When you’re training filmmakers on 5D, you need a lot of the most recent data to pass along. Mitch Aunger’s Planet5D site is one of the top three spots I visit to stay current on the gear coming out for the Canon HDSLR.  Mitch seems to be able to give you the straight scoop instead of the corporate BS marketing hype.  While he does have ads down the side of his Planet5D blog, I find most of those links are actually interesting new products and not just everything on earth that’s for sale.  Where else would I have found out there is a steadicam for the iPhone? But seriously, we not only are interested in providing all the data our filmmakers need to achieve Canon Certification, we want them to know their options.

We met Mitch back in the frontier days, when the Canon HDSLR was just taking off.  He was doing his interviews and trying out the gear on display in person, not phoning it in.

When the Alaska gold rush was in full force, there were lots of supply stores at the bottom of the mountain happy to sell the miners everything they could.  Most of it was overpriced and a lot of it was not even needed.  I feel the Canon HDSLR also set off a gold rush and there are lots of people ready to make a quick buck off it.  The hand-held rigs are the most amusing.  There must be over a hundred rigs that “do it all.”  But inevitably, when you finally get your hands on them something weird occurs or you find you don’t need most of the features because they don’t make any sense when you actually get into production.

Mitch’s videos show you what happens when the rubber meets the road.  This is the data we like to pass along in our DSLR Filmmaker Bootcamp, which is officially called the Canon Boot Camp.  This features training in the Canon DSLR 5D, 7D and 60D.  We don’t talk about anything we haven’t tested and proved for ourselves.  There are only three exceptions, Shane Hurlbut, Gayle Tattersall and Mitch Aunger.  If they give something the thumbs up, we pass it on and attribute it to the source of the data.

A lot of Canon information is hard to pry loose prior to the release of their new products. Mitch is one of the guys Canon lets peek behind the curtain.

We compile a reference manual of HDSLR issues and gear.  If you’d like your own free copy, here is the link to the download page on Facebook.