Helmut Kobler, Los Angeles Cameraman

Panasonic P2 Varicam (2700)

A shoulder-mount HD camera that's great for documentary/reality work. Beautiful cinematic image, good in low light, with a ton of control over gamma, color and other image settings. The 2700 can also record from 1-60 frames-per-second, which gives you a lot of creative control over motion (slow motion, time lapse, etc). Finally, the 2700 shoots to P2 cards, which save a lot of time and money versus using tape. Read more here.

64GB P2 cards (E series)

I love shooting to P2. With five 64GB cards installed in a Varicam, you can shoot at 720/30p for almost 13 hours, or more than 6 hours at 1080. Think about that: no stopping the action to change tapes. no labeling tapes, and no carting a half dozen tapes with you on a shoot. Plus, you can offload P2 cards five at a time, transfering up to 13 hours of content to your editing station in less than an hour.

Panasonic MSU10 card backup device

The MSU10 makes it easy to offload P2 cards in the field, without having to drag a laptop , hard drives and card reader along. The MSU is small enough to hold in one hand, runs for days on a single battery, and lets you backup a 64GB card in about 14 minutes. That's fast. It backs up to a hot-swappable drive sled that you can pop out, and then attach to any computer via USB2 or eSATA. Or you could just attach any external hard drive to the MSU. It truly makes it easy to keep shooting and shooting and shooting, day in day out, without running out of card space.

Fujinon HA13x4.5 BERM super-wide zoom lens

You've seen this 13x zoom lens in action on many reality and documentary shows. When set to its widest focal length, the HA13x4.5 can capture a ton of action in the frame, and is perfect for shooting in indoor spaces. The wide angle look also gives otherwise pedestrian shots a stylish feel. Finally, with an f-stop of 1.7, you can open its aperture to get a nice, shallow depth-of-field at its telephoto end.

Zeiss ZF.2 primes (Duclos cinema mod)

Zeiss lenses are sharp, with nice contrast. Their focus ring also has a long-ish throw distance, making it easier to pull focus than if you were using Canon still lenses. Also, unlike Canon lenses, Zeiss ZF.2s have aperture rings, so you can change your aperture manually on the lens.

These Zeiss lenses have also been modified by Duclos Lenses to be more cinema-friendly. That means the lenses have:

* Durable focus gear rings for connecting to follow focuses

* De-clicked, stepless aperture rings so you can change aperture smoothly, instead of stepping through 1/3 stop increments

* Common 80mm front ring (with 77mm filter ring), which makes it easier to swap different lenses in and out of a matte box, or use screw-on filters.

* Finally, the lenses have Canon EF mounts.