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Good afternoon habrovchane. For several years, I enjoy photography and video shooting for about a year. Nothing unusual in my hobby is not - the price of SLR cameras has long been quite democratic, and only masters Instagrama and did not find it. Unusual is the context in which I have to take - namely, the military life. It so happened that after graduation working in the field of data protection, I prefer the service of the French Foreign Legion.
I guess not everyone in Russia knows that France is currently in two wars - in Mali and in Tsentroafrikanskoy republic. Moreover, the French troops are constantly present in some "hot" and the strategic points of the planet - just typed a couple dozen countries. At the same time I could not military reporter, I'm the same soldier as the other guys around. Like everyone, I have my duties as all I have to drag myself kilograms of equipment. Next, I would like to tell what I have to solve the problem and what tricks to go to practice your favorite hobby.
What I shoot h4> To take a more or less constantly, I use four devices:
1. The biggest, heavy and fragile camera is a Canon 600D. I will say more, Canon - the most impractical of all used my device, but it produces the best quality images and its battery lasts for hundreds of photos.
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600D, I use either the most short trips, or the longest. Let me explain: a short hike or patrol your backpack is not too heavy, so that the excess pounds you completely on the shoulder; in long trips you will most likely be permanent housing and the ability to store somewhere the camera.
2. GoPro - great invention of the series "and hung forgotten».
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It is small, light and unobtrusive. To it sold a bunch of accessories and attachments, so that you can attach it to a helmet, body armor, backpack, or even a machine; remote control eliminates the need for direct contact with the camera.
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However GoPro relatively weak battery, besides he quickly eats memory. Personally for me the actual one more problem - I forget about it. That is, it turns really "hung and forgotten." So this camera in most cases I use to record video in the background.
3. Chinese miracle Yudo glasses with built photographic camera found in the vast eBay for twenty euros.
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This contraption buy exclusively as an experiment. Fragile, awkward, with instruction only in Chinese, glasses give surprisingly quite decent quality video in good light. The sound quality and photo nonetheless terrible.
4. Phone. War - it's not only bang-bang, war - it is a lot of free time. A lot of interesting and vital moments occur when you are shooting is not quite ready. Camera at hand is not always, but the phone almost all the time in the pocket, in such cases, only he and rescues.
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On the phone, I also actively writing texts - a personal diary and occasionally blog on LiveJournal (which is why my choice was the Blackberry). Two-thirds of this post was written on the phone.
Problems h4> The most important and obvious obstacle for the shooting, as corny as it sounds - the profession. I still do not go looking for mushrooms and not hiking. During the exercises, or shooting ranges shooting options can be found, but all the same I want to "action." However, during the action you think first about the performance of the task on their skin and the skin of his comrades. Video shoot in these moments do not want, plus the same GoPro shooting sparkles like a Christmas tree. I found the only way out - GoPro with cover BlackHawk on a helmet or body armor.
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Hands remain free, nothing constrains the movement and not distracting. But everything is not perfect, since the free space may be neither here nor there.
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Another fundamental problem - the weight. My body armor in "combat" state weighs about 26 pounds, the backpack - for about fifteen. Add to this machine, helmets, ankle boots, water, and other pleasures of life, you get rather big figure. One day I came across demotivators with screenshots from Call of Duty and the caption: "The creators believe that a trained soldier can run fifteen seconds." Personally, I am after two hours and fifteen battle can not. In such a situation, trying to save weight on the whole. Already a replacement battery, I highly thoughtful, and the second lens and the speech can not be any.
The consequence of this problem is the fatigue. Sometimes days are issued, at the end of which there is no way to even take off the shoes, not to go with the camera. And this, unfortunately, can not be helped.
Headache of the 21st century - electricity. Sockets, you know, do not grow on trees, and modern devices are asked to eat regularly. It turns out that the camera may become useless for the second day. Exit here two: either removable battery or charger solar powered. For myself, I found a compromise - a device PowerMonkey Explorer, which is a solar-powered charging a small battery at 2200 mAh and interchangeable tips for different devices.
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In sunny weather Soup can be charged directly; overcast - during the day to charge the battery, and only at night from his phone or camera.
During campaigns weather conditions choose not particularly necessary. Heat, cold, dust, dirt, rain - in some parts of our planet all can experience a few days. Besides, sometimes you have to crawl on his belly and, in the arms and hands nagare stain. My backpack sometimes looks like this:
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If GoPro was created specifically for the extreme, the Blackberry and Canon unlikely. For Q10, there are many protective cases. Interest me, of course, not krasivenko leather accessories, and anything big and strong.
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With the 600D has to be extremely careful. I prefer to wrap the camera in a marching fleece sweater, which is always present in my backpack. If a long hike, it is better to separate the lens from the carcass, and put them in individual sleeves.
My army spetsialzaniya - military doctor; as it turned out pretty good medical gloves to protect the wires from moisture and dust. In fingers comfortably store your memory cards and adapters to them, and in the palm - wires.
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The problem, which I initially did not think at all - limited memory. Video weighs a lot. GoPro fills a 64-gigabyte memory card for three hours. At the same time the possibility to copy the contents of the card on the laptop or hard drive can not be for weeks. That has to carry extra memory cards. A lot of cards.
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Total I have seven cards - two to 64 gigabytes, two at 32, two at 16 and one at 8. Two adapter with MicroSD to SD travel with a camera and a laptop.
Another problem - the breakdown and loss. Imagine that you are traveling to Barcelona for a week and forget to charge for your phone. Or traveling on a business trip to Nizhniy Novgorod and you break the stick. What will you do - go to the store and buy a new one. Now imagine that you are in Mali, the nearest supermarket is located in the city five hundred miles away, and the city is under control is not very friendly mood and very well-armed men. So with their gadgets have to be very, very careful.
Handling and storage h4> All footage must be somewhere to handle and store. Indispensable for me in this case the thing - cloud services. They help one side to group data from different devices, and with another - the fear in case of loss or failure of the device. In other words, perform its direct functions. In his enthusiasm, I use DropBox, maykrosvtovskim OneDrive, Google release Google Drive, as well as the program Evernote. DropBox on my most important documents are stored, duplicated diary and all publications of LiveJournal. On Google Drive I rent 100 gigabytes, which is still enough to store all your photos. Fifteen gigabytes free on OneDrive enough for photos taken with the phone - they are sent there automatically. Evernote I used to synchronize text documents.
My laptop - a MacBook Pro with a 256 GB SSD. All images and all video to 2014. stored on the laptop and duplicated on terabyte external hard drive. Video taken from January 2014 are only stored on HDD.
Photos I treat very superficial. Crop, rotate the brightness or correct Ballance white - at least that's my and my maximum. For these purposes, I use Google Picasa, which I think is more convenient and easier to understand iPhoto. On the video a bit more complicated. Here I am still very green and inexperienced, so that the search of his ideal is not yet completed. So far, I use iMovie, but it is possible that over time, move on to something else.
Publish h4> It may seem counterintuitive, but the captured images and create a film I almost never published, nor does it share with your friends nearmeyskimi. I'm not doing this for several reasons. Firstly, out of respect for the privacy of his colleagues. If I am willing to share their own, it does not mean that the rest agree with me. Second, 80 percent of the footage of me - it everyday routine life. As said earlier, I'm not a war reporter; My goal is not to attract the audience, my goal - to keep time the way I see it. I'm interested in not three hours of shooting from heavy machine guns, and the way we ran the crowd, sorry, in the toilet at their end.
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Why am I doing this yet? The summer of 2010 I spent in the US. I would like at the end of the trip to make a movie for my friends, so from the start filming interesting moments of his journey. And although the idea did not work out, I still have gigabytes of footage. The fact that some four years ago, it seemed foolish, now is a nostalgic smile and warm memories. Memories of his carefree youth, the whole stage of his life. I shot video and photos now do not represent for me the enormous interest - military life, and so I am surrounded. But a few years later, I'm sure I'll be looking at them with a nostalgic smile and warm memories.
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Take care of yourself!
Source: habrahabr.ru/post/238637/
