(lighthearted electronic music)
- Oh!
Almost.
Cinema Series.
(knife blade snaps)
Oh, it's like a nice easy sticker to open, that's uh-
just use my eyeballs next time.
Ooh.
Sticker.
Instructions.
(paper crinkling)
Fancy lens cloth.
Soft case with
built in lens cloth, oh yeah.
Super soft hard case, like the softest of cases.
Inside you have the money item.
(ambient electronica music)
Check out these tasty quartz lined ND filters.
Delicious look at that, Mm!
ND1000, that's like pure black.
You take this, place it into your hand,
it completely vanishes and then you are-
you're done, you're good to go, you got, you got nothin'.
That's the way I store my filters,
just to you know, save bag space. Ha!
(rhythmic rock music)
(ambient techno music)
♪ You're full of confidence and cheap cologne ♪
♪ You're showing off your moves in hope for attention ♪
- What's up everybody! Peter McKinnon here
and welcome back to, yes! Another two minute Tuesday.
It's so great to have you here,
and to see all of your smiling faces.
Guess what? I'm gonna try and make you a promise today.
I might break it, I might not.
I'm gonna try and stick to two minutes,
and I'm gonna do that by committing right now
by putting two minutes on the clock.
(echoing boom) Let's go!
Okay, so today we're talking about how to make your photos
and your videos more professional,
and you're gonna do that by using filters
in front of your lens.
There are so many different types of filters
that you can screw on to your lenses,
that you can even magnetize to some of your lenses
depending on the mount.
But these are going to give you drastic changes
both when you're shooting photos
and when you're shooting video.
Now we talked about ND filters before
and that'll be the biggest change
that you have when you're shooting videos.
Having nice depth of field in the background
like we have right now, where it's smooth and creamy
and delicious, and it's very blown out.
It's a very shallow depth of field.
That is a very professional look that a lot of people want.
Now when you're outside and it's super bright,
usually when you're shooting at a very wide aperture
and if you don't know what that means,
you can check this video here which is camera basics,
you want to shoot at that wide open aperture
to get that nice, soft, shallow background.
But if you're outside and it's so bright
and you open up that lens to let tons of light in,
well it's already too bright and now you're
letting even more light in, so how is that gonna work?
That's when you put an ND filter over the front of your lens
and the best way to explain it
is like sunglasses for your camera,
everyone uses that analogy for a very specific reason.
So check this out. Let's say we're outside right now.
This shot that you're looking at,
that's how I want it exposed.
We're at 1.4, that lens is wide open,
nothing's shallow, it doesn't look good.
You'll see as I just move this piece of glass,
this ND filter in front of the lens,
look how much better that looks!
Now we have that professional look outside
despite how bright it is.
(clicks keyboard)
I just realized I didn't actually tell you the reason
you need an ND outside for video while I'm editing this.
So really quick, a little caveat
so that this all makes sense,
is when you're shooting video,
you want to maintain your shutter angle.
Meaning you want to shoot video, double your frame rate
so that it looks the smoothest when it comes to motion blur.
If you're not shooting double your frame rate,
the motion blur isn't natural,
so it feels jittery and it just looks weird,
and people watching your videos and your films
will just think, "This looks a bit choppy" or "interesting"
and that's because your shutter speed
is not matched to your frame rate.
So if we're shooting at 24 frames a second,
and we're shooting video on a DSLR,
we're gonna move our shutter speed to 1/50th of a second
and you always want to keep it there.
You can compensate for the brightness outside
by cranking that shutter up to you know, 1/250th
and it would look fine on your screen,
but then that motion blur won't look good.
So you have to keep that shutter speed at 1/50th.
But herein lies the problem,
that the footage is just too bright,
it just doesn't look good,
which is why you slide the ND filter over the lens
which basically exposes everything properly.
Another reason why cinema cameras are so expensive
because they have built in ND filters,
they don't even need anything over them.
I'm shooting on one right now, for example,
where's the button, where is it?
Look at this, all I have to do is press this button
and it adds and de-filters at different stops
right over my footage.
It's incredible!
Anyways, I figured I would just kind of throw that in there
because the video doesn't really make sense without it.
Moving on.
So that look is going to make your films,
your projects if you're working for somebody,
yourself, for a corporation, anything,
it's gonna make your projects, your work, more professional.
That's using an ND.
Now we're gonna talking about something called a polarizer.
If you've never heard of it,
it's also a filter that screws on the front of your lens,
but what this is going to do is bring out more
of the blues in the sky.
So it's gonna punch those colors,
it's gonna extract that nice saturation
from these very vibrant scenes
that may not otherwise be picked up
from your camera as vibrant as you see them.
A good example of this is when I went
to the Bahamas a couple years ago.
I made sure to shoot all my tropical photos
with a polarizer on because it made those blues
way darker and richer blue, it really pulls that out.
Another good thing is using these polarizers
on your done shot, because your drone footage
is gonna look even better and more colorful
when you have a polarizer on.
But my favorite use for a polarizer,
because they're also known
to cut reflections out of windows,
is if you're doing a time-lapse from a hotel window
and you have that reflection in the background
of your actual room that you're staying in,
you want to get rid of that, you throw a polarizer on,
it's gonna cut right through the glass and look amazing.
And then it also doubles as giving you that refection.
You'll notice a lot of Hollywood directors and DPs
use polarizers to get the reflection out of a car window
when you see someone driving in a really cinematic scene.
Half their face is perfectly exposed
and the other half might be all the trees passing
on the road that they're driving in,
and that is one of my absolute favorite
types of shooting styles when I see that in a movie.
It's super cinematic, it looks incredible,
and you're gonna get that with the polarizer.
I'm pretty sure that was already two minutes,
so I apologize.
I mean no, I'm not sorry!
We're crushing good content right here.
All right, next up is something called the Black Pro-Mist.
Now you might be like, "What is that, Pete?"
"What does that even mean?"
Now let's be honest, when you see big, blown-out
highlights in your camera footage
when you're shooting with your DSLR or whatever,
it doesn't always look that nice,
but a Pro-Mist filter is gonna kind bloom those highlights,
it's gonna make everything look a lot more
soft and glowy and dream-like.
This is a Pro-Mist, it just looks like a UV filter,
but if you were to hold that in front
of the camera right now, you might even notice
around my ears or around my face,
it's just a little more soft and cinematic.
Now I'm not threading this on because I'm literally
just holding it to the lens, hey.
But if I move it away, I think you'll probably
see the difference, especially when you're outside.
So again, if you replay that footage,
you just skip back like ten seconds,
you'll notice when that Pro-Mist was on,
my skin looks a lot softer,
so does that neon sign in the background,
opposed to the harshness of those highlights
without a Pro-Mist.
Ooh! (snaps fingers) Just lovin' this! Lovin' this topic!
Okay lastly, you can throw a UV filter on your lens.
Now you've probably heard of that,
those are the most common, the most popular.
Usually when you buy a new lens, you throw a UV on it.
I can't say with like absolute certainty
that I even see much of a difference with a UV haze filter.
The reason I do like them though is because
if you're spending a lot of your hard earned money
on a lens, that's gonna protect the front element.
So if you drop it, if something hits it,
if water gets on it, anything like that, a knife.
Maybe you're shooting the thumbnail for
8 Camera Hacks in 90 Seconds.
You just have that filter on the front
to make sure it's protecting your investment.
So that's why I like them.
And the last pro tip is something called the step up ring
that looks like this, there's no glass on it.
That may have blown your mind right there,
it blew mine originally.
But what it is, is a filter that filters on-
(ring clinks on floor) Argh! We're good.
It's a fashion-
(ring clinks on floor) Seriously, Peter?
It's a fashion accessory you can, you could like,
Jennifer Lopez hoops right there, we're not gonna-
Let's get back on topic!
So what the step up ring or step down ring does
is you screw and your thread your filter on to it,
and then this is gonna allow you
to thread this on to your camera.
Not having to buy this same Pro-mist or polarizer
or ND size for every lens that you own, right?
'Cause some lenses are 82, some lenses are 77.
You've got so many different diameters of lenses
that like, you don't want to have to buy the same ND filter
for every single diameter lens that you have.
That's why you get something like a step up
or a step down ring and then you can
just screw your existing filters on to it
and fit your lenses without having to break the bank.
So I'm gonna list all of this stuff
in the description below.
If you want to check all of those links out,
ka-boom! below.
And I should say, I just replaced all of my filters.
Everything, my UVs, my polarizers,
my NDs with PolarPro's new lineup.
They are friends of mine and they just came out
with all the their filters that we know for drones,
'cause we all love those.
They've got them for like the Phantom,
the Mavic, all that stuff.
They just brought out a whole new quartz line
for DSLRs, which is incredible.
And they come with like everything!
This is the only company I've ever seen
to include a soft case, a hard case,
a built in lens cloth in the soft case,
the great quality filters that you are seeing
in my hands that I am using right now.
So again, I've linked all that stuff below as well.
And this is a little bit of what that packaging looks like.
You get a lens cloth, a soft case with it,
and a hard case that the filter comes in,
but I take it out of this hard case, peace!
It's really nice, by the way and it's also labeled
so you know which filter you have.
But I threw it in this soft case
'cause it's very slim, nice profile.
Velcros shut. Also has the model of the filter
that you're using on the top left corner
so if you have then stacked you can
just kind of go through them like records
and figure out which one's yours.
And then when you open it up,
it's just nice and soft inside.
But my favorite part is the fact that they actually have
a built in lens cloth inside this nice soft packaging
so you can clean your filter off right before you put it on,
or you can wrap it in the cloth and then actually place
that in the bag so when you go to grab it,
you're already grabbing the cloth and not just
putting your fingers, your dirty little meat hooks
all over your super nice, clean NDs.
Boom! That's what I call thinkin' through a product design!
All right guys, so that is it for today,
that is your two minute Tuesday.
That was probably more than two minutes.
I hope you guys got something out of that.
Again, all of the links are listed below.
These are tools that are pretty inexpensive
that are gonna make a massive difference
in your, both your photography and your video.
These filters aren't only just for video purposes,
like if you want to do long exposures of water,
or time-lapses, or traffic driving by,
an ND is gonna help you with that as well.
So these are really cheap for the most part
applications that are gonna get you
really not cheap results.
That's why I wanted to share this with you guys today.
I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you get something out of it.
If you have questions, list them below,
let's start that conversation, and until next time,
hit that like button if you like this video,
smash it if that's something that you're into.
Subscribe if you aren't already,
And, and! Mm! I will see you in the next video for-
I'm not gonna give it away, you guys know that. Peace!
(imitates whoosh)
(smooth R&B style instrumental )