- What is that people, Dunna here.
We are currently in Banff National Park
and today we're gonna do a bit of a special experiment.
Xiaomi reached out to me
and asked me to take their new 11T smartphone
for a test run just to try out the 108 megapixel camera,
maybe some of the cinematic video features
and just generally have some fun with it.
So here's what we're gonna be doing.
Between Banff and Jasper, there's a stretch of highway
known as the Icefields Parkway
and it is world renowned
for being one of the most beautiful places on earth.
There are several iconic viewpoint locations
along the Icefields Parkway,
so today we're gonna try and hit up at least five of them
all in one day.
We'll take in some of those iconic views
and we'll use them to test out this crazy smartphone.
But on top of the new phone
and the Icefields Parkway experiment
that we're gonna be doing today,
Xiaomi Studios and Sundance Collab have teamed up
to put together a smartphone filmmaking course.
Xiaomi Studios is an initiative
that gives young talented creators
a platform to make smartphone films
and Sundance Collab created by the same people
as the Sundance Film Festival is a learning platform
and community for those creators.
So if you're interested in learning more about this,
there's a link down in the description
that you can check out after this video.
Huge thank you to Xiaomi for sponsoring this video.
Now let's get to our first location.
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Our first stop of the day may actually be the most iconic.
It's at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.
Literally steps away from the hotel,
you've got Lake Louise
that backs onto a beautiful mountain scape.
The mountain shape down into this amazing V-shape
and people love to get the rocks in the foreground
with the water in the middle
and then the mountains in the background
and so of course, I had to test out
the 108 megapixel camera here.
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And I also wanted to try out
some of their pro video features
like being able to do your own focus racking.
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As always, Lake Louise was absolutely beautiful.
Unfortunately, it was a little bit busy out there,
so I was trying to get out of people's way
and sometimes it can be a little bit difficult
to keep people out of your shot when it's so busy,
but generally, everyone can find a spot
and get a nice shot anyway.
Let's move on to our second location.
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Our second location for today
is one of my personal favorites and it's Bow Lake
and one of the reasons that I love this place
is it's significantly quieter than a lot of the other spots
that we're gonna be stopping at here.
It's not really a hidden gem,
but it kind of feels like a hidden gem
with how few people are actually here.
When you pull up, there's a beautiful lodge
that unfortunately doesn't look
like it's in service right now,
but when you come out to the kind of beach line
that they've got going on,
there are a bunch of different, really amazing views
that you can look out to see a glacier
or you've got a set of mountains on the other side.
There are a bunch of different really cool views
that you can get.
So I definitely put to use the ultra-wide lens on the 11T.
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It's actually got three lenses.
We've got the main one, then we've got an ultra-wide
and then we've got a telephoto macro lens.
The other thing I wanted to try out
was something that they call magic zoom
and is part of their movie effects
that they've got built into the camera.
Basically you set your subject in the center of the frame
and it automatically does a dolly zoom
as you move away from the subject,
which is a really cool thing to be able to do so smoothly
and with such ease.
It's a bit deceiving because the sun just came out,
but it's actually quite chilly out here,
so I think we're gonna call it quits at Bow Lake
and head to our third destination.
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Well, unfortunately my original third stop
was supposed to be Peyto Lake but it was closed.
You may have seen this before.
It's a beautiful lake
that is shaped somewhat like a wolf head or a dog head.
So instead, our third stop of the day is Waterfowl Lakes.
This view is just a little tiny turnout off of the highway
and it's the epitome of that blue, green color
that so many people think of
when they think of glacier water
and all these glacier lakes.
It's another case of looking right and seeing one thing,
looking left and seeing a whole different thing
and right now I thought I would try and take advantage
of the built-in time-lapse feature on the 11T.
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All right, so this wasn't a stop that I was planning,
but I saw a view that I wanted to see if I could check out.
I think it's called Weeping Wall.
(bell chimes)
Absolutely stunning this thing up here
and because there just happens to be like no clouds
behind it right now,
I thought it would be a cool chance to show you
the sky replacement that you can do right inside the phone.
Check this out.
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Anyway, I just thought that would be cool.
So back to our regularly scheduled programming
and onto the next stop.
(gentle misc)
The next stop on our tour is called Sunwapta Falls
and it is absolutely epic
and super easy to get to which is really nice.
Now, I know I've been using the 11T
for kind of a different purpose at each stop,
but there are so many things built into that phone,
so many cool like effects and features
that there's no way I could test them all.
Some of them, you kind of need another person around
to like hit the button,
really cool like cloning and all that kind of stuff,
but one thing that's really, really exciting
about that phone is that it has super, super fast charging.
It's got 67 watt charging,
so you can charge it from zero to 100% in 36 minutes.
In fact, this morning I charged it basically from dead
all the way to full while I grabbed breakfast.
Anyway, let's go check out Sunwapta Falls.
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Oh boy, it is loud down there.
I forgot how much I liked this place.
Definitely one of my favorites, onto the next one.
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And because you just can't get enough of epic waterfalls,
our next stop is Athabasca Falls
and I know in advance that this one is also very loud,
so I'm doing my talking before I get out there.
This one is pretty close to Jasper.
We're about half an hour away
from the end of the Icefields Parkway
and I mean, just like the last one, it's epic.
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One of the nice things about Athabaska Falls
is that there's a bunch of like walking to do around it.
Sunwapta is pretty much like you go there,
you see what you have to see and then you leave.
This one there's lots of walking around that you can do
and a couple of different places where you can stop
and take photos and that kind of stuff.
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This is definitely my favorite part
of coming at Athabasca Falls.
A little bit further than like where people
are willing to go, it's nice and quiet.
This water is so ridiculously blue
and it's just so beautiful.
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Well, that pretty much does it.
We managed to hit, I think at least five spots
along the Icefields Parkway.
I kind of lost count at some point
and I had to skip so many potential good spots on the way.
So if this is something that you enjoyed
and you want me to do a part two
or maybe I do it one more time
and just pick different spots to show you guys,
leave a comment down below
and let me know if you have a specific spot
you'd like to see in this
or just leave little emojis of the mountain
so that I know you want it.
Again, I want to say a huge thank you to Xiaomi
for sponsoring this video
and for sending out this phone
for me to play with on this interesting experiment.
There are a lot of really cool features for photography
and videography going on in this phone.
What I managed to show you
is really just a snippet of what's going on in here
and like I mentioned before,
if you wanna check out that smartphone filmmaking course
that they're putting on with Sundance,
make sure to check out the link in the description
and on your way down there,
make sure to hit that like and subscribe button.
Hit the bell notification,
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
All right, for those of you who stuck around this far,
at this point, I just finished shooting
the stuff at Bow Lake and I went to review my footage
and for whatever reason, my camera was just saying,
there are no files on this card
and so I freaked out a little bit.
I took it out, I put it back in,
I swapped the battery out, nothing was doing it.
Luckily, I brought my laptop with me on this trip
and I got the footage off of the card and we're okay
'cause I can't, I couldn't, I definitely can't go back
at this point, I'm already running significantly late.
(exhales sharply)
Little panic attack there, fun stuff.
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