Sorry for the late reply. My little miniature schnauzer, Sadie, was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. So, I’m spending as much time with her as I can. She’s doing ok right now so I thought I’d trY to work on the site a bit.

For birds you will want a lens as big as possible. Trust me, birds are a lot smaller in the image than you think they will be when you see them up in a tree.

Humidity is a killer for electronic gear. You’d almost be better getting something like an Ewa-Marine bag to enclose yap camcorder in to prevent problems with humidity. The bonus would be that you could do some shallow underwater shots as well.

I usually pack several tins of silica gel with me so that in humid conditions I can throw one in a bag, seal it up and draw all the moisture out. Going to Ecuador, I’d certainly be over prepared for damp conditions.

Wish I could be of more help.

Thanks again for the comments. Sorry again for the long response time!

Sorry for the late reply. My miniature schnauzer was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer so I’ve been spending as much time with her as I can and everything else is on the back burner.
I guess when you’re passionate about animals they take priority over a lot of other things.

Chelsea, I LOVE your plans for your documentary work! It’s something I want to do as well.
My hope is that I can make a difference somehow.

What subjects are you thinking about? Maybe we can kick around some ideas.
Would love to talk more with you about this.

Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate its,

I find the opposite happens to me. It seems that when people take a look at my work when I’m around, they always ask what camera it was shot on. I guess they figure their footage will look like that as well if they only had that camera.
But that is mostly by other filmmakers.
Everyone else usually doesn’t ask.

Yeah, it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t buying more gear that made me better, it was shooting more footage that made me better.

It’s like a new pair of Nike’s wont make you run faster but running every day and training hard will.

Of course, there are always specific situations where you really do need new gear to do the things you want to do. I’d like to get a DSLR that shoots great low light stills so that I could do nighttime star time-lapse work.

I simply can’t do it with the gear I have now. So I need like a Canon 5D MarkIII or a Nikon D800e or something to do that.

But otherwise, it’s like you said, getting your butt out their and just doing it.

Thanks for such a kick in the rear…

Keep on keeping on.

JJ