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Gear: Tools to Experiment & Play With

so high, I feel like if we had a cooking show, right? So now we're gonna be slicing and dicing again. This is gonna be our Julian. Um, So as I said, often times I'm known for carrying around a ton of different cameras in a ridiculous amount of way. People just laugh when they see me coming because I'm strewn all, uh, Tokyo just with camera gear. And that's because I have so much fun with playing with different ways of capturing a scene. I could be Justus happy, as we mentioned earlier this morning with just having that so often times just having a mobile phone, A special. If you understand either the different APS Ordell, things like a nolo clip or ways you can shoot with it, you can get a ton done with that. That being said, if you've got some extra technology, um, it can extend what you can do. So with that, let me go through a few of the things that we have here, especially when we get we've got coming up our infrared class, and that is one the one area of technology here that is a ...

little bit unique. It really is something that you won't be able to grab riel infrared unless you have a camera that is set up to shoot in that infrared portion of the spectrum that said, Let me back up a little bit Even though you do have infrared, possibly a infrared setting on your camera or filter and photo shop, or even a setting in Photoshopped that says infrared, none of those are actually shooting infrared. Basically, what they're doing is they can take a portion of the red, green, blue light spectrum that is sensitive to your sensor, and it can't emphasize it. In other words, it can make blue skies darker, black and foliage lighter green. But it doesn't actually interact with the chemical composition of your subject matter. And we'll talk about that, especially when we get into it an infrared class. If you there were that that being said, I've got here a Nikon D 40 that I had converted. The one thing you want to know if you're are going to use an SLR for doing infrared is that you wanted to have live view. In other words, it has to have a setting on the camera where you can actually, um, see the image through the electronic viewfinder. Not through the prism up here, because there is a new infrared filter built into the camera. Um, what you see, when you have with an SLR, you're looking through the world. You see the world in full color. It's exposing for full color. It's setting focus and everything else on full color so you don't see the world in infrared. In live you, it turns off the prism. The the well mirror comes up and you're actually able to look through the electronic viewfinder, and it processes the image through the infrared piece of glass. And therefore you see the world in new Paret, and it exposes correctly for infrared. If not, if you're using it, you say, I've got an old SLR that doesn't have that. The problem is, is that all your exposures will be inaccurate. You're basically going to be sending your exposure manually or be using exposure compensation, because when you press your shutter down halfway, it's going to see the world in full color and expose incorrectly. And because infrared the exposure is based upon your foliage, it's not like you can say, well, This entire scene has the same basic exposure. So you said it once. The problem is, is this is green grass over here. You move over here to the building. It may be the same basic light, completely different exposure. This is Snow White, completely white. And this now is going to be darker just because it has no college, no chlorophyll actually in it. So you're gonna want if you want to convert an older one of your SL ours, you're gonna want it to have I'm live you on it. But because of that on because, as I mentioned, they make such great walk around cameras. I love point shoots for converted. This is Ah, Canon G 15 old used bought it, you know, on eBay for next to nothing. They're great cameras built like a tank, the shoot raw. And because they are all based upon Elektronik viewfinders, right? Everything that's not a single lens reflex is based upon some sort of e v f for electronic viewfinder technology. When you look through the camera, you're seeing the world in infrared. It exposes for infrared. Everything works just great. You don't have to worry about anything. It's just works, got bracketing. It does some automatic alignment of, um, your panoramas, which were already seen. We love shooting, so these are excellent cameras that I absolutely love. Converting this one is one of the Olympic pin Siri's. This is their light version. The PL five also converted for infrared. The one thing to remember about infrared is, um, they all have a slightly different flavor based upon their sensor. So every single camera between this one, this one, my three different infrared that I have right here, each one has a very different flavor. Results of the CPI and Scion. You'll notice that a lot of my inference have this blue or brown cast of them. That's part of the process. It's actually built into the spectrum on infrared, by definition, is a red or pink or purplish image as its shot, but depend upon the sensor. It does have quite a bit of range, so every single camera has a different flavor of infrared to it, and there are different infrared filters that you can get when you purchase a conversion. When you say please convert this for me, there's colder. There's enhanced color, their standard color and so we'll talk about that when we get into the infrared class. I like that. The Olympus Pen, Siri's one. It's a removable lens. You can customize it and put on it. It's what's known as a micro 4/3 sensor. It has a nice articulated lands on it. You'll notice out in the field that I'm shooting some macros on it, so it's awful nice to lay it down there and be able to do this. You can also put it up here and see yourself. If you do that selfie thing, it also has a touchscreen, which is kind of nice, because if you're down doing macro on it, not only can I come up here and see that, you know the point of the fern tip that I want to focus, but I literally just tap on it. And it not only sets the exposure in the focus point, but it also takes the shot actually triggers the shutter so you can set up the touch screens on the Olympus Siris for to trigger the shutter. Jeff, remember to turn off because if you put it on your chest every time you bounce, you're taking pictures cost. You go. What is going on here? And you're accidentally taking pictures? Yes. Question. If you convert a camera that has interchangeable lenses, will you be able to use the use it with more than one lens? Very good question That brings up the question of calibration When you when you do the conversion process, which will be talking about again, I use life pixel, great paper, people over at life pixel Um, when you take out the infrared filter and when you take out the hot mirror the infrared inhibitor and put in a infrared piece of glass, Teoh allow it to grab this portion of the spectrum. They're calibrating for specific lens, and so they're typically do it for what would be known as the kit lens for the camera. If you have something that you say, I always shoot with this lands, or 90% of the time I shoot with this, you'll notice that you have a lot of these. These are the Nikon 18 to 318 to 200. What I consider a great walk around lens. So this is what I would have them convert to, because this is my standard lens that I would use. You can use other ones, but in terms of the razor sharpness, they're going to be best calibrated to a very specific lens so you can use other lenses. But that is something to take into account. And you may want to check focus, you know, when you do use a different lens on it. So it is. That's one of the things will be talking about the need for a class. Great quest. Okay. And so that is in front, other things. In terms of my regular cameras, I'll often have an old SLR what might know standards. This is an old D 300 but I'm gonna have this. Normally, I would have this with my portrait lens on it. This right here is my got a Sigma, which will be shooting tethered, as you can see right here. Um, this is my 70 millimeter portrait macro lens that I love shooting because it's a lens, and it just allows me to have that beautiful of okay, that out of focus background. So for both macro, close up as well as just for a standard portrait lens, something like a 70 millimeter is wonderful. This is on a what's known as a size see sensor, so it's a 3/4 size sensor. It's not a full size sensor, um, and so that 70 is like a 90 equivalent, which gives me a nice flat face in terms of it. You're not getting a wide angle distortion. The nose doesn't become bigger. One thing to keep in mind when you're shooting portrait is that you really don't. You want to tend to flatten out the face a little bit, as opposed to both the face out with a wide angle. So I love this lens for that, and normally what I'll do is I'll have this lands on this and then I'll have this lens set up with a little holster, so you'll notice that in the pictures I've got this here so I don't have to change lenses because if I see something that's macro or shooting portrait, then I'll just do this and I'll take advantage of this. So if I do have to set ups with SL ours, I'll do that because I've got a portrait macro lens on one of them, and then I'll have a walk around lands on another one. This one is my 7100. Um, that my standard travel camera for my SLR work. Got a battery pack on it. That's just to impress chicks. You know, this really that these things were cheap. The one thing I know, my wife, I'm kidding. Um, there one there. It's great because it gives you a vertical shutter release. So again their eBay 50 bucks, something like that. It gives you a nice grip whether you're in here, and it just extends it. If you've got a bit bigger hands, their excellent you can put in the bigger size batteries on here, and you have a vertical shutter release on it. So there's no reason why not to unless the size of your camera bag to not get a battery grip. They're just great. One thing to keep in mind with getting one is get one that actually is integrated into the camera, where it can actually use the shutter release without needing extra table. Some of the cheaper ones, you know from Taiwan they need an extra cable because it's really not set up to trigger. You're shudder through the the extra battery handle so I love those, and it does make your camera look like it's 10 times as much money for 50 bucks. Okay, so that that the holster in terms of point and shoot cameras these for what? A proof. I mentioned some of the shots down in Tonga. This is theologian pus, and again, I have no stock in any of these companies. There's no links to Amazon where I'm an affiliate program. We're going to get any kickbacks. But I do love him. And this is the Olympus, the TG Siri's. The TG three just came out there waterproof cameras down to one atmosphere, about 30 feet. Plus, they're just wonderful cameras. Overall, they're just, you know, they're they're built very well. They want great ones to give your kids when you're wanting to send them out because you could drop it. You can throw it, they can get it splashed, they don't have manual settings, and I can't shoot raw so that you have limitations. It has a ton of special filters and effects. One thing I especially like about this is that it has that one centimeter macro, ridiculously great macro, and because it's got a 28 millimeter wide angle as well as I think KP probably goes upto a 1 10 telephoto is You can shoot at one centimeter macro and still get a full, um, wide angle, which would be impossible. This right, this is the equivalency of a 90 telephoto on this macro. So this will give me the, um, the center little portion of a flower. This gets me the center portion of the chefs flower razor sharp and sees the entire flower. I'm inside the flower if you do. If you enjoy macro photography, you need a point shoot camera. You do not just want to rely on your SLR cause you won't. You will not be able to get what I can with this one. Nana. Nana. Um so I love that four point shooting. Speaking of point and shoot, this is a GoPro you all heard about. How many of you have a go pro? None of you have a go pro. You will all had lunch go out by yourself a GoPro because they're really, really fun. Um, this is also what I called the poor man's drone camera. Or quadcopter Because especially with something like this, you are, and you may not be able to get that there, but you're basically can get these wonderful perspectives not only when you're at a concert in your doing crowd scenes, but you're actually getting a completely different view of the world and the fact that this is also a fish I This is a very different way of telling a story. It's also great because if you're shooting, you'll see some of the shots that I'll share. I'll shoot family portrait on the beach of friends and stuff like that, especially kids running on the beach. Um, low tide, wet sand and you basically try and you tell them to grab the camera. I catch the camera. The person who catches the camera gets, you know, a cookie or whatever, and then you run like a bloody idiot and you basically an anti view right down here. And in addition, I mentioned that a of that burst mode of 30 frames a second, which since this also comes with a wireless remote that I usually have taped to the handle Here I can trigger a 32nd full rez burst from down here, which is really cool or oftentimes I'll put it on what's known as their Interval ometer setting, where it will shoot two frames a second for hours. It can shoot 4000 shots on one battery. Hey, at full resolution. So I could just all day long just run like this. And there are kids just going. I mean, it's just wonderful, and you get these shots looking down. Wet sand. Reflection up a kid's glorious. You will never get that shot. Nor will any of your competitors get that shot without something like this. But you're not going to sit in wet sand and look up and take one shot and have the kids in midair jumping. You'll do that for about two seconds, and then you'll get up. So anyway, so it's the GoPro's air. Great for that. Like I said, they also come with a waterproof housing. So in terms of riel, underwater photography or school of photography, they're excellent. But even if you don't this, you'll notice it comes with a bracket that does not have the waterproof housing on it, and that lets you shoot video and get the audio. That's the problem without usually having in housing is that you're going to get muffled audio. I also had on this put on a or bought in addition to that the, um, led screen on the back. So that's one of the challenges with the GoPro is you can't see. There is no built in the reason What shoots for so long is that you can't see it. You turn it on and you can't really frames from the shot. But as you can see here, right with the led back on it, which is just run by the same battery inside, you actually can shoot and composed and change settings and do all sorts of things. So the combination of the, um, LCD back, which isn't expensive and something like this bracket that allows you to use it without the waterproof housing Israel. Nice for most photographers that aren't really interested in underwater. You're just gonna take advantage of it for action photography or met our dish. I photography. So this can actually be your fish. I in your bag, right? You're not gonna carry a fish, I guess. What? You've got a 14 megapixel, um, fisheye in your pocket at all times. Very cool. Okay. That concert with one of these things, you'll notice. So this is sticking out of my butt throughout most of the shoots. Just because I have that in there as a as an option. Um, when we get where you have got a class coming up in Panorama, I've got this one right here. The motor, Galileo, this allows you to shoot time V. Ours automatically. Um, it does 360 degree three, um, three levels of 260 degree panels automatically. So you basically stick this in a room or any environment and get out of the scene, and that could be triggered from another mobile app. Okay, so this is really fun for especially if you're doing any kind of real estate work. You know, not that interview would ever want to make money with your photography. But I can tell you, you know, real estate gigs were pretty nice. You combine this with a fisheye and the fact that you can get full quick time virtual reality scenes through something like this. This is the company is motor m o t R R mot are are. And this is their Galileo, and it basically triggered by another app. So you would actually use this and you can run that and look through it through another app. It's wonderful for Panorama, and we'll talk more about panoramas. Um, when that class comes up, I know one that that's really fun. It's not a lens, but this is Sony. Um uh, Sony. Siri's the cyber shot. This is their ex. Uh, which one is this? There's two of them. This is their X 10. I believe it is. Ah, the DCs Um de x 10 This is a 28 a 10 x 28 24 24 to 2 40 Telephoto lens burst HDR shooting rapid fire that, um, goes on to your mobile phone and uses WiFi to do the capture. So basically, you have a telephoto has a built in sensor. It's again. This is, I think, a 12 18 megapixel sensor. I'm going a little bit too much gear up here to keep track of birth weight at the moment. Um, but you see through the lens through your camera, it automatically grabs it to the built in SD card built into it. Michael Rusty. And it sends it to your device for tweaking and it as an example. If you're in low light, it'll automatically I think, take up to six shots and making HDR from it. It'll also, um, it's just a ridiculously cool camera. They've got a version of this which is called There D X which is almost a C size sensor. A ridiculously large sensor for something like this does the same sort of thing. They were gonna make it because it's the same thing as their cyber shot point and shoot their pocket camera, which is an excellent one that the, um, the D X 100 in their camera version is a wonderful raw shooting pocket camera, the same sense or same glass. I'm like a glass on the, uh, do 100 Siris of this lens. So wonderful optics and the nice thing. Since this is controlled remotely, you can also take this. It's got your little tripod. Think Put this on the end of your stick and you're actually watching it here. Or put this up in the tree for next to the birdhouse. So if you wanted to shoot nature photography, just stick this up in the tree. You're actually watching and controlling it from your app. Here you can zoom in, zoom out and shoot from it Ridiculously fun. They're like, I think the this one right here, which has got a greater telephoto range on it, is like $250. Um, which is great. Okay, you better have some lens babies, Linds. Babies, Basically affordable tilt shift lenses. They've got different ones. This is their composer, which allows you to actually change your f stop on the fly, which is great. That's one of things you haven't been able to do with the lens babies. And then they've got another serious here that has replaceable lenses inside. So you go to plastic, do the little Holger plastic lens. If you're going for that sort of thing, different lenses themselves or again, you can combine it with this one that has the variable. Wouldn't shoot variable f stop on it in a piece of glass on here. This is my Sigma 50 to 500. So this on a C size sensor lets me go out to 7 50 for stabilized lens. It's a nice, great My surfing pictures that you may have noticed were taken with this. So if I'm sitting on beach. It's heavier. Rarely is this with me. But, you know, you gotta have one of these, um, all sorts of reasons. OK, Another thing that I have you'll notice on this camera. I've got a set up for a set of graduated in D Filters. And, uh, nd standing for neutral density is something that you need to have, because as much as we're going to be doing, um, neutral density graduated nd effects and he puts in quotations, effects inside of light room and adobe camera and photo shop the concept here of and I don't know if you can see that right there of having this graduated piece of glass that lets you change the exposure on one scene, one composition, but where you've got the bright light, bright sky, bright sunset and yet a darker foreground. By putting this into our little holder here, which, by the way, this set with all the variables and everything like this. This is a cheap knockoff is $20. Okay. And if you're shooting video, which is very difficult, you don't want a post process, this kind of extensive work. If you're doing any kind of video This sort of set up say is essential. And for no matter what, 20 bucks. But you'll be able to shoot this. And because it is a square holder, you can actually move your horizon line up and down somewhat. So some sort of set up for having a graduated nd filter set. I highly recommend having in even one of these cheap ones, um, for the cost is kind of a no brainer. Back we did a little thing with Panorama. One of these things. This you've got to have one of these an idea what this is. It's an egg timer that you get from my Kia, which I put on some alligator clips, and basically it allows you to shoot a time lapse of a push to a scene. So if you're doing the sunrise, then this is going to do a push through that sunrise, maybe shot over an hour. But then that you're moving from left to right in that scene setting using an app that has basically time lapse or an interval ometer setting on it. It allows you to shoot video. We'll show you samples of that when we get to the Panorama class. Okay, but that is very fun, and you can get commercial ones of that. But this is just a nightie egg timer with Gupte, you know, alligator clips to it. This also does the same thing. The nice thing about this one, the motor Galileo is it will do the same thing. But it will also allow you to do a pan and a sweep up so you can actually program it to go up and follow the sun. So as you're going through as the sun goes up can actually do this. Graduated just a little one degree at a time. Well, it's shooting. This is controlled by app. So it's based upon what app you're using to do that sort of thing. When we get into Panorama, get into that remote control Bluetooth trigger for your IPhone. Have to have one of those just have to You need to have your duck dynasty. Um, commercial light. This is this is only found at the higher in Walmart start stores, but basically it is your cheap led bank of lights for a little fill light. While you're doing a little portrait work, we'll do that. One should So some some samples where you're shooting, maybe backlit or something like that. You don't want to use your flash on your camera? A little bit of fill light on something like this with your shooting macro or portrait can be just enough to throw in that, you know? So you cut down the harshness of the shadows, Okay? And WalMart, of course, is a fantastic photography store. Okay? And because it's Duck Dynasty, it's on sale, okay? And we little things, uh, for keeping all this stuff from breaking the last thing we'll do here. These are no Bowflex in O v o Flex that are just near Prem's little covers that just stick to each other and are great for throwing a 1,000,000 things into a bag. So this is sort of thing where you just wrap do a burrito on whatever you're working with, and, um, they're great also, but if you're if that's too expensive, which are cheap, what you do is you go to the 99 cent store and you get a 99 cent back brace, which is the same bloody thing with Velcro on it. So this is the cent store back brace for wrapping up your devices. I had to throw some of those chief little things in there. Okay. And last, but not least, little things. You saw that little one that I used for handheld this poor, um, shooting. This is a cheap little mono pod with a variable head ball head. Of course, there's nothing cheap here but one. You could use this for extending it, or it's really set up for sticking in the ground and just doing a slight stabilization of panorama because you can obviously just rotate around here. It's just got a regular tripod mount on the top, and it goes down into nothing. So there are also things like that stabilizing and especially if you do, if you get off on Panorama is like me. It does help, though you'll notice when we get to the Panorama portion of the class. I'm all about breaking rules so we'll show you how toe legally shoot panorama is based upon the tried and true methods and how to grip it and rip it panoramas and get away with bloody murder. Basically, the entire class, we're gonna be doing that where we can get away with murder as well as, um, play by the rules. Last but not least, I always usually have a couple talking about natural light. You'll notice that in this entire table here, I have no strokes. Okay? No external struck. I use all natural light. I just No. Okay. I mean, they're useful. I've got onboard flash I used for Phil and other things like that. But usually your local knows I have something like this strapped to my side. And it allows me Teoh, you know, throw a huge amount of light wherever I want it. Yes, I do need to the assistant to usually do that. But both white and gold, they fall down to nothing. And when I'm really, really lazy, then that I can actually throw a spotlight. You know, wherever I wanted to do a little bit of Phil. So one of these things, there's no reason to not have that. That obviously weighs nothing was down to nothing. So those are a couple little bounces in there, and you need a couple of friends, one of these We're gonna be talking about how to unifies that. Unify a series of images by having a same subject in every single shot. This is awfully nice were travel logs and things like that, especially if you have small Children at home. These, as you probably all know, our ox ugly dull box characters. You don't know any way you'll see this with me around Seattle, but I often use feet because they're always with me for subject matters, or things like that are always fun, so that can also be in my camera bag and little battery chargers four. Cause you always run out of batteries. I like this one. This is called my charge, and the nice thing about it is, it has. It's a huge battery. It has a built in set up for a micro USB, and it has a lightning connector for your IPhone, and it has a plug directly into the wall, so it has its own charger. Plus, it has a standard USB, so it basically covers every single base that you could do. It doesn't need any external cables at all. It's all built into one. It is the my charge battery and last not least a USB card reader, because sometimes you need it. USB hub every card reader in the known universe can be including compact flash, and this is the vivid tar Syria's one, and it has they built in micro and regular SD card storage. So it's a USB hub and card reader and card storage. The vivid are serious one all in one card reader USB hub.