Taylor Wigton
DP, Los Angeles

Favorite gear: JVC -GY5000U camera
List: $5,995 (without lens or viewfinder)

Why I love it: On a superficial level, I love to see
the expressions on peoples’ faces when they find out the film they just
watched was shot in NTSC-DV.

"When I signed on to shoot a series of narrative features with an
ultra-indie production group in Maine, the producer handed me a
JVC-GY5000U. While I appreciated that the tiny budget had been
stretched enough to get a professional camera instead of a‘prosumer’
unit, I admit I was still skeptical. Could any DV camera produce images
I would be proud to show? Hundreds of hours on set and three premieres
later, I’m a believer.

We had an ambitious production schedule, and finished three features
within a year: a western, a hard-boiled detective story and a
1960s-style surf musical. When the cast and crew were boiling under the
summer sun, or becoming frozen solid in the Maine winter, we noticed
that the 5000U was completely unphased. In fact, it got so cold on one
shoot that I wished the camera would stop working so we could shut down
the set. Never happened.

Working in three very different genres meant creating a lot of
different looks. I was able to control the GY-5000U to get what I
wanted, even as the scripts called for a variety of visual scenarios.
The end result is footage I’m proud to show, and continually draws
compliments on its quality."