Each time I have the good fortune to work with DigitalRev TV and my friend Kai Man Wong something memorable happens.
For example, you might recall the time that Kai and DigitalRev TV dragged me around Hong Kong with a Lego Camera on one of their infamous CheapCamera Challenges. The highlights included surprise runway models, aggravated kung fu fighters and eating pig’s anus on the street. Most recently Kai and his hilarious crew parodied my Facebook profile photo for Fake A Big Shot. The resemblance was, um, striking?
I decided it was time to turn the tables.
I showed up in Hong Kong to give Kai and the DigitalRev crew a taste of their own medicine. A CheapCamera Challenge of my design: To re-create a photo I shot with the Hasselblad H3D. This was a $25,000 piece of equipment in 2007 when I shot the photo. I gave him 8 hours … and a GoPro Hero3PLUS ($399) to get it done.
Here’s how the the final product compares to my original. What do you think? Check out the video above to see how he did it.
Thanks to Kai and the whole DigitalRev TV crew for working on short notice and being such great sports. Subscribe to their channel here.
I think the motto for this shoot is simply “do what you can with what you’ve got.” I think Kai’s shot is really good, despite all of the post-processing that must have happened to erase the pool background and replace it with the background that ended up on it.
I think he did pretty well. I really enjoyed watching him work through the problems, and watching you coach him, Chase.
And, for the record, your accent was brilliant. 🙂
GoPro is evolving so well.
The video was great, I just love your collabs! I also think the outcome is very impressive given the constraints. Very inspiring to see how he makes progress during those hours of trial and error. Love it, thanks to y’all!
Cheers, Daniel
I think he did pretty well, to be honest. Like Chase was saying, he had $25,000+ of gear and lighting to pull of the shot, whereas Kai had a GoPro 3 – still a good piece of kit for what it is, but nothing compared to a Hasselblad! But it’s like you do when you are pushing photography using whatever you have, Chase – you use an iPhone and pull out some awesome shots! I shoot using a D3200 and standard kit lenses (18-55 f/3.5-5.6 and 55-200 f/3.5-5.6) because it is the only gear I can afford to shoot with, and I like to think that I can pull some nice photos out of it =) thanks for the blog and helping everyone else out with their photography as much as you do Chase!!