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Equipment: Recording System

when it comes to cameras, I do have to be transparent. Those of you who follow us know that I am Mr Transparent when it comes to all things camera as well as all other equipment. No, I have been paid in the past as a speaker for Panasonic. I am not being paid today to speak about Panasonic at all. These are my cameras that I own and I use. Now when you see the cameras on Chicago portrait dot pro right, that's my company's website. The vast majority of those images that are on there have been shot with a little mix GH three. There are some Fuji camera shots on there, but most of them are GH three. Those are because of my choice not because I've been paid, in my opinion, the way that I run my studio the best camera for my studio is the GH three. Does that mean it's the best muralist hybrid, Cameron, The world not in the slightest. When I'm going to go out shooting here and we're gonna go take pictures on Saturday. Louis, which camera are you gonna take? Which one, right? And why are you ...

gonna take the XY one and not the XY to writhe you no longer get flogged by the camp trawling lunch. So good job. Good for you. Okay, So when it comes to cameras, there are a handful to choose from the ones that I recommend our only that they're ones that I've had plenty of time on that would recommend, in my opinion, the most well rounded. If you want to get into shooting Portrait's and you want to shoot hybrid and you want to shoot your sports stuff is the loo mix G H three. Now there is a G H four. However, it doesn't do anything. Photo wise better than the GH three. All of its improvements are on video. So if you're more interested in video and film making than you are in photo, then go ahead by the GH four. She'll notice I don't have a GH for here. You know why I don't mean it. You heard the video on my talking portrait and it sounded pretty darn good to me. Hopefully it sounded good to you when we talk about GH cameras, we've got two of them right here. I brought a couple of course I brought one of the older ones, which is the G H two. I'm gonna put that in my spot right there on that G H two is my 45 millimeter Lou mix lens that has a mid stabilization. It's also got I think it might be Macro. I do believe it's a macro lens that happens to be one of the two lenses that I used to shoot product shots. Because remember, still a commercial photographer. Well, lots of things. I gotta shoot that. Our product shots next, the other the other way that we use GH cameras is Here's another gauge three. We take this back out of the way. The city GH three that's in a different set up, writes in a different configuration. There is an external battery pack. Sorry on this camera. I'll come to this camera next. Okay. This one here is gonna have on the bottom. It's going to have a tripod mount Now we try to stick with one tripod mount and that's it. We've gone with the tripod Mount that you saw on the Me photo. Why? Because it's the same as the next brand up in the line. Right, Matt group is the name of the company that has Mac that has be photo. They also have Bowen's lighting in line, light and so iconic and Pocket was there. They're all one company. They also have another line of tripods called in Dural and Enduro happened to use the same quick release mount. So when I need a bigger carbon fiber tripod to hold a big camera or I got amounted to a trucker, it's gotta be hung upside down on a helicopter. It said he using a me photo. I'll taken. Endure or I use get so as well still. But I'll put on an enduro head on there. Why? Because I want to manage on Lee one Tripod mount. I don't wanna have 16 different quick release plates. I only wanna have one, so I usually by a bunch of them, and when you go into my cases, you'll look in the lead. Google. What do you know? There's a couple of extra quick release plates. That's because we use the same ones over and over again. Let's talk more about some cameras because I know folks love to talk about cameras. Here's one of the things that you will see very often. Let me put this in a typical configuration that we will use when you were to come into our studio, for instance, you'll see that will get portrait sessions. Sometimes write. My girl Patty is so terrific High Patty, if you're watch, I know you're watching Patty and Patty is going to say, OK, well, you're one of today is gonna have to close changes. It's a girl and she's just graduated college and she needs to give her mom a couple of pictures. But she also wants to get a picture for her boyfriend. So could you do a picture for Mom, where she's dressed? Just regular Nice. Then could you do one for boyfriend, where she's dressed a little bit nicer? Right when we mean nicer? We don't mean anything, you know, adult oriented. We don't doing thing and in our universe, But we have different ways. Toe make, particularly curvy girls look nice. And one way we like to do that is with a high key situation, right? Well, hi. Key means for us that we use a tool called a um, we help me out. It's It's the name of that backlight. No, it's a huge soft box. It's really name last delight. Highlights are highlights. Sorry about that. I'm sure Last light folks will know it's a big pop up. It looks kind of like an air mattress. And we put two flashes inside there and those flashes air. Terrific. But, you know, it's I don't use a whole lot of flash, do I? When you see my studio in Chicago, you'll notice that that light that you see me using back there, that's called the light smarter, right? That's really my main light. My main lights and my secondary lights in my studio are what we're gonna talk about here in a little bit mean these air riel lights. Those are led lights. Well, there are times we have to use flash folks. There is times well mounted on top of this GH three, and this is how it's gonna be in our studio, right? The only thing that be different, of course, is it would have a plate on the bottom of it would, by the way, I'm sorry I don't have it with me, but I'll be doing a review on a brand new product that those of you that are using Lulic's cameras. You're always been on a shape because the quarter 20 bolt on the bottom are put this right where you needed there, buddy. The quarter 20 thread on the bottom is not right underneath the lens that causes more havoc than you would ever believe does it gets you off balance when you go on a tripod. When you want to use a ring light, it's off to the side when you want to slide it in some sort of slot. You got nothing but problems. I just said some guy that figured it out. He bought. He made some kind of little metal plate that goes on the bottom there, and it moves the quarter 20 female threat over to the side. I've got it with me. I'm gonna test it this week. And if it approves, you'll see it on hybrid photo next week. So if you're watching thank you presenting it. I did get it. Next. This is gonna have the battery on the bottom of it. The second battery. And here's one of the reasons that we like to use this. So one of the reasons why you find us using the GH three is well, when we need the longer lens. It's a little more comfortable with this camera, right? It's got a little battle hand around it now. Every you said that you were using your spear to your 72 200 F 28 is your primary lens, right? It's big lens, right? Guess what? This is the replacement to your 72 200 lens. This is, Ah, third of the weight. It's to third with 1/3 of the size. It's 2/3 the price. And I will tell you, as a guy that owns both of the Nikon versions, this lens auto focus is faster. And I think it's just a sharp if not sharper. This is one of the reasons why people, particularly that have maybe some disabilities like I do, where we're talking about. We don't want to have a lot of weight, right? That why we're switching Tamir Lis is this has the same angle of coverage as at 72 200 it snaps right on side There. It's got image stabilization. I'm about to sell this guy a camera here. If I was a sales person I was about the Selves guy. A camera here. Okay, so this is going to go on the bottom now. You're gonna know sets a little bit. Kind of long in the tooth toe. Hold right. That's a little bit extra. So this is where you're gonna be ableto you want to spend a whole lot of money, but then you can get the external battery holder. Now, what this does is this is gonna flop on the bottom. Here, make sure, of course, you have your power off when you do that. It's always a good idea. This is gonna hold a second battery, which is terrific. So when I start the beginning of the day and we'll go back to why we've got this set up in there we go. From the beginning of the day, Louie's gonna walk into the studio first. Gonna flip all the light signs. Gonna turn on the led is make sure everything's fine. Is gonna walk around with a color meters. Go walk around the flash meter. Make sure when Mr Crocker comes in, everything is already to go assistance or great, aren't they? They're just the best things ever. That's right. Then we're gonna make sure that this camera now has a little extra grip for me to hold. I got big hands. Right. So I got the ability to hold this now shooting vertical. We don't have to worry about it because we outlawed shooting vertical in life. My studio to why? TVs, YouTube. How many vertical televisions have you seen? Yeah, Not very few, right? I'm gonna sell a lot of my commercial work is gonna end up on a television screen. It's going to be when you walk into a business. The corporate statement that I'm going to shoot is going to be on a television screen. When you go to a trade show, you're going to see a trade show booth that's gonna have a wall on there. It's probably gonna be 16 9 on the television. Well, when we shoot vertical, then it's going to be much, much smaller on there. So we don't shoot vertical. It's rare anymore. Right? Okay. Next up on top here, this is going to be the flash. And when we're gonna talk about how we're gonna shoot Flash, we're going to shoot remote flash. Now, there are flash for mere list cameras, but most of them are not so terrific. Panasonic makes some flashes for the cameras, but they all are not upto will crock. It's happiness level now remember, there is a difference between fact and opinion over in this case. Fact is, they stink. Opinion is they speak. We're sorry about that. Panasonic. Those flashes aren't any good. I'm sorry. Best thing is, you could take a cue. Flesh a quantum que flash. They actually make one that works for Panasonic. Slided on there. Good to go. Don't want to use that. No problem. Panna Panasonic. There's a Panasonic version of the copilot for Q flash, right? Quantum makes vest, ink and flashes of the universe. You put this right on top of here. Now, all of a sudden I've got the ability to shoot hybrid lining, meaning? I've got my camera. I've got my name life that's going to be all led, right? I've got I feel like which is gonna be a fill card. There may be times when I've got up above I've got an led. That's a hair lighter. A catch like kicker light could do. But when I want to shoot high key to light out the white back and to make the background totally white. I'm using Flash and I'm gonna turn this on. I'm gonna hit the go button. And the cool part about this is if I look on the top there and I take a look at my screen on the back and it says my flashes maybe needs another half a stop worth of power. Guess what I do. I just turned this up 1/ a stop and taken in the picture and I go. One needs one more click and give Omar click and it take a picture. I go. It's all set. It's all ready to go on. It's over. That's technology. That's what's helping me get where I need to go. When you choose the camera that you're going to use, take your turn. Please go to the store. If you can find one that fits your your here in Seattle, you got Glazers. Sorry, you've got beautiful camera stores here. Forgive me. What's the other camera store? Kenmore. Right there. Not too far away. Another beautiful camera store if you can. Seattle folks please support your local camera stores. There's two great ones here were in Chicago. Guess what? We don't have one anymore. We lost Helix. We lost Kalyan met. We don't have anybody. It's horrible. Let's talk about the rest of our equipment before we get close to the end of our session here. We've got a wide selection of cameras that you want to choose from. You'll see that the two brands that keep re occurring in the world of Crockett are Fuji and blue Mix. Right. You choose whatever cameras you want to go, go with any of them that you want to. But you'll see when you're going to see me shooting. That's what I'm gonna be shooting with next. When it comes to microphones. We talked a little bit about live leers, but we've got a little problem with Laval ears. Laval ears are well, they're noise can be a little bit on the tinny side, but saying that we've got a family that's gonna wanna have some sort of picture taken. Well, that means we have to love everybody. We're not gonna hear anybody because this is only gonna work with one person. Also, we've learned something kind of unusual saying When we go back, today's when we're shooting e cards, we may have seven or eight Ekkehard pro folks coming in at the same time. Well, they'll be all set up. Maybe 2025 minutes. Apartment there, typically all from the same company. All right, well, when those folks come in, guys typically have no problem. They'll put a lively Iran. They'll clip it on the front of their shirt or tape it on their shirt, put it in their shirt, they'll reach into their pants. And then they pulled a little court off the side. Right. They may go to the bathroom, and then they just go to the changing room to do that. Guys typically don't care all that much, right? Like your worry. Invest. It wouldn't matter. You'd pull this right out and clip it on the back. No problem, Right? All right, ladies. They don't want to do that. They're going to go to the girl's room. Or that we have a dressing room to the going to the dressing room, and then they'll they won't ask any questions, and then they'll just go do it themselves. And hopefully they get it in the right spot. Okay? If they don't then we have to ask. And of course, we can't adjust. You can't just reach over and touch and adjust. I have to ask. I have to do all kinds of things. I have Patty, Thank goodness it's easier when a woman, a photo assistant, asks women to change their microphones stuff, too. But then you end up with another problem. That is that even if the women do go to the bathroom for some reason, you know they don't have the transmitter with them. But for some reason, they kind of think that maybe bacon still here. So they've got this little microphone thing on and they go to the ladies room and they come back and you could tell on their face that some of them are like, Can you hear me in there? No, no, no. There's nothing connects. Do it all. There's no way that you could hear it because they go well, I just wasn't sure that bit of doubt spins the game for the rest of the day. Now I'm gonna have a problem, because now she's already thinking, How is there something I don't know? I'm not comfortable with that. I don't like that I'm not. I'm not sure what that's about. So what that leads us back to is I love directional microphones. Now there's two ways we can go on directional microphones. Let's say we've got a portrait shoot. Much like the one that I did the talking for concession with you. I got two ways to go, right? I got this camera mounted up on a tripod and I'm ready to rock and roll. I can slide this microphone or any brand of microphone you want to in the side. There. This is gonna plug in right on the side. I'm gonna put this right over here so that you can see it There on camera has a beautiful This is beautifully designed. This is the microphone from Panasonic, By the way. It's a very inexpensive The wire clips on the back. I mean, isn't at an elegant solution, sir. I know their audio is king. As far as, like, videos concerned, yes, you're not paying attention to it. But what? Um, as far as I guess, your preference or when when you're entering this particular part of photography will have a photography. What, in your opinion, is the better Mike and start off with? Yeah, as opposed to, you know, the long shot Michael Level or whatever. Now, are you Are you talking about shooting e card pros orm or family oriented E cards? Like, I'm going to show you a little bit later. Or talking Portrait's. What do you think of is your primary? Yeah, I e steal. I'm got the dice in my hands and figure out what's right. What? I'm What am I gonna look at that one? Possibly cover all three. But ultimately, you're gonna need three different microphones. But to get started and where you are. If you're gonna stay with your Nikon camera system, then I would say go with the roadie brand R o D brand. They make some beautiful microphones that arm or like this, they're gonna take a batter. They're gonna do what you want to do. Here's another avenue. And as crazy as this sounds is to sell if you're ready, if you really want to do this and you think that this is ready for and by the way, from what you're shooting, I'm not sure that this is ready for you or not. And I'll be glad to talk to you more about it. In fact, you'd be better off talking to Louis more about it, too, right? Or hop into the linked in group and talk to them because I will gear into you because I referee that group to make sure that everybody behaves. They're all they're all polite with each other, right? That will guarantee you that you'll get really real deal answers. But if you were to sell your Nikon system and get that kind of cash because it's worth a lot of money, you would be able to buy the top of the lying Marylise system and have all three microphones and still have money left over. So not that I'm trying to tell you what to do. I'm not. I'm just I'm telling you, that's one solution there. But now, when we get into how we're going to work this into what we're gonna do here and when we come back, the next step is gonna be we're gonna shoot, shoot a little bit more. We're gonna make a small promotional piece as photographers were going to go back to studio tools and the studio tools were going to be really simple. We're going to start off with a professional grade camera. We're gonna be able to turn off the image stabilization cause it's gonna be mounted on a tripod. And you always want to make sure you do that. By the way, one of the best tips I could give photographers all the time. It's to make sure that you turn that off right, and then you're gonna be able to connect up through your mixer system and the reason you want to use a mixture system when you use a lot earlier. Microphone. Sorry, A shotgun microphone. Is that a shotgun? Microphone needs power. It needs a lot of power. This microphone, in fact, has a double a battery in it. And that is 1.5 volts. That's all the double A is. All that's going to do is that's gonna activate this and allow it to be seen by the mixer. This isn't gonna power this microphone. It's just gonna make it be seen by the system, that's all. So the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go from the camera, we're going to go to the mixer and we're gonna hook this little bad boy up just the way it's gonna be, right? This is gonna be off on the side so I can see the controls. You have to realize that these microphones, even though there are some of these, that the stereo thes air mono, they're only gonna be one channel which is both good and its bad. It's good when we get to some more advanced, but for right now, it's a little on the bad side. The set up that you see us using over there is gonna have one of these and here's how it's gonna work. We're going to use a divider. And this divider is something that you buy anywhere you want to. And this type of connection is called XLR, and I'm gonna put this right down here so they can see it. That's called XLR. What that's going to do is that's going to take a mono microphone, and it's going to allow it to work with a stereo mixer. And here's how. It's just gonna take the signal and it's gonna cut it in half, and it's gonna drop it into my mixer because my mixer has a left and a right. That means It's got power for left. And it's got power for right. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take one microphone and I'm gonna connect it up to hear right. I'm going to use a cord that's going to be in between here to, right? This is an XLR cord, but I'm just going to do this for demonstration purposes. So there's my microphone. Then it's gonna be plug my microphone for little miniature. Louis, this is going to go into left side. This is going to go into right side note isn't gonna matter because its dual mono. Then I'm gonna take another court. This is just your basic stereo, 1/8 inch cable and I'm going to go out of this mixer and then I'm going to go into my camera. You think that's pretty cool, right? All right, here's something else. We're gonna go turn on this camera. We're gonna tell it that its input setting is going to be a microphone. It's gonna be an external mike. We're gonna put it right in the middle of it setting because I like all my audio settings right in the middle. And if you read my mixers guess what else you'll find. They're all in the middle to They're all of the 12 oclock position. One of the things that I do in my system is I I develop everything and I set everything. So it all works right in the neutral position as best we can. Now there is one thing about this mixer that's very interesting and that does have an auto gain control. And in fact, it works really good. And it looks on this microphone happens to be turned off. So, Louis, please make a note on this mixer number to the auto gain. Control has accidentally been turned off. It will need to be turned on now that auto gain control is going to help me get the game where I want to write on the level where it needs to be. And that means I'm going to be able to shoot this without having any audio problems at all. Now you want to know the other reason why I choose to use the loo mix GH three over other cameras? Well, it's when I plug in my headphones when I plug in my headphones in the camera here, I get a couple of choices on the back of that camera. You know, those choices are Do I want to hear the sound that's coming out of the microphone? Or do I want to hear the sound that's already been recorded to the SD card? That's inside. That's reason right there to buy that camera. We will. Why don't you record to an external like riff on external audio recorder? Wouldn't you get better audio? No. Don't you want backup? Sure. I love back up. I don't want to. Why? I want to get it right in the camera. I want to buy equipment that I can count. I want to buy equipment that will allow me to do what I want to do. So when I plug in and when I teach you guys how to plug in, you're going to hear 1/4 of a second delay. And it's gonna be annoying because you're going to be hearing what's already been recorded onto that camera. That's rock solid star to last quick things before we beat feet. Next, one of the tools that were going to be using what we shoot the little sports kids tomorrow we're gonna shoot some sports tomorrow, we're going to use ring like we're gonna take cameras and we're gonna mount them onto me. Here's another one that's got mounted off to the side, right. It needs to be able to mount into the middle. Instead, we're gonna be able to mount into this ring light just like this, my friend. And we're gonna adjust this so that we can have whatever we want. We're gonna turn this battery on. I'm gonna make sure that's not on full powers. It doesn't blind anybody. There you go. And this is gonna be the second tool that we use, right? We've got to lighting tools. The 1st 1 is a long way. Already showed you today. That's just your basic One by one will come back and we'll talk about that a little bit more in the next segment. But the other tool is actually a more universal tool. This is a preferable tool than that one for multiple reasons. But primarily this tool is a ring light which allows you to adjust the power and watch this just the color temperature. Look at that. And then when you want to adjust the power, you press the button. And you just the power. Anyone adjust the color temperature, you press the button and just the color temperature. Wanna press the power you to? Come on, man. Come on. Does it get any better than that? You want to have a punchline? I designed that I did. I got paid to design that. That's right. So wise. Well, Crocker's are happy with that button. I'm just so damn have with that. I'm just take a look so darn happy with that. I just couldn't be more tickled. I couldn't. Okay, so we're gonna use a couple tools when we like. One is gonna be a ring light, which we're gonna turn into a light ring. I've got a bunch of these that we're gonna be using. We can use him in the lights there. We've got our led panels. When we get a little more time, we're gonna talk about why these look the way they dio, and there is a reason that they look the way they do. When you slide these out, you're going to see there's a little bit of diffusion in their kind of odd diffusion. This is called spun. And even though we gotta go. I gotta let you know This is part of one of the most important things you're gonna learn in this entire class. And that's called the diffusion dynamic when you're ready to get in tow lighting where you don't need umbrellas and you don't need soft boxes anymore, and you want to create your own quality of lighting and you want make light that's brighter on one side and not so bright on the other one. That's warm on one side, and it's not so warm on the other when that's diffuse on one side, one that's not so diffused on the other. We can do that, and we can do it by using the diffusion dynamic, and it's dirt cheap. These sheets are $7 apiece, thes sheets of green or what are gonna take any color lights that you want to and make them absolutely perfect. There is nothing that we can't conquer in the hybrid world that will prevent you from doing that one big important thing and you know what that is, don't you? That's getting it right in the camera. How many times have we been told a Brazilian times over? If you get it right in the camera. You don't have to do anything in post. I don't wanna have to shoot raw When I want black and white. I want to be able to look in that camera. And I want to shoot black and white. And that's the truth of it. Chris, When I want to make a black and white portrait of you I want to see in my brain the black and white I want to feel it. I want to know exactly what it's gonna look like when I want to take your black and white portrait. I'm gonna set this camera to black and white and I'm gonna just the current transom adjust the sharpness. I might even adjust the tone. You know why? Because when I put it up to my I see the black and white ah, muralist camera will allow me to simulate the color and the texture that I want to see. I can't do that with a DSLR a DSLR. I put it up to my eye and I see it in color. I don't want to. When I want to shoot and square, I want to set this two square and I want to set it to black and white. And I want to take your picture. And when we come back, that's what I'm going to do. My vision is a photographer is quicker to appear on a muralist camera than it is on a DSLR. That means that I can hand over files to them that are already matching my vision. So by the time it goes over to automatically become edited, it's already my mission. So that means my editor doesn't have toe have any creative skills whatsoever. It's automated. The vision is done by the photographer in the camera. Get roughed up. Don't. I was gonna say, Tell us how you really feel. I'm sorry, Ross. We went long there. But actually, we do have a couple of clarifications of your questions. And we wanted to get out of the way right now. Yeah, and let's just start with from motion FX. Do you know the model number of the sanitizer? Shotgun? Yeah. Yes, I do know that, Senator. Shotgun. I will. I will get that for you. It is. Uh uh, Yeah. Excuse me for that. I'm gonna take that as a no. No problem. and will weaken. We can look into it at lunch and posted in the chat rooms when we get back as well. Yes, please. I do know it's It's the $300.1. Okay, If that makes any help, come take it. A question from Douglas Gottlieb. And why? See the ladies can use those outside. Yeah, you can use them outside. Yeah, you sure can. Although you got to be really careful. Do you know that I've got one of the development projects that we've worked on that wants to make an led that will allow you to shoot outside and having led bright enough that it will overpower the sun. Right. Okay. It can. Well, there's a problem with that. When you use a flash and your overpowering the sun, the flashes only 15th 100th of a second long. So even if your eye sees that, it doesn't hurt it because it's only a minute amount of time. Well, there are led ease that air twice. A strong, is that? But when you have those on for four seconds and you look at him, yeah, you're blind. So yeah. Can we use high powered flash outside? We sure can. But then you will be able to see anything. Well, The Will Crockett ring light they designed were What's the official name for where there is where you find that and and I apologize for that. Spring light is the quantum. I'm a crime four. That's the quantum alma current Foreign. If you'd like to see that, go to q t m dot com slash omelet crown and there's two versions. There's the three in the four. The three is the one that flashes, and it's OK, but that's not the one that I recommend. It's fine. The one that will crack it recommends is the Alma Cron four that has a control panel up on top here that allows you to see the power and the color temperature. I'll plug it in for you real quick there, buddy, that you have the ability to blue you Hope e got it. Hold that. Hold that ring like there for me. All right, I'm gonna plug this in. One of the neat parts about the OM four that other lights don't have is the ability for us to go ahead and turn that ring line around is if you can see that there is a control panel there. You've got the ability to adjust power and then you press the button and then you can adjust color temperature in redos. And now don't forget I was involved in developing that products. You know, that means it's right when it's set 2700 and 50 K It's 2750 k right? This is one of the products I adore little on the pricey side, but I adore it.