Film maker and good friend of mine Peter Naylor popped round for a coffee a couple of weeks back and brought along a JVC HM700 for me to look at. In a real video geek moment we thought it would be fun to shoot a product type video using the tools we had to hand.

We mounted the JVC on my glidetrack and then used the 5d2 to shoot it. Lighting was provided by my litepanels LED lights and the whole lot was shot on my dining room table with the aid of cereal boxes, a kitchen fork, Darth Vaders cape and various other household items to keep the background dark.

I guess Darth Vader capes are probably not regarded as general household items, but with two sons under 10 who are mad about star wars it’s pretty normal for my house!

Pete took the footage and made this nice little video, not bad for an hours messing around!

View it in HD on YouTube

I was hired by the Open Youth Trust in Norwich to produce a short promotional video highlighting their recently opened £12m venue in the heart of Norwich.

This was the first project where I used my new Canon 5dmkII alongside my trusty Sony EX1. The images produced by these two cameras are quite different, although I really like the fact that they allow me to show two different perspectives in interviews, not only from a camera’s point of view, but also with such a different feel to the images due to the shallow depth of field the 5D produces. All of the 5D shots were done with a 50mm f1.2 L series lens.

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I find having a satnav is essential for what I do, having to drive all over europe for various shoots is made a lot less stressful by using a satnav which politely calls out directions leaving me to concentrate on the driving.

I used to use a stand alone TomTom Go, but a month or so ago I purchased TomToms app for my iPhone which I have to say has been great. I just put my phone on the dash, punch in a postcode and it does a pretty good job of getting me to where I need to be.

Another thing I’ve found useful is that when clients arrange transport or the location for the shoot wasn’t at a definable location I can just save my current location on my iPhone and know that I can get directions back to that spot at any point in the future, these are stored as favourites.

As anyone who has an iPhone or iPod Touch know, apps are usually quite cheap, but this one is an exception, I paid £79 for the Western Europe app.

As is quite common with iPhone apps, updates often get released that are free to install, yesterday TomTom announced an update which adds some new functionality (v1.2) so I decided to allow my iPhone to update (actually done in iTunes).

After the update process was complete I thought I’d check out the new features but when trying to start the app it kept crashing back to the iPhone’s home screen. After a couple of reboots I contacted TomTom support.

To cut a long story short, I was told that I would need to uninstall the app and reinstall it, which sounds okay until you realise that doing so will wipe out all of your favourites, meaning that your data is lost forever!

The support person I spoke to at TomTom told me this happens every time an app is updated, which is total rubbish, the last update from TomTom (v1.1) didn’t cause me to lose my data, and neither has any other app I’ve updated.

TomTom should make it possible for users to backup their data on a computer, or at least be careful not to wipe it out with their updates!