Workshop, learning equipment

Workshop reflection, trying out new equipment. This Monday afternoon I was tired, however, we had a workshop with Dan and we were learning how to use the slider, glide cam, dolly and the boom mic with an audio recorder. I have very good experience with both the slider and the Glide cam because I own both, however, I have not yet purchased a dolly or microphone recorder, so these were the ones I was most interested in. I tried to teach some colleges how to use the glide cam, but this piece of equipment takes a very long time to set up and mine took me about a year to master it and even now I still would like to become better I’d use the glide cam to capture a steady shot while filming and a smooth image. Then the slider, which is exactly like mine and it works completely the same way, I really would like to try a motorised one, however, I’d use a slider for capturing a panorama like the image of a place of the whole of someone’s face by turning the tripod head round whilst sliding the head along. Next the dolly, the dolly is my personal favourite piece of equipment as you can capture some extremely satisfying shots with it however it is no good on rough surfaces and can only really be used indoors. I would really like one though, they can also be used to capture like a zoom in effect by moving the physical camera closer, rather than using a digital or optical zoom. Then finally the boom mic and the boom pole and voice recorder linked by an XLR lead and then also using headphones to listen to the audio. So, I can use everything except the audio recorder which I did get my 1st lesson on it today, I’d say I can use its most basic settings, but I would like to learn more and in thinking of purchasing one of my own, so I can do so. They are mostly used as the primary audio solution then after the camera's mic. They provide a higher definition recording and also are separate from the camera so if the camera fails at least you have audio. The main problem is syncing the audio and video this is solved by clapping a few times then you can sync it all up in the edit with the distinct sound.