Ryan Hill
My name is Ryan and I am a video tech here at Lensrentals.com. In my free time, I mostly shoot documentary stuff, about food a lot of the time, as an excuse to go eat free food. If you need my qualifications, I have a B.A. in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University in beautiful downtown Carbondale, Illinois.
Posts by Ryan Hill · page 2 of 3
Product Spotlight: LaCie Rugged BOSS Drive
Have you heard you’re not supposed to look at your phone for an hour before bed? How about that you should be drinking 125 ounces of water per day? Are you at least checking the batteries in your smoke detector every 30 days? Advice like this should be easy to follow. It’s all pretty low-effort;…
Photography and Videography Resources to Check out During Social Isolation
Self-quarantine has left many of us in a state of boredom, and even more of us in a state of uneasiness. This is no easy time for most of us, and so we wanted to provide you with some resources to help you financially, help you sharpen your skills, or even just help you cure some of your boredom…
The Shutter Sounds of Our Most Popular Cameras
As a leading authority on optical testing and product reviews, it occurred to the Lensrentals staff recently that we owed it to The Internet to explore the final frontier of camera comparisons, a comprehensive examination of shutter sounds. Our thorough and scientific testing covered multiple…
A Look at the RED Ranger 8K Production Camera
The most important thing about RED’s new Ranger is that it’s rental only, not because that’s a first for RED (though it is), and not because we’re the only online rental house carrying it (though we are), but because it’s indicative of the customer it’s designed for. This isn’t a camera for…
How We Solve Problems – Fixing the Broken Battery Door of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K
### Update: Blackmagic Design has reached out to us following the publishing of this article, and have begun the process of exchanging broken battery doors with an updated design. More information at the bottom of the article. We go through a lot of gear here at Lensrentals. Like, a LOT a lot. Even…
Ten Products That Caught Our Attention at NAB 2018
This year’s National Association for Broadcasters (NAB) in Las Vegas proved to be a good one for product announcements. With over 100,000 people in attendance, NAB has become a bit of a holiday for the gear savvy videographers, who are excited to see what new products are to be announced. As usual,…
How Videographers Can Avoid Data Catastrophes
Two or three times a week here at Lensrentals.com, we get one of two common support calls. Scenario number one is that someone thought they transferred all of their footage over, but later found that they missed a couple of clips and need us to send them their rental cards back. If we haven’t…
Building an Effective Workflow with RED Camera Systems
With RED’s lower-cost RED Raven and RED Scarlet-W arriving, more budget-conscious and beginner filmmakers are finally going to be able to work within the RED ecosystem. That’s great news if you’re getting your first chance to shoot 4K, 5K, or 6K RAW, but excitement can quickly turn to abject terror…
First Impressions of the New Canon C700
I’ll preface this piece by saying we’re still waiting for a lot of the equipment for the Canon C700 to be available, so it’s only fair to call this more of a First Impressions than an actual review. However, Canon’s C700 is a highly-anticipated product, so I thought I’d take a barebones kit out for…
RED Weapon Helium 8K S35 Hands-on or: DSMC2 and You
To be perfectly honest, this article started purely as an excuse for me to play with a carbon fiber 8K RED Weapon. I figured I’d take it out for a weekend, shoot some footage, melt my computer trying to edit it, write a hands-on review, and be done with it. Gradually, though, I realized that a…
What is Color Depth and Why Is It Important for Video?
One of the most common questions I get from video customers is, “What do 10-bit 4:2:2 and 8-bit 4:2:0 actually mean?” The explanation can get pretty technical, so it’s easy to default to the opinion that higher numbers equal better footage. That’s true in a sense, but following that logic leads to…
How to Use Interview Transcripts as an Editing Tool
I was introduced to the benefits of interview transcription a surprisingly long time after I’d started learning about documentary filmmaking. Tired of introductory-level film classes and spending hours discussing editing theory between screenings of Koyaanisqatsi, I decided to take a Journalism 101…