Never mind Samuel, I already figured the seller on Ebay.
Will be contacting him soon.

Thanks anyway, Alex

What makes to me wonder Patricia, is how do you manage (and others) to make through such long shooting session with small cam without solid shoulder support ?

I think if I would do commercial video (events, for instance) no doubts I would use shoulder camera, even though the cam itself is much more heavy. Once on shoulder you earn stability and wieght is spread better making considerbly less strain on your arm.

Regards, Alex

Well, Alex, the secret is not doing anything commercial. This is all for fun, no one expects it to look like TV or real movies. And I am looking around for a stabiliser, but not a shoulder support or tripod.

The waist battery rules...

I spent all last week in London. I never had to recharge the waist battery till I got home...

While I didn't really shoot all that much because I was at work in the office most of the time, the waist battery did make life very simple for me on the trip.

I did get time on the weekends to go down to the Tower Bridge and got some shots of David Blain hanging up there in his plexiglass box...

He's attempting to stay in the box for for 44 days with no food (only water).

Patricia, I would be interested how you will end up lookig for a stabilizer. Chances I'll go this route also in some future (or perhaps will end up with soem kind of shoulder support/chest brace)

Alex

Alex, you can build your own shoulder stabilizer/brace. A friend of mine built a beaut for his GL1---he since sold the cam though. As far as tripods go, I really like the Manfrotto 055pro legs and 128RC head. It's a tad expensive, but it's not to heavy to lug around, and it's quite stable. The head's nice and smooth too. I put a deposit on one the other day. I should be picking it up by the weekend. I miss my 075B/136 set-up, but it was just not practical for carrying around. Great studio rig, however!

Thanks Frank.
As far as talking about tripods - remember - I a photo shooter and only then comes video. :-)

Manfrotto 055 is my workhorse (besides of monopod) with two heards (141RC and ballhead). If I'll really need a tripod shooting - I'm set. Will think about your suggestions of buiding my own shoulder support...

Regards, Alex

The 055 is quite good. I also take more pics than video. I usually don't use a tripod, but with video, it's pretty much a must.

Regarding photography, these days I'm only doing 35mm SLR pics. I wished I had a large format and a good rangefinder---actually, I love rangefinders. Both are out of my budget; and I'm sure my FM2T is going to outlast me---unlike those miniDV cams!

Yeah, to video I came just in a few last months ocne our little dauther begun to walk (only then we with my wife realized how much we wuold miss not recording her rushing around).
Until then I used to shoot for 7 years, ran thruogh several setups (mostly of Minolta) until a year ago settled up on Canon:
EOS-3 + 28-70/2.8L, 70-200/2.8L, 550EX and accessories. Once shooting carefully, the quality is incredable.

Alex

A 28mm manual lens is going to be my next lens purchase, though I don't know how often I'm going to use it. There are shots I've missed because the lack of one. I look for older manual lenses, but in new-like shape. So far e-bay seems to be the best place to find these. Canon makes some good lenses---from the tests I've read. Some of the Nikon gems have long been dropped for the newer auto-focus stuff. I prefer focusing manually, since I'm not usually in a big rush. If auto fucus SLRs are anything like the auto focus in cams, I'll pass.

Oh, Frank, I see you completely out of tthis world... :-))
AF in SLR has done a leap ahead of what has been thought about AF a decade ago.
Most of contemporary SLRs (even the most consumer one) are featured by very sophisticated and responsive AF capable of locking and tracking fast sports.
Some of pro AF SLR are specifically tuned for really fast and resposive AF, featured by multi AF points you're able to choiose from and several AF modes to cover pretty much every situation, but in most demanding low-light conditions (in which case you would be also struggling focusing manually).

I know, careful manual focusing skill is oneof the most highly valuable for the photographer (and there might be the cases where very careful manual focusing may outperform AF in precision due to natural AF pinpoint tolerance), but rankly, I can hardly think abot such cases. May be I became too lazy to swithc over to manual, but I leant AF and specific AF issues of the camera (as well my previous Minoltas), so can only think about manual in really low-light or low-contrast situations where AF would struggle more then would my eye.

Regards, Alex

Thanks for the education, Alex. I have buddies with high end digital still cameras, along with all the great---new---lenses. What I noticed is that for the most part, they take some nice shots. What I also noticed is that they take some not so nice shots because of the auto everything. But..., if they want to capture the moment, and fast, well, let's just say that they leave me behind in the dust! Ahh, I recall my early days of shooting 100 ASA B&W print and 25 ASA color slides; and then later came my my Super8. The pain, the pain of it all.... :-)

Well, Frank, you know even the most sophisticated camera system will not cover for photographer's absense of skills.
Often people have enough cash to fork otu for the "latest and gratest" paying lots of cash to latest, most capable SLRs and digital SLRs, but proudly holding the stuff hanging on thei neck take nothing but mediocre snapshots worth of cheapest P&S. On the other hand, I know amateurs that used to own old manual stuff and I was never capable of producing such wonderful images even with my advanced camera and high quality optics.

Its not the cam, but the person behind one... :-)

Regards, Alex