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I shot a video at Champney Falls in Albany, New Hampshire back in 2001 with my Sony Z1U HDV camera. This place had two waterfalls, Champney and Pitcher and was located on the side of Mount Chocorua. When I bought my PMW-EX1 a few months ago, I put this place back on the list to shoot. I really wanted to capture the beauty of these waterfalls with the Letus Extreme, the amazing EX1 and my Nikon lenses. And this time, I would use a dolly for slow cinematic slides.

I made a total of six trips up the 2.5 mile trail from my car to the waterfalls. The first 2.5 mile trip was a strong and excited Tom with two twenty foot PVC pipes and a homemade plywood dolly. When I arrived at the falls, I dumped the stuff in the woods and went back to the car, 2.5 miles away.

My next trip up the Champney Brook trail was an excited Tom with a Vinten Vision 3 tripod, my Sony PMW-EX1 with the Letus, and my backpack full of lenses, trash bags (for rain), batteries, tools and lens wipes.

At the falls, I grabbed the dolly and pipe from its hiding spot and shot for five hours. I met a few people who made it to the spot and these hikers were intrigued by my elaborate setup.

I shot with my Nikon 200mm f3.5, Nikon 24mm f2.8, Sigma 18mm f3.5, and my Nikon 50mm f1.4. I got my EX1 wet from water pouring off the rock face and the sweat pouring off my own face.

As you will see, all the work to get the dolly and pipe up the mountain was worth it in the end. I originally was only going to hike the camera, tripod and lenses up the the falls since I was alone. I am happy I made the extra trips.

After shooting, I hid the dolly and pvc in the woods and I hiked the camera, tripod and lenses down to my car, 2.5 miles away at the trailhead. This was my fourth time down the trail.

Now back at the car, I thought about just leaving the dolly up the mountain and getting it the next day. The sky was dark and I could hear thunder in the distance.

I went back up for the fifth time.

I was not that tired, but I was mentally tired of this trail. The same hike over and over.

I picked up the dolly and pipe, wrapped electrical tape around the two pipes to hold them together and headed back down the trail for the sixth and last time.

Then, the lightning and thunder hit and I don’t remember much after that. I only remember very wet socks.

TRT: 1 minute 52 seconds
File size: 42 MB
Type: Quicktime mpeg4 720p HDTV

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Production Credits

Hiked, Shot and Edited by:
Tom Guilmette

This video is not to be distributed.