(serene electronic music)
(sighs)
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I just got a notification in the mail that something arrived
that I need to make this video make sense,
so I'm gonna go pick it up, and I figured,
"Why not take the old ATV and make it a little more fun?"
So let's go do that.
Okay, also, this episode
is about investing in good camera equipment and gear
and one of my favorite things ever.
Is it really dark in here?
Is that better?
Yeah, that's way better, way better.
Also, side note, I don't just keep a couch in my garage
to talk to you guys on. That would be super weird.
I'm giving this to my in-laws,
and I just have yet to actually
put it in the back of my truck
'cause it's a whole thing, and I don't want to do it,
but this has nothing to do with this episode.
Let's move on.
Now some of you may think this is overkill
to just go get the mail,
but I live in Canada, and it is super, super cold outside.
It's also very windy. Safety first.
You know, the funny thing I haven't told you guys
is the mailbox is like two streets over. (laughs)
You know what? Now that I think about it,
I'm gonna put a GoPro on this as well
and just make it even more exciting.
(engine revving)
Ah, it's too risky.
I want to go down this hill,
but there's a fence at the bottom
that you can barely just see.
The mud is really soft. Abort mission.
Here's the issue I was having.
As you can see from the GoPro footage,
I was trying to get down the fence several blocks over
'cause I wanted to mob that whole area
where they're building houses, construction,
lots of mud, lots of fun, essentially,
but the issue I was running into was the mud itself.
Because the mud was so soft,
I was sinking in it at a pretty fast rate,
and it means if I'm sinking in it that fast,
chances are a 600-pound ATV would sink even faster.
I think the funniest piece of information
comes when I got home,
and my wife told me that the package was actually delivered
while I was out riding the ATV,
so I guess this entire sequence was useless,
but (chuckles) we had a good time,
so I guess moving on to that package.
(upbeat ambient music)
(exhales)
So as you can see,
we are using the new lens
on the desk tutorial kind of stationary set-up
that I have plugged into my C200
with my Rode mic and the boom
and the shotgun and all the lights,
and everything is looking extra crispy,
so super pumped on that.
Second note, I'm sick,
so if you can hear my voice,
it sounds all deeper than normal.
that's because it is because I'm under the weather.
Fluids, I hear, are the key.
Let's just go back and say,
"Equipment's expensive. Buying lenses is super expensive."
If you're just starting out in photography,
if you're just starting out in vlogging or making videos,
or you want to start making YouTube videos,
when you look at the price of a lens,
the first thing you think to yourself is,
"Wow, never mind. Forget this. I can't afford that stuff,"
and here's the thing.
This was one of the first L-Series lenses that I bought.
It's the 24mm 1.4L.
This lens, when I bought it, I worked at a camera shop,
and even with my discount,
I think it was still upwards of like $2,800,
and that was after I got my discounts,
and I think I rolled that,
so they took it out of my paycheck every two weeks.
It was the only way I could afford it,
and this is the same lens, fast-forward nine years later.
I've had this lens for nine years.
It has scratches on it.
I had to break a filter off it,
smash the glass and pull it off with pliers.
I had to file down the edge so it wasn't sharp,
and then I painted it in with a Sharpie.
The whole rubber ring is gone.
There's nicks and dings and dents in it.
The rubber seal on the back end,
it's not weather-sealed anymore,
so you couldn't even use this with a pro body
and be fully guaranteed
that no water or dust or anything would get in.
Optically, autofocus,
all of those features, perfectly sound.
I've dropped this. It's been kicked.
It's been hit by bullet casings.
It's been in the ocean in Hawaii.
It almost got run over by a Formula One car.
It's been to nearly every single continent on the planet,
survived extreme heat and extreme cold.
Now there are a few things, obviously.
The weather seal is a big deal for me.
I'm always in situations where I need to make sure
my gear is sealed and protected.
And the other thing is the rubber ring here.
I really miss the rubber ring.
You don't realize how nice it is
to zoom and focus with rubber here.
Yeah, it's completely gone.
So when I asked the guys at Canon
if they could fix this and tweak it up,
they were like, "You're probably better off at this point
"to just get a new one," so I did.
I'm officially retiring, after nine years, my 24mm lens.
All right, now the other thing I love about the 24 mil
is it's a prime lens.
That means it's a fixed focal length.
It doesn't go any wider. It doesn't zoom in.
It is just 24mm, and that, prime lenses, are usually sharper
than lenses that actually zoom in and out,
so little fun fact for you there.
- [Drive-Through Employee] Hi. What can I get you?
- Hey, can I get a large coffee?
So obviously, a sharper image is going to be much more ideal
if you're doing photographs and if you're doing video,
that sort of thing.
Now a lens like the 24 mil has a surprisingly accurate
and very close minimum focusing distance.
Is there cream in this? Did they put cream?
No. They put cream in this.
Aw, fight through it!
But what that means for a minimum focusing distance
is that you can get objects really close to the lens,
and it's still gonna be able to pull focus
out of those objects even being so close,
which is only typically doable
with something like a macro lens,
so that really broadens the horizons,
the possibilities, with one single lens
when you have a minimum focusing distance,
that minimum? Yeah.
Yeah, I'm down with that.
Oh, also, I realized that that looked like a Tim Hortons ad
with how I had the cup. It wasn't.
Tim Hortons is not good coffee. (laughs)
Lastly, let's talk about the price of that lens.
Back when I bought it, it used to be like $3,000,
but the price since then has significantly dropped.
I think now it's like $1,500 US,
and that's not bad for a lens like this.
Break that down over what? 12 months?
That's 1,500 divided by 12. It's about $125 a month.
Take $125, and you divide that over what?
I've had it for nine years.
That's like $1 a day for nine years?
I mean (chuckles) yeah,
now it sounds like a UNICEF commercial,
but if we're honestly talking about this,
and you think about all the jobs I've done,
all the places lens has gone with me
and all the people it's photographed,
all the money it's made me from weddings
and all these different things I've done
through the past nine years.
Basically, this lens pays me to own it.
That made sense. You get what I mean.
But real quick, I want to show you a little comparison
of the difference between a 2.8, or an F4,
versus a 1.4, which is what this lens is,
which is why everything looks so deliciously tasty,
just slow-cooked perfection
when you shoot with something so wide open.
All right, here we go.
Okay, we're gonna start at 2.8,
50th of a second for the shutter speed,
which means you're gonna get the most natural
cinematic looking motion blur.
2.8, ISO 200.
Let's focus in on this handlebar.
Notice the stuff in the background.
Let's go up to 320 ISO.
I'll do that on the screen so you can see.
Everything's nice and blurry, right?
Now if we drop that to 1.4,
you can see how much brighter it got
because all that light just got let in,
so we're gonna compensate for that
by bringing that ISO back down to like, I don't know,
160, it looks good, and we'll focus on this handlebar,
but now look how much blurrier everything is
in that background.
It's so much smoother, and everything is way more isolated,
and to be honest,
a lot of people use shallow depth of field,
which is what this lens does for you very well.
They use it to tell stories, right?
That's why you see in movies when it rack focuses
from one person's face to another person's face
during a conversation.
The director, the cinematographer,
the people behind the camera are trying to tell you.
They're trying to direct your attention
to where it needs to be on screen.
So this person's in focus. Everything else is nice
and blurred and crushed into the background,
and then (whooshes) it racks to this person
'cause that's where they want you to focus now
on what that person's saying.
So you can use depth of field to tell a story,
so when you're buying a lens,
that's something to think about.
So yeah, if you're interested,
I'll leave the link below, and you can check it out.
Highly, highly recommended.
Also, the entire intro B-roll
that I did at the beginning of this video
was done with the 24.
You guys also saw it in the tutorial.
So I've tried to give you
like three different scenarios of using this lens,
both B-roll, studio style, and then, like, vlog
like what we're doing right now,
so you can see it's pretty versatile.
Also wanted to mention,
happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and fans.
If you guys didn't know, I put my presets 50% off.
The link is also in the description, and it's on the banner.
If you want to check that out
and edit your photos using those Lightroom presets
or edit your videos using my LUTs,
those are 50% off right now,
so it's like $10, super cheap.
I love you guys. I hope you liked this video.
If you did, hit that Like button.
Subscribe if you aren't already,
and I'll see you guys in the next video.
(ambient electronic music)
P.S., cut that outro sequence.
We have some special edition holiday versions
of the classic PM hat,
so if you want to check those out,
link is also in the description.
Hey, see you guys.