2 of which are mini XLRs), and lets you use the latest RF glass whilst still enjoying EF lenses via Canon’s splendid adapter with native performance. Netflix approved, this is a camera you can wield solo, running-and-gunning, or sit proudly atop a fluid tripod. With exposure overlays like zebra, waveform and the increasingly popular false colour, the C70 has the ideal attributes to tackle an indie film.

If it’s not for you though, you could switch out the camera and lenses for any of the options previously mentioned, and everything else will work absolutely fine.

Life Thru a Lens

With the Canon EOS C70’s RF mount in mind, it felt like picking RF lenses was the right thing to do here. Canon insists it really had video in mind when designing its RF lens range. Designed specifically for mirrorless cameras, RF lenses mount closer to your sensor, offering an immediate bump in clarity.

If you’re leaning on autofocus, you’ll find these lenses smooth and steady, and for those focussing manually by hand or follow focus, Canon’s ‘focus-by-wire' offers precise adjustments. Of course, if you’d rather use EF still or cine lenses, we have plenty – along with Canon’s wonderful adapter to mount them.

Now for the trio of lenses we chose: The Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM for wide angle, the Canon RF 50mm F1.2 L USM for standard, and the Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L USM DS for closer shots and glorious bokeh – we do have the non-DS version if you aren’t keen on Canon’s special coating!

Laura says:

Having access to so much gorgeous RF glass is very exciting, on the day we were basically spoiled for choice! Straight away we decided primes would definitely have to be included, and 50mm and 85mm focal lengths are absolute classics for good reason – fantastic in low light and absolutely razor sharp. We decided we’d also want the versatility and convenience of a wide zoom to compliment these two, and the RF 15-35mm fit the bill perfectly. None of these are light lenses, and although on paper we knew that the RS2 would cope with the weight, I did wonder about balancing the setup.  After a bit of jiggling and adjusting, it balanced perfectly.

Keep it Light

For lighting, we realise what you’ll need will very much depend on your project, but we just wanted to tick 3 individual boxes. Firstly, we would need a bright light with colour customisation, to sit on the C70’s shoe mount and provide interesting compositional options for running and gunning. Secondly, we needed a vibrant, aimable key light with enough grunt to use outside as well as in. Finally, we felt it important to include a versatile 3-head kit offering as many options as possible for highlights, colours and diffusion.

With that in mind, we chose the NEO 3 three-head kit, complete with stands and diffuser caps, as well as Aputure’s C300D Mk II for that key light oomph. We also chucked in a trigrip reflector for bouncing and filling options.

Laura says:

Having been to a Rotolight event a few months ago we were both pretty familiar with the amazing capabilities of the little NEO 3s, so we were keen to use them for this shoot. Space was somewhat limited, but these are so compact and versatile that they were a doddle to use. They offer 16.7 million colours so you can get exactly the look you’re after.

Taking the Mic

Much like with lighting, the film you’re making and shots on your list will dictate mic types and quantities, but we wanted to at least show off a couple of different options. As such, we picked Sennheiser’s EW 100 ENG G4 Wireless Lav Kit, featuring a lavalier mic and transmitter, a wireless XLR transmitter dongle, and a receiver. We also chose the Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun mic and the Rode Boom Pole, which can be used wirelessly in conjunction with the XLR transmitter from the previous kit.

This setup gives you either a wireless lavalier OR a wireless boom, which will work fine for some scenes, though you may need more units depending on your number of subjects. The C70 also comes packed with a Rode NTG2 shotgun mic, so you can record audio straight to camera. We prefer the idea of using Zoom’s H6 field recorder and combining all key audio in post, whilst using the on-camera shotgun for ambience and scratch.

Alex Says:

Having options is pretty important when you're flying solo or in a tiny team, and this setup offers a boom, lav and on-camera solution so you can really tailor how you're recording audio for each shot. Just bear in mind that using a host of different mics will result in quite different sounding results, so using two different types for a conversation could result in some headaches and bother in post. 

 

Balancing Act

There was a time when balancing anything other than a DSLR on a compact stabiliser was a major problem, and if you wanted to use a heavy lens, you could forget about it completely. But fear not, because DJI continues to iterate on its award-winning gimbals, and the RS2 is more than capable of supporting beefier units and bigger lenses too. It can handle up to 4.5kg on its small, sleek frame, and with the C70 only slightly north of 1kg, and the RF 85mm almost identical in weight to the camera, you can comfortably balance both and even attach accessories, EVFs and screens if you want to.

We found it relatively easy to attach and balance the C70 provided we positioned it as close to the RS2’s vertical side support as possible. The camera fits neatly with the bundled plate, but we've heard that many shooters prefer to use a 3rd party option for added stability and mounting points. SmallRig has a whole host of solutions here, and we stock plenty of them if you’re interested. The RS2’s motors seemed to have no trouble holding the C70 steady – with only the briefest of “I’m a bit cross” gyrating during calibration, and we were set up in just a few minutes.

Alex Says:

This was the bit I was most worried about. As a hire office associate prior to my current role here, I used to get a fair few phone calls from struggling filmmakers, desperately trying to balance some over-sized camera - cine lens combo on a poky gimbal. Thankfully DJI's latest stabilisers laugh in the face of a bit of heft, and although we didn't mount the handle and shotgun mic when the C70 was on the RS2, we easily could have. I could see you hitting some balancing problems if you've got a big heavy cine lens hooked up via an adapter, but we do now have the DJI RS3 Pro!

 

We used the follow focus mounting plate under the C70, which is included in the kit and easily screws together with the provided Allen key. We had heard that the new, deeper teeth on Canon’s RF lenses meant you could actually get away without fitting focus gears. In practice, whilst it did seem that teeth were meeting teeth, we were worried about slips and a lack of precision, so fitted the supplied gear ring just to be safe.

Good To Go

So there we have it, a small but powerful, agile setup ticking a whole host of boxes. Camera and lenses, lighting, audio and support, in a compact and in the grand scheme of things, convenient package. It's quite exciting to imagine what you could create with such a lovely filmic camera and Canon's latest, most precise glass. The lighting means your scenes will be well-lit inside and out, with the NEO kit providing bright colourful on-and-off-camera options to satisfy even the most creative filmmaker. The stabilisation you get from the RS2 Pro means you can inject intensity into your footage with swift moves and pans, and in terms of audio, you have mics you can easily hide for fiction, and professional options for documentary.

Everything featured in this article is available at Hireacamera.com, and if you have any questions do get in touch, we love to work out options for customers, as well as thoroughly enjoying seeing the results post-hire.

 

Laura Currie and Alex Parker 2nd October 2022