- Hey, my name is Matt Johnson, and welcome to California,
specifically Northern California,
in a place that is difficult for me to pronounce,
Graeagle, Graeagle, Graeagle?
Today I want to walk you through
my destination wedding gear.
This is the gear that I bring to any wedding
that I have to fly to travel to.
If I can drive to it, I'm probably bringing all the gear,
there's no need to stress,
but if I am traveling to a wedding where I need to fly
suddenly there are a lot more logistics
that I have to figure out,
like how much to carry, how much can I fit into my bag,
what's the weight limit, things like that.
So, today I want to walk you through my relatively
compact destination wedding gear kit.
I'm calling it compact, is this?
This feels compact to me,
but I'm also not like a super minimalist filmmaker, either.
So yeah, we'll just jump into it.
First off, I want to draw your attention
to one of the most game-changing things
that I ever bought for destination weddings,
and this is something that really separates
a normal wedding from a destination wedding for me.
And that would be,
Manfrotto Befree tripods.
Not sponsored, none of this is sponsored by the way.
This is just stuff that I love and use.
So man, man, man bun frotto.
Manfrotto is amazing, because look at this,
it's a whole tripod, but it's so compact.
It's so great.
It's like this tall, super light,
cram two of them into a checked bag very easily.
I love this so much.
So, two of these come along with us
to every destination wedding,
and then we have our ceremony tripods.
Likewise, I also wanted to go
with a more compact light stand.
So, back to Manfrotto again,
these are the 5001B light stands,
super compact, incredibly lightweight,
and then they unscrew,
full-size light stand.
Absolutely love it.
So I bring two of these along for two lights,
and okay, before this wedding I asked Rachel,
do we need to bring the big light?
Can we just bring some small lights?
And she's like,
"No, considering how big the reception is gonna be,
you want the big light."
And I said, okay, we'll bring the big light.
So, oh, we gotta crawl over here, big bed.
Aperture 60X.
This is the case that it comes in.
It's well-padded and it doesn't add a ton of weight,
so I figured, just bring the whole thing.
Toss this in here.
Whole light is ready to go.
Goes up on the light stand.
These light stands are sturdy enough to handle it,
which is great.
Put up on the side of the dance floor.
It's gonna look awesome.
Other light is hidden here somewhere.
Little Core SWX TorchLED
with a little battery.
Pop that on, woo.
Absolutely love it. It's great.
Really nice for lighting toasts,
or details, or anything like that.
Super compact and bi-color too, big, big fan.
Now, that's it for sorta the lighting and tripods.
We also have one monopod for Rachel here.
Just a standard Manfrotto tripod.
We've tried using more compact ones
that didn't have the feet,
but the feet are so nice, so we're still using it.
I've had this monopod for a decade now,
still going strong over a decade.
Love it.
What else do we got?
If we're talking other support gear here,
let's talk gimbals.
This is a new gimbal,
the WEEBILL-2 that Zhiyun sent to me,
and I said, perfect opportunity.
Small, compact gimbal, we have a destination wedding.
The jury is still out on how I feel about this, though.
I haven't shot a wedding with it yet.
That's going to happen in a couple of days.
So, so far I'm pretty impressed by it,
and especially in terms of the size,
pretty good for a destination wedding,
able to throw it into a suitcase
and carry it across the country, so definitely nice.
But if you looked over here, you might've noticed,
wait a second, what's this, and this over here?
Is that, is that more gimbals?
Okay, yes.
This is the Zhiyun Crane 2,
this is the Zhiyun Crane 2S.
Matt, why did you bring three gimbals
with you across the country?
This is a weird situation.
This is a do as I say, not as I do moment, okay.
Because I'm a big fan of having backups,
and so even though I have this new gimbal,
I don't really trust it, I haven't fully used it yet.
So I wanted to bring a gimbal along that I knew and trusted,
in that case it was the Crane 2.
I've used it for years, still going strong, still love it.
So having this gimbal as a backup worked well.
But why is there a third gimbal then?
Well, that's because we're filming this wedding
and we brought along a behind the scenes shooter, Noah,
who's holding the camera right now to film this.
So I needed (laughs) did you just wave?
I love it.
I needed a gimbal for him to use as well.
So I said, you don't have to bring your gimbal,
I'll bring you a gimbal also.
So we got,
we have three gimbals.
Yeah, I know. It's completely ridiculous.
Next cool thing I have to tell you about,
because telling you all the cool stuff here at the start,
I am so very excited about this.
We brought four cameras to this wedding.
You're like Matt, four cameras, come on,
this is a destination wedding, what's wrong with you?
Well, three A7S IIIs,
one for me, one for Rachel, one for Noah,
gotta have something for the BTS shooter, so,
we could probably get by with just two.
I would still bring three cameras regardless,
just in case one of them breaks.
We're out here in the mountains of California,
the nearest Best Buy is several hours away.
It would be rough.
So I have an A7S III here,
Rachel has another one here,
and the third one Noah's holding to film with.
But I said there was four cameras,
what's the fourth camera Matt?
Well, super, super excited about this.
So late last year, and with the pandemic
it's been a while since we've been able to film a wedding.
So I purchased this little guy,
a Super 8 camera.
Check that out.
(mimics electronic noises)
Like that? Ahh.
Love it. Love it, love it, love it.
This is the 514 XL.
It's fantastic little Super 8 camera.
Super point and shoot.
You literally put the film in it,
look through it, hold down the trigger, it starts recording.
Ah, I have already shot some test footage with this,
taken off, had it processed, and I love how it looks.
It's just so cool.
It's a little baby, and it's all retro, and oh my gosh.
So I brought along four reels of Super 8 film,
which equals about 12 minutes of recording time,
and we're gonna be shooting
a lot of Super 8 at this wedding.
So four rolls of film here.
A little tip for you if you're ever traveling
with Super 8 film, or any film for that matter,
never send it through the X-ray machine at the airport.
In this case, I kept it in a separate bag,
I pulled out the bag from my main bag,
said, "Hey, this is film, can you hand check it?"
They'll take it over to a little machine,
they'll check it for gunpowder or bomb residue
or whatever they do, and they'll let you go along.
I brought some 50 D and some 500 T.
50 D is for daylight, super bright like this,
500 T is for more indoor night shots, things like that.
I don't know, I don't really know about night,
Super 8's not the best of in low light,
but 500 T is gonna be much more helpful,
especially we're filming some interiors.
So super, super excited about that.
Man, Super 8.
Bringing it back, baby, bringing it back.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.
What else we got in here?
We have the Mavic 2 Pro,
and I was very careful
whenever I purchased this drone
to make sure I got a case that would be good
for bringing along on destination weddings.
So instead of just the standard strap bag
that it comes with, I want something a little more padded,
so this is a little individual hard case for it,
which I really like.
And I also have a hard case for the remote here.
Not bad size-wise, easy to pack into a carry on bag
as well as lots and lots of batteries.
I brought three of them for this wedding,
so they're all kind of crammed in here into various parts,
wherever I could.
That's all the main stuff from this bag.
We have like ND filters,
ND filters for the drone.
Let's talk lenses now.
So what do we got here?
First of all, we brought it along,
even though it's big and beefy,
the Sony 7200 F4.
I call it big and beefy.
but it's actually really pretty compact and small,
which is great.
For a 7200 lens,
this is one of the smaller ones that you can get.
I love the size. I love the weight.
I love that it's still optically stabilized.
And honestly, an F4 with the A7S III,
it's good enough in low light, I'm never hurting.
This lens is really probably only gonna come out
for the ceremony,
but because it's a larger 200 person wedding,
we wanna make sure we can get enough throw,
so this should do a good job of that.
What else we got in here?
There's more lenses buried underneath all the batteries.
Have a lot of batteries.
This is the Canon 50 millimeter.
Rachel loves shooting with this thing,
so we brought it along.
This is the...
(Matt grunts)
This is the ZEISS Contax 85 millimeter
that Rachel also loves shooting with.
F/1.4, great in low light,
love this for dancing footage,
and also for rooms that are a little bit tighter.
It's nice to be able to get a tight shot
without it being too tight.
Then we got Rachel's big lens, her favorite, her baby.
This is the Sony 135 millimeter f/1.8 GM
Absolutely gorgeous, beautiful lens.
It's just so, mmh, mmh, so good.
Rachel loves it, I love it, it's fantastic.
This lens is the reason
that you're not gonna be seeing the 7200 much.
7200's just for the ceremony,
but you have to bring it for that.
Now, what else do we got?
Wait, there's more lenses over here.
So this is my ZEISS Contax 50 millimeter lens.
This is kind of a backup lens,
I bring it along just in case I need it.
And you're probably thinking,
Matt, why are you bringing along backup lenses?
Well, that's because I've got this lens
on my camera right now.
I borrowed this from Sony.
This is the Sony 50 millimeter f/1.2 GM lens.
It's new. It's beautiful.
I'm very impressed by it.
I've barely use it so far, but wow.
Wow, wow, wow.
The little bit I filmed with it looks amazing.
This is probably what I'm gonna be shooting
the majority of the wedding on,
but in the event that I ended up hating it,
or it breaks, or something like that, et cetera, et cetera,
I have this other 50 millimeter just because
I shoot on 50 so much, it made sense to bring it along.
Lastly, of course, my favorite lens ever,
the Sony 24 millimeter f/1.4 GM.
It's beautiful. It's tiny.
It's great in low light.
My go-to gimbal lens. Absolutely love it.
Zero complaints there.
What else we got? We got on-camera microphones.
This is the Shure on-camera mic,
and then we also have the RODE VideoMic Pro Plus
that's on Noah's camera that he's shooting with right now.
(woman mumbles)
Let's talk audio now.
Audio is arguably one of the most
important parts of any wedding,
so definitely important that we cover audio here.
First off,
we've got the old trusty, still going after a decade,
Zoom H4n.
Love this thing.
Great auto leveling,
gonna plug this into the DJ soundboard
and it's gonna sound great.
What am I gonna use to plug it in though?
We've got cables.
We have RCA, we have XLR, we have quarter inch,
and we've got different flavors
that mix and match between them.
So whatever the DJ has, I should be able to plug into that.
We've got a thigh strap for the bride
to wear a microphone as well.
I've got stashed in here in various cubbies
four TASCAM DR-10Ls.
Technically I'm wearing one right now,
and I'll probably be wearing one for the BTS,
so I got three for everybody else.
One for the officiant, one for the bride, one for the groom.
And then we also have, where is it?
It's somewhere around here.
Ah!
We have this case that has more recorders in it.
So this is my little on-microphone recorder
that I will use for the reception.
I can take this recorder and then I can use my mic sleeve
to put it onto the microphone
and record pristine backup audio.
In addition,
because this is a three-day long wedding extravaganza
and they have a lot of things planned,
I believe for the rehearsal dinner
there is supposed to be an audio system, but we're not sure.
So in the event that there's not an audio system,
I brought along a backup microphone and recorder.
In this case, this is the Electro Voice RE50/B,
and a TASCAM DR-10X audio recorder.
Simply plug it into the bottom of your microphone.
Ta-da, you now have a standalone,
awesome sounding microphone system.
So this is really, really great for toasts and reception,
and rehearsal dinners, love it.
Otherwise, that's about it for audio.
Let's talk about these two bags that I have here as well.
First off, these are both Think Tank branded bags,
and I absolutely love them.
I bought Think Tank for years, they're just fantastic.
In this case, it looks super nondescript.
You don't want something that screams camera gear.
It's not a Pelican.
I used to travel with a Pelican case,
but I found that it added a ton of weight with the plastic,
and while I like that it had the extra support,
because I was carrying it on,
I didn't really need the extra safety and protection
that that sort of bag offered.
So instead, I opted to go with the Think Tank,
and this is the, I think it's on the bottom.
(grunts) I opted to go
with the Think Tank Airport International V3.0,
and this is made to go in as a carry on,
on both domestic and international flights.
So if you're traveling internationally,
I absolutely love this case, it's fantastic.
It looks like a normal piece of luggage,
which is what you want,
you don't want something that screams camera bag,
and it's really, really great.
Likewise, I have the Think Tank Retrospective,
and this is the 60 Classic, so very nondescript.
Is this a laptop case?
Is this just somebody's just generic briefcase?
Who would wanna steal that, right?
Just kidding. It's full of camera gear.
Absolutely love it.
It has three slots.
You can put a ton of lenses in here, a ton of cameras.
It expands, it's got room for a tablet or a laptop.
It's super roomy. I absolutely love it.
And a little bonus for you here,
this counts as a personal item.
So here is my carry on bag, and here's my personal item
that still fits under the seat of the airplane.
You can wedge it under there, and it'll fit,
and nobody's ever complained.
So it's a fantastic personal item.
Also, we have Rachel's lens bag as well.
This thing is super lightweight,
so it's easy to throw into a checked bag
and just take it along with us.
This is gonna be great for Rachel whenever she's shooting,
so that way she can have her lenses
that she needs to carry around.
The last thing,
probably wondering what this cardboard box is over here.
Hompow Portable LED Projector.
What is this thing? It's exactly what it looks like.
It's a tiny little LED projector.
Like I said, this wedding,
we wanna do some cool, fun, unique stuff.
And so just like we bought the Super 8 camera,
which honestly I'm planning on using
for a lot more weddings in the future than just this one,
we also invested in this LED projector.
And what's great is that it was $59.
It's not some mega expensive projector.
It was, I think it was regularly 68,
and they're like, you can have it for 59.
And I was like, take my money, this is great.
Thank you, Amazon.
Great benefit of this LED projector
is we wanna do some really cool stuff
when filming the couple.
We want to take some old footage that we have of them
from whenever they were dating,
and we want to project it onto a wall
and we wanna have them standing in front of it
with it projected onto them.
It's weird, it's abstract,
but I think it's gonna look really, really cool.
So a lot of creativity,
a lot of weird stuff that we're trying out,
a lot of fun stuff.
I hope I covered everything here.
I'm sure there's a few little things.
There's a lot of batteries,
there's some things that are like random backups for things.
If you're wondering where the prism is,
I opted not not to bring the prism this time,
instead I went with one of these Setapak,
and this is this little split diopter,
and you hold it up and it's like, whoa, look at that,
so, little, little blurry,
little, little difference there in the shot.
So this is really cool.
It's nice because you can just slip in a pocket,
pull it out, hold it, film with it.
I used it at one other wedding and really liked it,
so it's come along with me to this wedding too.
With that, that's what we brought to the wedding.
Tell me in the comments here. Am I crazy?
Is this too much stuff? Is this not enough stuff?
Am I insane?
Regardless, I definitely think
if you are filming destination weddings
and you've not invested in compact travel tripods,
compact travel light stands,
compact suitcases and cases that look like luggage
and not like camera gear,
if you can do that, you're doing pretty good.
Hey, I wanna thank you so much
for watching this destination wedding gear breakdown.
I have a lot more videos planned from this wedding,
so if you would like to see them,
it would be a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video and subscribing
if you wanna see more videos like it in the future.
Also, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker,
which you probably are,
'cause this is literally a gear breakdown
about wedding film gear,
you probably want to book more couples
and film more weddings,
and I would love to help you out with that.
So, I have created a free guide
that's gonna walk you through some practical steps
that you can take right now in your business
to book more couples and film more weddings.
It's a completely free gift to you.
You can download it at the link
down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching, and have a great day.
(gentle upbeat music)