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My Complete Filmmaking Kit: Every Piece of Gear I Actually Shoot With
35
items I'm a filmmaker and co-founder of a FORMA studio, based in Spain, and this is the whole kit I shoot commercials, corporate films and branded content with: 35 pieces, nothing aspirational, nothing I don't own. Cameras and lenses are the easy part, so ...
Sections
11
Cameras
Lenses
Camera Rigging & Support
Accessories
Power & Batteries
Media & Storage
Cameras
The three bodies that cover everything I get hired for: a cinema camera for when the image is the point, a small full-frame for run-and-gun, and an action cam for shots I'd never risk a real camera on.
The best image you can buy for the money, full stop. 6K Blackmagic RAW straight to the card, and colour that grades like a much more expensive camera. Mine has an internal focal reducer that drops the crop to 1.18x, so Super 35 glass behaves almost l...
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K with internal focal reducer (crop factor reduced to 1.18x) & UV-IR CUT 100% OLPF.
My run-and-gun body. Dual base ISO that stays genuinely clean at 12800, autofocus that just works, and it's small enough to live on a gimbal all day. Yes, there's a newer Sony out. Do you actually need it? No. The FX3 still does everything a corporat...
Sony Cinema Line FX3-A
The camera I put where I'd never put a real one: bolted to a car, out in the rain, on a helmet. The 1/1.3-inch sensor is a huge step up in low light over older action cams, and D-Log M means it actually grades to match the rest of my footage instead ...
DJI Osmo Action 4
Lenses
Glass is where your money should go first. Bodies get replaced every three years; a good set of lenses outlives all of them.
Proper cine glass: rated in T-stops instead of f-stops, so exposure stays consistent when you swap focal lengths, with a carbon-fibre barrel light enough to hand-hold all day. Same front diameter and matched gear positions across all three, so changi...
Xeen CF T1.5 Pro 24mm/50mm/85mm Canon EF
12mm with genuinely zero distortion, so straight lines stay straight. That's why it lives on architecture, interiors and any car shot where a fisheye look would ruin it. The flares are unreal and it's tack sharp wide open, and with the Tilta focus ge...
Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Zero-D with Tilta Focus Ring
Rock-solid, clinically clean and sharp right across the range. This is the lens that lives on the FX3 when I'm covering an event or a corporate day and I can't be swapping primes every five minutes. Fast, quiet autofocus and a focal range that covers...
Sony FE 24-70 mm f2,8 GM
The best value lens in this entire list. A constant f/1.8 zoom that behaves like three fast primes in one barrel, and on a Super 35 sensor it's the perfect everyday range. If you're on Canon EF and building your first kit, start here. And honestly, e...
Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 Art DC HSM + Tilta Ring
Camera Rigging & Support
The unglamorous half of the kit. Nobody posts about cages and rods, but this is what turns a camera into something you can actually work with for twelve hours straight.
The foundation of the whole BMPCC build. Full aluminium cage with ¼-20 and 3/8-16 mounting points everywhere, a built-in NATO rail, and cable clamps that have saved my HDMI and power ports more times than I can count. Once the camera lives inside thi...
Tilta Full Camera Cage for BMPCC 4K / 6K
A top handle you can genuinely trust with the full weight of a rigged camera. Quick-release, a cold shoe on top for a monitor or a mic, and enough mounting points that it ends up being the anchor for half the rig. Low-mode grabs and handheld moves st...
Tilta Xeno Top Handle - Titanium Gray NATO (Open Box)
The part that makes everything else fast. Arca-Swiss on one side, Manfrotto on the other, with 15mm LWS rods underneath, so the same camera goes from tripod to gimbal to shoulder without unscrewing a thing. If you own more than one support system thi...
Tilta 15mm LWS Arca Manfrotto Dual Baseplate
Titanium rods are the definition of buy once, cry once. Noticeably lighter than steel, completely rigid, and they don't bow under a matte box and a follow focus the way cheap rods do. On a small camera every gram you save up front is a gram you're no...
Drumstix 15mm Titanium Support Rods - 3" (7.6cm)
The monitor mount that finally solved a problem I'd been living with for years. Rock-steady positioning, fast to reposition between setups, and it holds its angle instead of slowly drooping through a take. If you've ever had a monitor sag mid-shot yo...
Light Widow Horizon Monitor Mount Kit
A small, beautifully made adapter that puts the DJI Focus Pro LiDAR exactly where it needs to be on 15mm rails. DJI doesn't give you a clean way to do this out of the box; Kraplastic does. This is the low-profile version for when space in front of th...
DJI LiDAR 15mm Adapters - KRAP! Custom Set Solutions
Same idea as the micro mount, but this one raises the LiDAR above the rails, which is what you need once a matte box is in the way. Between the two of them I can put the LiDAR in the right spot on any build instead of compromising the whole rig aroun...
Kraplastic DJI LiDAR 15mm Adapter - Up Mount variation
A few euros of metal and plastic that protect the most fragile port on the camera. It turns the HDMI cable flat against the body so nothing sticks out to get caught, snapped or yanked. A broken HDMI port ends a shoot day, so this is the cheapest insu...
Tilta TA-T01-HDA-90 HDMI 90-Degree Adapter for BMPCC 4K ...
Buy the twelve-pack, put one on every lens you own, and never think about it again. They stretch onto any barrel and they're seamless, so the follow focus never catches. The whole point is that you stop moving a single ring between lenses in the midd...
12x Tilta TA-FGR Seamless Focus Gear Ring
Accessories
Two pieces of kit that changed how I shoot more than any camera upgrade ever did.
One of the best purchases I've ever made. It takes a bit of setting up, but once the LiDAR is calibrated you get autofocus on manual cine lenses, which is the thing everyone told me couldn't be done. Handheld single-operator work on fast primes sudde...
DJI Focus Pro
A really good matte box for what it costs. It has its limits, but it does the job: proper flag control against side light, and a variable ND that lets me keep the aperture exactly where I want it while the light changes through the day. Paired with t...
Freewell Eiger Matte Box with Variable ND filters.
Power & Batteries
Nothing on a set is more embarrassing than running out of battery. This is how I stopped worrying about it.
99Wh is the magic number: the biggest battery you can legally carry onto a plane, and enough to run a rigged camera plus a monitor for most of a shooting day. The Lite version is noticeably smaller and lighter than a standard V-mount, and the USB-C P...
SMALLRIG V Mount Battery VB99 99Wh PD100W
The piece that connects the V-mount to everything else. Compact, with USB-C PD output, so one big battery powers the camera, the monitor and the accessories at the same time. Going V-mount was the moment the kit started feeling professional instead o...
Tilta Mini PD V Mount Battery Plate – Black
Media & Storage
Your footage lives here. This is genuinely not the place to save money.
Blackmagic RAW at 6K eats cards, and Cobalt is the line that has never dropped a frame on me. Sustained write speeds that hold up on the longest takes, and enough capacity to shoot a full day without a card change. Expensive, and worth every euro the...
New CFast 2.0 Cobalt Memory Cards Announcement
Reads CFast and SD at the same time over USB 3.2 Gen 2, which means offloading a shoot day stops being the part you dread. Aluminium body that dumps heat instead of throttling halfway through a transfer, and it's small enough to live permanently in t...
Dual-Slot SD Memory Card Reader - ProGrade Digital
The card that goes in the Osmo Action and the drone. Up to 200 MB/s, V30 and A2 rated, and it handles 4K without ever complaining. It comes with the SD adapter, so it doubles as a spare card for anything else in the bag.
SanDisk Extreme PRO 512GB tarjeta microSDXC ...
Lights
If there were no light, there'd be no video. That's why light comes first: you have to control it, learn to shape it, and get good at building lighting setups for every kind of shoot. It only comes from experimenting a lot, and I'm here to help you w...
Seriously powerful light with adjustable colour temperature and a Bowens mount, which means every modifier on the market fits it. 220W is enough to punch through a window or bounce off a ceiling and still leave you headroom. This is the workhorse of ...
Smallrig RC 220W LED Video Light
Fantastic little bulbs, that's it. I've got four of them. Full RGBWW control from the phone, they screw into any normal lamp on location, and they turn the practicals already in frame into lights you can actually art-direct. The fastest way I know to...
Aputure Accent B7c
120cm of very soft, very forgiving light for a fraction of what the big brands charge. It's my default modifier for interviews and portraits: big enough to wrap a face properly, and the Bowens mount means it goes straight onto the SmallRig. Honestly ...
TRIOPO 47.2in Octabox Softbox, Bowens Mount
Audio
The word is audiovisual. If “audio” comes before “visual”, there's a reason for it: your sound has to be as good as your picture, or treated with even more care than the image itself.
Really good shotgun mic. It pairs with any recorder, or goes straight into a camera, and the switchable low-cut plus the internal battery option means it works on anything with or without phantom power. Tight enough to reject a noisy room, forgiving ...
Sennheiser MKE 600
Two mics and a receiver, and the case itself doubles as the charger. 32-bit float recording on board means clipping is basically something you can no longer do, and the built-in timecode saves real time in the edit. It comes with proper lavaliers too...
RODE Wireless PRO - Compact Wireless Microphone System
A very complete recorder: four channels, 90 and 120 degree stereo on the built-in mics, XLR and jack inputs. It's the box I bring whenever I need sound that isn't tied to the camera, and it has never once let me down. Old design, still completely rel...
Zoom H4n Pro
Tripods & Grip
Everyone starts out with an amazing camera and a flimsy tripod. It shouldn't be that way. This is the support that's actually worth the money.
A wheeled stand is one of those upgrades you don't know you need until you own one. 94 inches of height, and it rolls fully rigged from one setup to the next instead of being broken down and rebuilt every time. The locking castors keep it exactly whe...
AMBITFUL 7.8Ft Wheeled Mobile Light Stand
Excellent tripod. Very expensive, and it works flawlessly. The Flowtech legs release all three locks at once so it sets up in seconds, and on a run-and-gun day that is the difference between getting the shot and watching it leave. The Aktiv8 head has...
Sachtler Flowtech 75 MS with Aktiv8 Fluid Head
Cases & Protection
The gear above is worth more than my car. This is what keeps it alive between shoots.
Waterproof, dustproof and crushproof, with wheels and a retractable handle. This is the case I check on flights and drag across gravel car parks without thinking twice about it. The PowerClaw latches are the best I've used, and the 935 size is the sw...
NANUK 935 Waterproof Hard Case with Wheels (Black)
Same case, but with the padded dividers for camera kit already inside. This is the one that carries bodies and lenses: the dividers reconfigure in seconds, so the layout changes with the job instead of me cutting foam inserts. And the olive finish me...
NANUK 935 Pro Photo Kit (Olive)
A body cap that's actually built to survive a camera bag. Machined, weather-sealed, and a huge upgrade over the flimsy plastic one that came in the box. Sounds like a tiny detail, right up until you get sensor dust on a shoot day and lose an hour cle...
PolarPro Defender Body Cap for Canon EF Mount (Desert) - B&H
Drones
A drone isn't optional in a video production anymore, as long as your flight permit is in order. I only own one so far, so this is the one I recommend.
Best value-for-money drone out there, unbeatable. Dual cameras so you get a wide and a medium without landing, a 1-inch sensor that actually holds up in low light, and obstacle sensing that makes flying near buildings far less terrifying. The Fly Mor...
DJI Air 3S Fly More Combo w/ RC 2 Remote