On Friday, May 9th, I was fortunate enough to have been given access to cover the rally for Senator Obama held here in Eugene, Oregon.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been through a trial by fire like that in many years - reminded me of my days interning for free at one of the local newspapers back in the day.

I was able to shoot for the citizen journalist organization - The Uptake.

I busted my hump to capture content shooting with what I later discovered was the smallest camera being used by the working press.   I found it slightly amusing to look at all the gear the mainstream media was shooting with including what I now term “Hair and Teeth” on camera talent .  Add to that multiple production crew people and no wonder TV news is going in the toilet.  And the looks I got shooting on the media platform with my little cameras in relation to the various shoulder mount and larger sized cameras such as Panasonic DVX100’s & HVX200’s, SONY V1U’s, etc put a smile on my face as well.

I did find some limitations in my choice of gear that I shoot with, but I’m beginning to find that using the SONY HC7’s with the Azden SMX10 mic is very compact and less intimidating to the subjects I shoot when I interview them.

The combination of shooting hand held and on my Bogen 3001 tripod with fluid head was a dream - All my gear was carried in my photo backpack - I was mobile and easily moved around while asking man on the street type questions.  Going to post in Vegas Pro 8 was straight forward.

At the end of this project - I discovered the pro’s and con’s of working with these cameras, but given their limitations, I still prefer shooting with these types of cameras over anything bigger for the time being - especially when delivering to the web.