More like a drinking kool-aid rehab center. Whenever a member expresses his desire to buy a new gear, others would say, "Don't do it man. Get a grip. Calm down and let me show you how to use built-in EVF." Sorta group therapy.
Musicians (well guitarists anyway) commonly refer to Gear Buying Addiction as Gear Acquisition Syndrome (= GAS). The chronic sufferer will often start their forum post with something like, "I have GAS real bad."
I'm not sure how well that reads outside of the USA, but either way, the spousal unit will usually be unhappy.
You think you have problems, i bought all the same gear as above and now compelled to use it for on water event footage even though it's totally not suitable. One problem, how does one fit all this stuff into a waterproof housing and still operate it? I'll let you know this weekend, i just arrived in San Fran via OZ to film 2 events and the waterproof housing is a big plastic bag and duct tape...haha (post a photo soon)
Shooting with matte box and flags from the back of a jetski, this is gonna be fun!! We'll soon find out how good these Chinese products are.
I must be stupid, i left a perfectly good HMC 152 and housing at home because i want to use all this new stuff :-(
BTW - I bought the Wondlan Sniper1.3 Zacuto knock off and it's pretty darn good. Got the black/blue version. Good deal for roughly 200 bucks. The Zacuto costs 8 fucking hundred!
Gentlemen, Gentlemen,... Let us not forget that the GH2 & Various other pieces of gear in this topic generate quality far above their price point. May I suggest a list that counts the cost if there were no GH2? (or 5DMKII for that matter- but then again - MKII's are already more expensive...)
This is the only way to feel better and rationalize- (Spend 10k - but - you know what- you normally only get the camera for that!!- Now- go out and buy a police scanner so you can run 'B' roll when you are near some sort of interesting event!)
I use GH2's audio level meter to avoid clipping. Then the headphone out just to guesstimate the audio quality. The headphone level... When I raised it too high, it did affect the balanced audio output.
How's the Dual Pre working out for you? Are you recording direct into the GH2 and monitoring with headphone through the Dual Pre? It seems like that should work but I'm struggling with headphone levels....
No you can't stop it!!! We live once. Motion is beautiful. Capture the beauty. But it ain't free.
I didn't list what I bought though. Hehe. The list shows what I would have bought if I hadn't suppressed my desire to own every gears. Like some members here, I've been trading camera bodies. Buy low. Sell high. At the end I got GH17 and GH2VK bodies for almost free.
Audio USB Dual Pre, AT875R mic, Sennheiser headphones, mic stand, XLR cables
Misc WF-717 video tripod, Editman Cage, jinfinance FF & lens gears, Cinematics mattebox, Lowepro 202AW, Extra batteries, Extra SDHC cards, lots of cheap small accessories from ebay.
No fancy lens. No anamorphic adapter. No ext EVF and LCD. But gawd... who knows?
OMG. Stop me now. I bought the GH1 already hacked with 14-140. Plus an audio recorder. Then I got an adapter for my old OM1 50mm.... Then I tried a friend's 20mm. Then I HAD to have it -- and I love it.
Now, I'm actively researching: 1) rigs 2) LED lights + light stands 3) microphones and headphones and boom poles
Can I stop now? Is there a 12-step program for GBA??