Lessons

Lesson Info

Gear Essentials

we're gonna start where we ended up on day one we discussed that we were going or we said we're going to go ahead and discuss riggs so I just wanna go ahead and catch up on that okay great so we covered a whole bunch of different tools that you could use maybe that you already had from photography you know like tripods maybe had a viewfinder and the lenses you already have and then we just rambled off a whole bunch of different tools thatyou could utilize so not that it was disorganized but for somebody who's new to two video in general it might have been a little bit overwhelming so we're going to do is we're going to break down the different kits that might fit knew from where you are in photography and video before we get started I did want to let you guys um I did want to let you guys know that if you go to our blogged so blogged at lindsay out there photography dot com the top block post that's there right now I have a list of discounts from sponsors so for example something I'm g...

oing to be doing I'm starting by teaching how to edit in photo shop I'm going to show you how to add lens flare but it has to be video clips and so one of the sponsors want one of those people that are actually giving us a discount was called uh is that lens like love is that what it's called lately glove like light leak lightly klutz a uh it's a quick kind of if you fought every isn't say it the wrong way wei have that discount there and there's a couple plug ins that we referred to later on you can see the videos that we covered in day one and that will be where tomorrow I will actually posting all the videos that we edit it today so you be over the watch that so make sure you check that out and there's one thing I also want to mention before we get started um I recently started a new competition called my dream shoot so if you go to my dream photo shoot dot com what I'm looking for is to be able to help somebody shoot the images they wish they already always could but there's some reason you feel like you can't like maybe feel like you lack some type of technical knowledge or maybe you're just afraid I don't know how to put together a shoe or maybe it's just been overwhelming so I am going to pick one person on dh hope this will be many more in the future and I'm going to mentor them through the entire process and so all I want to know is your idea um maybe what you think's holding you back and um why you deserve to win and so you can check that out my dream photo shoot dot com so I look forward to mentoring one of you that sounds fun fun you're gonna be there helping I don't know if you knew that when I get started with a beginner kits um you know we sat down yesterday and we shot into very very distinct styles you guys saw shoot with lindsay's hike he look in my vintage knew our setup of what I wanted to shoot for the day um lindsay has a couple go to a piece of equipment that she has and I have a couple pieces of goto equipment than I have so we came together to try to create kits for you guys that would make it easier for you in regards to what you're willing to invest and also what you're willing to start learning in adapting to uh if you're just starting off and you're just trying to get into videography you want to buy a slider you don't buy a vertical slider you want to get every little single you know kit that you need so I want to make sure sure that you guys have it easy kit is possible so first slide just so is you're trying to write things down the first slide we talk about the type of gear that you would want to get the second slide is personally the brands that we prefer that we use they're plenty of other brands but just in case you like I have no idea where to start we're going give you a night and our preferences are based off of what we actually use it's it's not something that we work with companies for whatever reason and we're only marketing them for their names it's actually said that we utilize and we work with those companies because we utilize them if that makes any sense so we grow from there so first beginner kit um our camera guy sure I can be happiest are so first of all for a beginner whatever camera you have that's a dslr that khun do video it doesn't matter as long as you have something that shoots video ideally with interchangeable lenses you can't shoot video with just that I mean pretty much anything you have but most of what we taught was geared towards disorder so keep that in mind uh the next thing stabilization need something to keep your camera steady for example like a tripod uh something to give your cameras some movement we don't want to get too fancy if you're just starting off so we might recommend a mono pod which is useful because you can make it dual purpose for photography in case you don't and a really embracing video we don't want to spend money that you end up regretting audio gear um uh you can get an on camera like that plugs into the side of your camera or something I didn't mention here is I we mentioned the other day the adaptors you can add your iphone to actually get decent quality audio from your iphone so that's an option as well and some kind of headphones I mean it would be great if they could be noise cancelling it it's not necessary some kind of headphones you know the other thing is if you want to practice technique you don't necessarily need any of this susan we were having a discussion this morning about one of your friends that shot just with the iphone edited from the iphone and exported everything from the iphone and shot a short film and that's just somebody who's practicing movement I mean that they're literally just looking everything an environment they even use little toy trains around tracks where they tape it to this the track itself it would move around that's still considered movement is still considered editing video like that's awesome and you don't have to invest anything aside from taking your phone out and gluing it to like we're not blowing it don't glue things teo tape nicely take things to your train set or things with movement so you can start practicing those motion all with an iphone but of course we're trying to step it up a little bit in the last piece of gear would be some kind of view finder ideally because it really makes a difference for you being able to focus especially in a bright sunny day which a lot of us I have to shoot in that we'll talk about the specific brands uh okay camera gear it doesn't really look again it's really matter what camera you have but we said maybe a sixty d it's okay to have a used camera you know so maybe even going back one or two generations for video that's fine um and then maybe sixty uh that tripod we mentioned there is the camera tripod that I have the photo tripod that I have that mono pod is the fluid head one the one that's mobile that we used on set yesterday uh audio gear the on camera mike that we recommend it's kind of standard is the road video mike plugs into the side on dh headphones so the largest ticker actually what I have in my gonna go ahead and stand up for a second the's are the headphones I keep on me at all times if I'm video editing you guys will see me dead if you caught me last night just with these same things on their noise canceling I don't hear anything unless you like right next to me and I'm like hi how are you so awesome said felt and then some kind of you find her um the first we funder I had was a goodman good luke so it's actually tissues for photography to see the back of the screen um something like that to start off with is great so this would be a beginner kit that I would recommend if you already owned some of this stuff great stick with it so pro sumer kits if you're tryingto start videoing this is something that you're definitely interested in doing but you don't want to just have basic equipment you want other things to your accessibility so we're going and this would be probably for someone that's made me not doing video professionally what they think you'd like to be able to introduce that is something you offer your clients but you're not willing to spend a ton of money right away to invest you wanna you wanna test the waters first uh so you would want a pro seymour dslr for example like pro swimmer would be like a five day mark to five mark three ideally something in that realm doesn't need to be seventy woodwork sixty woodwork um you want a carbon fibre tripod something stable uh you want a mono pod and I think for pro sooner if you're going to step it up a notch maybe get a slider because the slider is one of those tools that a lot of people use in video to bring up production value and the great thing is I mean they come in all shapes sizes and price variations we showed you guys two different sliders yesterday are two different price points way had the right gear they're slider and then we had synovate ce atlas f lt two different price points two totally different sliders that you could multi purpose for different reasons so thie for the pro sumer deal r r d s r well you notice a big difference in video quality from the entry level to the other one even if you have professional glass on both of them not exactly but for example if you have like a cannon t three ire one of the which is a consumer digital camera they often have lower resolution so you can't actually do ten eighty it's going to be like seven twenty and you won't have as much flexibility there and then you usually can't do a lot of variations with your frame rates but if you don't mind the lower resolution it's still getting you good audio especially if your end output is online like friend about what's going to be video or something like that fine then I'll say it's also depending on your audience right so I'm like completely anal about going on veniamin in clicking hd half your audience is going to click play okay that was awesome and I'm like no it sucks you need to make sure it's nice in the frame that everything's like nice resolution youtube is the same way I mean they have live little clips where you can do it in ten eighty or two forty or for eighty people generally don't care unless they're us and then they're very very picky about what they're saying so ten eighty is ten eighty across the board that's kind of what I'm asking because a lot of the newer even like very entry level dslr there now ten eighty it actually often the older if you get a used one there seven twenty cause they're older right and they could be the high end ones so if you want to get like really technical about it certain high end cameras give you more bit depths which basically means if you think about it kind of it's quite similar to how we would shoot eighteen sorry a bit in sixteen bit in photography there's more information there but like if you shoot it right it still looks good eight bit versus sixteen just have more information there to work with so hire and cameras give you that flexibility but if you don't need it necessarily so I wouldn't worry about it and also say and we'll discuss later when I'm teaching as premier taking ten eighty footage like we mentioned yesterday putting in seven twenty you have a lot of flexibility and regards manipulating your photo and a lot of times your clients are gonna know the difference between ten eight and seven twenty unless they're playing on specific you know a court or a tv screen by all means but um you can have more flexibility when having to re arrange anything if you don't shoot it properly and again I'll show you how I do that in those processes so the next thing would be audio gear on this list so to step it up you need to get your audio off camera anything you need to have an external recorder of some sight some sort and some type of mike again you need your headphones and then we're going to recommend a little bit step up for your viewfinder so take a look at the brands we recommend uh so the proceed market five the mark to five mark three sixty even they all do a good job so it's not I'm not gonna get too particular there uh same tripod as we mentioned before with a fluid head so kind of step it up make sure you have a fluid head sticking to your pan and your kilt for your camera movement gonna want the same mono pod this slider that we recommend is a synovate slider atlas f lt on we also use the rhino slider yesterday on set networks really well and then uh good question someone who hasn't used uh fluid had that often would you be happy using a fluid head as a just your basic tripod head in general would it bother you to have a fluid head on it really good question so the biggest difference for if you have a fluid head versus a bald head is you can't flip vertical so we're trying to shoot both you can't unless you have a lens with lens collar where you're actually rotating in the collar you remember on day one wish I should hear would loosen up and get all won't be that's exactly imagine your camera fixed on that specific ball head and literally your cameras in the same won't be moved so you want something that has a couple accesses of movement I like that I think I can use the other word so swampy is the way we're gonna be oh okay great of into the question okay alright perfect um so the camera movement we just said trifon but the tripod that we're mentioning here the five six one be age devi in this case because we have a slider this one is a video tripod so the price definitely goes up they're much more sturdy and they usually have come connectors at the base that gives it more stability you're not going to be able to really make use of your slider unless you have a video tripod well I mean you can depend on the way that you're shooting you can shoot at a lower angle and have something florine and film that way if that's your stylistic approach yesterday if you remember I can stick my slider right on top of that desk I just have to of a couple different things so you can use a slider without having a video tripod the video tripod that makes it more versatile you can take it anywhere it's a platform into base you can lower you can raise it depending on what you need so by all means you can still have a slider without a video try but it just gives you flexibility having that video tripod and actually it brings me great point so do you know the term like grip someone who was good at bass lake setting stuff up more or less making things work you can for most sliders get grip equipment basically adapters to make the slider so you could put a light stand on either end of it so instead of it being on a center center point of balance where the wobble side to side if you're on a photo tripod will most of us have light stands so you can actually mount it so that it's pretty solid in between those two if you didn't want to have to go ahead and invest in a video tripod I would say nine out of ten nine out of ten sliders have either in a fitting at the bottom on each end or fourth depending on you're tryingto put it on so you just basically go in saying what I would do is I'd bring my light stand and the slider is the local cameras don't help me that's my approach he knows you know yeah so in that case if you're if you're gonna multipurpose them make sure you always have those little adapters foot of reason you don't have in a fitting underneath and you just have a quarter make sure you have the adapt to do otherwise which is what's awesome actually one of my one of my interns the way that he like hooks me the first day that he was on set is like I was trying to get something rigged up and he just like I had this little thing on his hip he opens it up and I had like all of those adapters and I'm like so oh yeah thie assistance his name's brent izer is that he's a great I think rip I mean he comes on set with gaffer's tape with tools with everything on set he's like ready to go I think he's an awesome assistant that's another thing to talk about make sure they have like a little tool case on the side if you're going to use all this equipment sometimes things get loose sometimes things get rickety doesn't have to be something big just be something small like a swiss army knife with you know a phillips head or ah flathead screwdriver in there just have something available on set just in case something happens I use a lot of a lot of tape and gun okay so other gear would be stepping up your viewfinder so a couple of you find as we like is the goodman custom finders which is basically their more pro version of a viewfinder and then also this kudos the finder and davis the finder pro as well so that's some of the gear that we've used that we like so we've stepped you up from beginner you just think you might want to try it pro sumer is like all right I think I might want to make money from this well let me give it a try professional is I want to make money and offer this to my client for any money already and I want to make sure that I have everything necessary on set to make this happen okay so all right so you wouldn't want a pro dslr sofer in my case it would be five mark three is appropriate you don't need to go higher than that uh so you want fast glass for sure so one of the reasons that we loved slr video is that you can shoot really wide apertures and it gives you that movie feel so if all the lenses you have or for oh five six it's not the same field so I'd invest in fast glass stabilization you want a video tripod at this point if you're making money from you want at least to have a video tripod with a fluid head we already had for camera movement of mono pod a slider but you might want to step it up with a shoulder rig and this will depend on this hype of footage that you're recording because the shoulder rig we use it but if you're doing events if I become even more important and then we have something called a stabilizer which I'm talking about like a glide camp a steady cam um maybe if you're doing more portrait it would be totally relevant but if you doing weddings you could get some really great shots with that so that's stepping up to professional level for audio okay you might want to have it on camera mic available to you maybe the last stitch effort but you want your external recorder you want a shotgun like and you wanna laugh and you want your good headphones so that's where you want to be as a professional there you know and as we're talking about this I know this is a lot of gear one thing that we haven't talked about us how do you carry that fear around right there's a lot of stuff be very careful with your body I recently we were on tour for about two and a half months I hurt my shoulder lifting gear all the time in trying to do it manually by a little cart by little hand car sitting it's foldable that fits in your car if you're on the go fit only carry what you can carry on your body reasonably don't try to over exert yourself don't try to take as much as you can on set and hurt yourself safeties and health is should be primary and everything that you do so just take care of yourself and kind of adjust accordingly yeah and so for this entire professional kit I own all this but I don't necessarily bring it everywhere I might have I might need okay I'm just gonna have my slider and that's it because I can treat it as a tripod if I just lock it down so I'll have my camera my bag with all my lenses on it and that slider with the video tripod and that might be it and then that totally fine like I said a lot of time to skip audio unless it's necessary and so that other gear would be a viewfinder I'll talk about the brands so this is what I use we have a can of five the mark three we have that same mono pod and fluid head okay but we also have the video tripe on that specific one we have a synovate f lt slider we also have a synovate shoulder rick which you saw us use jeff had a sunset and then I also have a glad kim two thousand and there's a couple different versions of that for the audio gear um audio gear we usually use the nt g to shotgun that's a shotgun that we have we have the task and the d r forty was the little external one that separate but the one that we use the d r sixty d which is the pre empt and extra recorder that sit underneath our camera uh we have sennheiser level ears and then noise canceling headphones of some sort and then lastly this is because this is my favorite on the viewfinder that I use is a synovate cyclops it's the the big one that fits around your eyes that is awesome so this would be the pro kit that I would recommend if you're doing this to make money on tio offered the service sister flights so you at this point about that cyclops that was the one you were using yesterday yes one that fit here yet there was a question does that fit over glasses it's pretty big I mean maybe if you have no one's eyes go like if you have like hipster glasses for the huge probably not but if you have a normal glasses like yours you can totally fit him in there okay so yeah there were a couple people that ask them I didn't get a chance to ask if I want to make sure you get that I have a funny story about it like these things it's really huge into actually nice because it's another point of contact so the more points of contact you have your body the more stable it's going to be and a lot of times I find myself having a mark on my nose like holding it so tight and I'm like looking around and depending how close you have don't let anybody film you because like your chins and yeah very often so don't don't let anybody take photos of you using nothing but it's uh it's would be definitely my viewfinder of choice for sure so let's say at this point you have every single piece of gear to shoot for any specific setting if you wanna call it that and you're making money off of videography you're just like I need to be everybody else because I need every single toy out there which is what I actually started with which is really done and we're going to go into the mack daddy kitchen sink kid okay this is the biggest baddest kit that you could get I feel like I'm gonna sales pitch here and I think this is we're not saying that for if you are a cinematographer this is for photographers like if you're going to go start your own movie production crew there's certainly a lot more than this but this is like I'm working professional photographer offer video services and yeah I want all of it and you know a lot of these are gonna be toys but it'll give you a reason to play while you're working I mean it's like that all right so for your camera you want a pro dslr fast glass for having stabilization you want a video tripod in a fluid head for your camera movement you want a mono pod a slider a shoulder rig stabilizer okay the needs of the new ones a jib a vertical slider and something for ariel was like everything okay for audio you want a shotgun like your external recorder preempt some audio grip remember who we're talking about griff that's what he had on set with that that pole for booming it out um high end reference back headphones and then if you find her so let me explain that a little bit more of the high end reference back headphones is at some point you get noise canceling so that you I don't hear anything advance you can clearly hear thie audio going from you know the recorder from the mike but the reference audio means that it's not adding base and it's not basically increasing the levels because a lot of headphones do that they try to make the music sound the best for you and you don't actually want that you wanted to sound like you're actually recording so those khun definitely get really pricey I know that when he bought the first pair headphones it was like three fifty I was like are you serious so yeah my kids you had family someone's headphones three hundred fifty dollars and headphones but I'll tell you I can edit like last night for hours I used these while I was at the restaurant last night that the second I got home I took these off because they start hurting the insides of years after kel ours so anything that's a leather that's it's nice and patted you can work for hours and never feel them the second because the noise canceling the second you take them off you feel all the sensitivity to everything around you like I can hear everything now so and then they have never once even go more expenses and that five hundred you know it's just letting you know what you're looking for is noise canceling and reference you could spend spend thousands on headphones it's just really up to you what you want to spend what's comfortable for you and your workflow so all right so let's look at the details so we shoot a five day mark three personally we've got that there's like you know the stabilization is the same as before for camera movement all the stuff is the same but we've added on the dj phantom but having it souped up so that it has the gimbal in other words kind of the stabilization on there and you want the carbon fiber blades and you want to have the little what is it called a first person yes you can actually see while you're doing that this is his room I just it goes back to video games and being a nerd is as a kid and an adult I can't even say it kid way added on their synovate vertical slider which actually you can get a kit to convert your horizontal slider but we have both because usually when you need the vertical you don't have to convert the regular one because then you can't use it on dh then a chip of some sort this innovate is a really good one so you're not gonna be able to hold all the stuff in it like a miata like a smaller so make sure that again safety first that you hazard lugging the equipment that you need if you have the mack that kitchen sink set it's just cause you're trying to like show off your friends that are photographers videographers and saying I can do a lot more production than you can and then and then for certain tools for the job of course figure out what you need um and then lastly for audio gear all that stuff was the same but what we've added on here is having that grip so the pole that kind of goes out over the set and I would have multiple labs at that point because I'm often actually need to record more than one person speaking at a time and one lab isn't going to cut it so that would be in my kind of souped up broke it honestly depending on type of work you do is a professional you might need to but I was trying to keep it simple cause they're expensive you know and and something that I didn't discuss a lot of these specialty items you can start practicing them so well people hire you to do just that the area eren grimes that's kind of what he's focused on right now is the aerial digital photography it's not easy to do right off the bat it takes a lot of practice so if you find somebody who's going to do that and that's their job so be it I mean there's people on set we talked about yesterday that all they do is work with a glide cam there just you know the steadicam operator that's all they do so don't feel like specialising one of these is gonna help you you can if whatever reason you're not shooting your own jobs and somebody's gonna hire you to do a specific day hey you specialising glide cam's that's whatyou d'oh they'll hire you to work that specific day because they can't do themselves or otherwise okay great so I would love to take any questions related to gear because after this we're going to move on from gear besides the fact that when we do a little bit of sound editing he'll talk about that don't bring up the mountain man video wakefield anything so I think the one that we kind of want toe hit on is riff all too cool who says shouldn't the magnetic it have a one d c or other type of camera that does for kay do you think four k is kind of part of the mac daddy great question so we're teaching a class for photographer so I would say that would be for cinematographers you would want to go maybe to a cinema camera and you jump very large in price at that point and there's you know there's reds and then there's ari cameras and there's I mean there's tons of everything so I would say mack daddy kitchen sink for professional photographers looking to do video but if it that point you start calling yourself a director and cinematographer if that is what you're branding yourself as then yeah maybe that is appropriate or even I'm not even fourcade maybe just two k even at that point and I hear that there's like even more than that at this point where there's like even hey I just want all the cake thirteen fourteen years not three anything but three ok so picks casey is also asking about a crane okay s so a crane I would give you a lot of movement similar to a jib just on a much larger scale and so a lot of a lot of these cranes with it makes the easiest you can actually see what your cameras doing they'll have it so that there's a cord where you can actually see on a viewfinder again I wouldn't say for professional photographers you shouldn't get away with the jib and like I had that adam most ninja if I wanted people to see what my cameras doing on the jib I can hook it up they're in hd mic cable and do the same I mean if that's that is a solution that you're looking for I know david I had this conversation last night that kessler does make a pocket crane almost is what they call it it's about twelve hundred dollars and then they have the pocket gym which is like five six hundred dollars so it's depending if they have a similar motion it's just different differentiation in size so it's really up to your budget which one you want to go with and then also like where you one man band you're not going to want tohave you you'd be much better off as a one man band having a jib than a crane because how you gonna get it there and set it up and then yeah friend for me sometimes that I have used gibbs would keep it off to the side and then if there's a shot on this extra time and hook it up for fun versus making it focus because it's not necessary just looks cool okay so so wait like I is there anything else there because we are going to move on I think we are really good to move on have uh thank you so much for delivering all of those we love the breakdowns for each one and we really appreciate it thank you guys you guys can always ask us more questions on the way here no problem all right so I'm gonna show you a video I'm gonna live a question just came in that I think is actually really cool photo find a pool howbout follow focus you didn't actually speak especially listen anything in there you know that's a really good point and so they didn't really exactly fit into categories that we had but I think something's to step it up a notch absolutely could do follow focus I would say that would be in the professional to mack daddy I would say professional wouldn't be pro somewhere on dh then there's a couple of the things I would say like at that point you get it looks like the barn doors for a rig on the front basically act as your hood blocking out the sun so yes there are some other things that I would step it up but those air like I would say more accessories and elsie the price point is also that like the mack daddy range of pieces because I've used follow focus is that air with a kit seven hundred fifty dollars and then disintegrate on may and then the really great ones like the synovate orza kudo they'll run you twelve fifteen two thousand dollars just for the folk the follow focus they're very very expensive so that something mac daddy kid if that's what you want to do it every single piece of aspect that you want to just collect year well means do so it's just expensive it's a professional professional teo been kit so I can't remember what it's called but where would you put the one that changes your stops that where would you put that so great the neutral density the nation and variable neutral density filter uh definitely has a professional if you are shooting weddings outdoors you kind of need one yes you really really really need one you know what I would say that the variable andy filter would be professional grade um if you can find an nd filter for like one hundred bucks you go on ebay you'll find a plethora of them for like a hundred dollars or sometimes lesson that sometimes a little bit more than that by all means they fit into smaller kids but the variable and the filter isn't in the price point of the first two years yeah that's a great point so he's a pro sooner if you get just a regular andy and then variable if you guys remember us going over equipment first day those coke infielders they're very inexpensive I mean I found the ring adapters like seventy five bucks but then I can use any size filter that cocaine makes toe put onto that specific unit on dh that's because I got the actual koken unit they make a replication like from like china or something like that where it's a fake version it's a knock off but it still works so get for someone who's just starting out if you had to pick just like two or three pieces that's it what you would start with so it was you know not for beginner but you'd like to step it up a little bit kind of the probe post you were two different answers and say well okay good you let me go first I can choose to now that's fine you go first all right I'm going with three pieces I wouldn't do o god how this I'll just go quick mining pod tripod and fluid head that's my three pieces on tio each other the mono pod comes with a fluid had you could multi purpose it on the tripod you only have one access of movement and you can still turn it around I mean that's that's three access is a movement plus stabilization ah ah okay it's peasant type of work you d'oh I don't that story so I was like I knew what she was going to use and I'm like I got you maybe I would swap out the mono pod because I don't go I'm not usually that mobile like usually it's my set like I don't need it to move around I can tell you to wait so I sent my tribe but you know what I mean so I might use the tripod with the slider as my stable kitt and then a viewfinder of some sort because I can't see and I need it that's sixty three month comes in a two pack whatever just letting you know that okay he's the one that brings a lot more here than ideo somehow really I don't somehow I want it I don't believe that e u I really thank you bring here if it's just me I don't bring much but if I have help I bring every time she has to be like sitting next to her that's like six foot three she is like come over here packed meal that's basically what happened that's absolutely crazy so you have people help you out