(slow drum beat)
(mellow guitar playing)
- I pinched my pennies, I saved my allowance,
I Scrooged my McDucks, and I sold one of my kidneys,
and I was able to make what I'm considering
a fairly substantial upgrade to my camera kit.
And I thought it would be fun if we talked about it.
(slow techno music)
What is up people, Dunna here,
and today we're gonna talk about these things
that you see on the table before you.
But, if you don't already know what they are,
take a guess down in the comments below.
I'd love to see what you think I picked up.
Now upgrading your camera gear
can be kind of a nerveracking process,
and it's not to be taken lightly, necessarily.
Unless you just have, like, unlimited money.
But camera gear, as most people find out
the further they get into it, is really expensive.
And there's so much of it out there.
And a lot of it is really good.
So how do you make a choice what you're going to get next,
or what you're going to get first?
And I thought it would be kinda cool
to talk about why I made the choices that I did.
As you can see on the table, I made three choices.
I got a new camera, I got a new lens,
and I got a new tripod.
Let's begin with the tripod.
As far as a tripod, what I typically am looking for
is something that I can carry around with me every day.
I throw it in the side of my backpack,
and it comes with me everywhere,
even if I don't use it, which is like 80% of the time,
it's always there just in case.
For the last six or seven months,
I've been carrying around the Vanguard VEO 265AB,
which is an aluminum travel tripod.
And it does a pretty good job,
but there were a couple of things about it
that I wasn't a huge fan of,
and the straw that broke the camel's back
is that the ball head started to wiggle a little bit,
and no matter how much I would tighten down
that top plate, it was still wiggling,
so it was time to look into a new tripod.
Now I reached out on Twitter,
and you guys were really helpful in making my decision.
And a good handful of people told me
to look into 3 Legged Thing.
Now what we can see here is the 3 Legged Thing Punks Brian.
Now it's a very similar concept
to kind of any travel tripod, but it's got
a couple of things that I'm really excited about.
First and foremost, with my Vanguard tripod,
I always ran into the issue that it was only
59 inches tall at its maximum height.
Personally, I'm six foot one, so that's 73 inches.
So if the camera is only up 59 inches,
I'm always having to point it upwards
when I'm filming myself.
The 3 Legged Thing Brian goes up to 75 inches.
So if I really wanted to, I could actually get shots
looking down at me, without having to
like put it up on a table or anything.
It's got twist locks, which I actually kind of prefer.
I know there's a lotta debate about that on the internet,
but whatever, I like the twist locks, they're not bad.
And these ones feel really good.
It's carbon fiber, so it's super light.
It's only 16 inches when it's folded up like this,
so it fits on the side of my backpack really nicely.
It comes with Slik ball head,
and it comes with this cool little tool
that, unfortunately, when I opened the box,
the tool was actually broken,
so they're sending me a replacement right now,
but I'm not too worried about that.
It was just kind of a little extra.
And they're replacing it, so, no big deal.
Now, this is the most money
that I've ever spent on a tripod,
so I was definitely a little bit nervous about it.
It's funny how those important things,
sometimes you don't necessarily wanna spend all the money,
so up until now, I've always kind of bought
either cheap tripods, or ones that I found
that were on a really good sale, or something like that.
So this guy, full price, it was like $400 Canadian,
so it's not a cheap tripod, necessarily.
I'm excited to use this.
I'll keep you guys posted on how it's working out.
If you have any questions, make sure to lemme know.
Also, lemme know what tripod you're using,
if you have a good travel tripod suggestion.
I guess I have a return policy, so,
maybe if you guys have a better suggestion,
I could switch it around.
The next piece in my upgrades was
the Sony ZEISS F4 16 to 35 lens.
Now this one was a little bit difficult for me,
because I already have that range covered.
I have a Sigma 16 millimeter F1.4 that I really love,
and then I have my 18 to 105 F4,
that's kind of my all around lens.
But I wanted to get something that had
a bit of a shorter zoom range,
so that I could make quick adjustments,
and were just kind of to cover my wide angles.
Being that it's a Sony ZEISS lens,
we've got that nice Sony ZEISS quality.
It's super sharp, I'm really loving it so far.
If you caught my video about the FeiyuTech AK4500 Gimbal,
I was using this lens to shoot that entire video
on my a6500 and a6400, and I really love how it turned out.
Even though it's an F4 lens,
it still did a really great job.
And if you put enough light, I'm not too worried about it.
Now some of you might be thinking,
"Dunna, this is a full-frame lens.
"Why wouldn't you get something like the 10 to 18
"to cover your super-wide, or why wouldn't you get
"the 18 to 35 Sigma with an adaptor?"
The reason is because I knew that it was probably inevitable
that I would eventually go full-frame,
and I wanted something that would work
on both my APS-C system and on my full-frame system,
once I eventually got it.
A little while ago, I did a live stream
when Sony announced the a6100 and a6600,
talking about my thoughts about those cameras.
And in that video, I explained that I had been
kind of waiting for that announcement
to decide whether I was going to go up to full-frame,
or whether I was going to wait for
whatever Sony put out next in APS-C.
And, as I'm sure that you can tell by this point,
I've made that decision.
It didn't take me long after getting the full-frame lens
to get a full-frame camera, and this is the a7 III.
Now I'm pretty sure this camera
is about a year old, at this point,
and it took me that much time, basically,
to make my decision on it, watching all sorts of reviews
and making sure that I was making the right choice.
Because, I am really happy with the quality
that comes out of my APS-C cameras.
I'm currently shooting on the a6400 here,
and the a6500 there.
And they produce fantastic quality!
There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
There're just a few advantages
that come with going full-frame.
And if Sony was to put out the camera
that would've knocked both the a6400 and a6500
out of the water, I might have stayed full APS-C.
But they made some upgrades that are very exciting,
and we're gonna talk a little bit more about that later.
But it wasn't the thing that made me go that direction.
So why did I choose to get the a7 III?
There are a couple of reasons.
But first, I need some coffee.
It's not part of my camera kit, but I really like it.
First and foremost, I thought it was time
for an upgrade to my a6500.
I'd been really, really loving the a6400 that I have now,
but the a6500, as much as it's a great camera and stuff,
doesn't have some of the same features,
and it's weird hopping between cameras
if they don't necessarily have the same features.
For example, the a6400 has the HLG profiles,
but the 6500 does not.
So, I try not to shoot in HLG
because I know I won't be able to exactly match the footage.
With the a7 III, it has those HLG profiles,
so now I can match HLG to HLG
if I'm using two cameras on a setup.
Right now, I'm shooting cine2 because
both the 6400 and the 6500 have that.
I know it doesn't have a flip screen like the a6400 does,
but it's got a lot of the same features.
It's got similar autofocus features.
It doesn't have the screen dimming
like there is in the a6500.
And so, I think it's just gonna match up
a lot better with my experience on the a6400.
That's the squad now: a6400, a7 III.
Now another reason for getting the a7 III instead of,
let's say, waiting for the a6600 is because of this lens.
I went with a full-frame lens, and I got the F4 version.
Some of you may have wondered
why I got the F4 instead of getting the G Master F2.8.
I shoot F4 and F2.8 a lot on my APS-C cameras.
And because the look changes between APS-C and full-frame,
I knew that by getting the F4 lens,
I get to keep a similar look to what I'm used to,
but I get it at a significantly cheaper price.
'Cause that G Master is, it's pricey.
Beautiful, but pricey.
Also with full-frame, I can go a lot wider.
It's a little bit tough to find good wide glass for APS-C.
There's the 10 to 18, and that's about it.
So by getting the 16 to 35
and then getting the full-frame camera,
now I can go way wider,
which I'm very excited to experiment with.
I don't personally like it too much for vlogging,
but we'll see.
In fact, I already filmed something,
as soon as I got this camera, in my studio,
which is a fairly tight space,
and it worked out really well.
Another reason that I went to the a7 III
instead of keeping with APS-C,
is because of the low light performance.
On the newer cameras, in the APS-C line,
they didn't really improve the sensor at all.
So I was hoping maybe they had some crazy new technology
that would basically make it better in the low light,
or something like that.
But they didn't, so full-frame made sense
because I do end up shooting in a lotta low light situations
in my studio and in other places,
and it's just so handy to be able to crank up the ISO
and not have to worry as much about noise
or degradation of the quality.
And finally, the thing that really really pushed me
over the edge, is I really wanted
to get the full-frame look.
It does have a different look,
like I was talking about before with the F4 lenses.
Immediately, I can see the difference.
And I'm very excited to be able to play with that,
and to be able to choose when I want that,
and when I want the APS-C look, when I wanna crop in.
So these were all the things going through my head
when I decided to upgrade my kit.
I made three significant upgrades,
and then a couple of little things,
like, for example, I got the L bracket
to go along with this, and I got a couple extra batteries
to go along with the camera.
'Cause when you buy a new camera,
you don't just buy a new camera.
You need all those little accessories
and things that you're used to.
And so, of course, it cost a little bit more
than just the camera.
But as always, I wanna hear from you.
What do you think of the upgrades that I made?
And also, if you could upgrade your kit,
what would you get?
Lemme know in the comments below.
I'll leave links to all of this stuff,
everything that I've purchased.
All my gear links are kinda always down there,
but I'll leave this stuff kinda closer to the top,
so you can check it out.
So chances are, next time you see me,
I'll be filming a little bit more with this.
Thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you next time.
(beatboxing)
Hey there, Mr. Lens.
Hey, a7 III.
(kissing noises)
I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
(upbeat music)