What’s the least amount of equipment you can get away with for a good doc?

I’m getting good results with a Canon HF S10 as a backup camera to my current documentary project. The HF s10 is a $1,300 camera that I chose over some others primarily because it has a manual gain control, something missing on most prosumer handhelds (my Canon HV20 does not; nor does the HV30s we were using at the Nieman Journalism Lab; I eventually learned the “cell phone trick” for controlling gain). The downside of the HF s10 is that it uses the “24F” fake-progressive coding that means that shooting 24p comes at a cost of both time and quality after you’ve reconstituted the footage in Final Cut. The new Canon hv40 has true 24p, but, alas, no gain control. Next year, undoubtedly, one or both of these cameras will have both features (although the newly released HF S11 does not have 24p). And when one $1,000 handheld comes out with both manual gain control and 24p, it will become an immediate favorite.

My main camera these days is a Sony PMW-EX1, souped up with a Letus Elite adapter and a selection of Nikon lenses. I’m delighted with the look it gets; I’m also amazed at how the HF S10 (sometimes teamed up with my Cinevate Brevis adapter and a Beachtek DXA-2S XLR mike adapter) can get 90 percent of the quality at 20 percent of the price. Here’s some test footage with the HF S10/Brevis combo.

Is that good enough?

Given that the equipment continues to improve, the question is how low you can go. I’m not talking about a Flip Camera/iMovie YouTube piece, but something that could actually hold its own at a film festival or on a large-format flatscreen television.

One film that really took this test to the limit was “Mondovino,” a 2004 documentary feature by Jonathan Nossiter, examining the wine business around the world. Shot completely handheld on a Sony PD-150 Mini-DV camcorder, usually held at hip level by Nossiter as he interviewed a variety of vineyard owners, winemakers and wine brokers. Nossiter even leaves in the quick zooms he used to get focus on the subjects’ faces. It was rough, raw, handheld, unlighted, with audio right off the on-camera mike. The film was distributed worldwide and screened at Cannes. See the trailer on YouTube to get a feel for it. His only concession to B-roll were the frequent cutaways to the dogs that seem to populate all the vineyards.

So anything from there is moving up toward production quality. If Nossiter were shooting now, five years later, on an HDV or AVCHD handheld, he’d have sharper footage, but I’m not sure it really matters.

Solomon Rothman, on his “I Shot The Camera” blog, provides this perspective:

What makes the difference between pictures that are immediately written off as amateur and those that pass the grade as professional productions are mainly due to a few small equipment upgrades along with GREAT post production. While it will take tons of practice and expensive software to achieve the professional look, the equipment can actually be purchased on a very small budget, if you know what to buy and how to work it.

Here’s his list:

1. A Prosumer HD video camera with manual exposure control, manual white balance, and balanced XLR inputs (or separate audio recorder)

2. Wide Angle Lens

3. Tripod with Lanc Control

4. Linear Polarizing Filter

5. Boom Microphone or Wireless Lavalier Microphones

6. Boom Pole

7. Large Hard drive for Editing HD Footage

8. Professional Video Editing Software (Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Sony Vega, Avid)

9. Camera Stabilizer or Dolly (cheap “home made” or replica version are all over ebay and they still will work with practice)

10. Noise Canceling Headphones

A good list, but what’s missing is lights, or lighting devices such as a four-in-one reflector. Therefore, a doc maker using this kit is shooting in natural light, outdoors, not between 10 a.m and about 3 p.m., and not in the evening under normal room lighting. Doable, but requiring concession.

Jason Scott, in his 2005 blog about his doc “BBS, The Documentary,” has an entry about a “studio in two bags” worth a look. He’s got lights; he also has excellent photos showing exactly how he travels and sets up.

And I posted last year for the Nieman Journalism Lab about NBC digital journalist Mara Schiavocampo, who, while not a documentary filmmaker per se, has a basic kit that gets the job done. Here’s also a post from my blog on a small bare-minimum kit built around the HV20.

We’ll look at more as me go, but here are a few more links along this line:

Isabel Isabelle Roughel Roughol, “The J Junkie” had (at least in 2007) this backpack configuration.

“Solo Video Journalist” Cliff Etzel had this kit last year for run-and-gun.

Here’s a list on DVInfo from a few months back.