Gadgetory

what's going on guys you're watching Jays two cents and many of you been asking for more information about the camera setup that I use or have recently built for my channel to get some of the epic cinematic stuff that you see every now and then so I figured today I'd go ahead and give you guys a little tech attic look and what it is I use here on my channel now if you follow me on Twitter and why the hell wouldn't you be following me on Twitter the link is down below you would have already seen some sneak peeks of this camera rig especially as I've been building it over the last couple of months the most common thing you guys said was this looks like that turret on the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars you know when they're doing that thing it is kind of fun to sit here and you know aim this thing around and have some fun with it but let's go ahead and get down to business when I was a kid I was the kind of guy that was always making movies I made my own indie films I made my own sets I took you know praat I made my own props and stuff and I was the kind of guy who never wanted to be in front of the camera which is why this whole YouTube thing is kind of weird I would much rather be the guy that's behind the scenes that's working the camera director photography or director of actors because this is where I'm comfortable I'm comfortable back here so I had to build a rig that I felt was comfortable for me having a nice rig gives you confidence to make your videos and stuff but it's definitely not necessary for right off the bat anyone that's gonna say that this is overkill for doing YouTube absolutely however this rig was designed for being able to do mobile interviews it's gonna be going to CES it's gonna be helping me do more cinematic indie type films in the future probably for the vlog channels they may not be tech related now we've got a rig where I can do that so let's go ahead and take a look at some of the parts at the heart of this rig we have my Canon t2i which might actually surprise some of you guys considering the fact that this camera is so old however it has all the functions that I need it's got the same sensor as the 60d in there which is a fairly decent low light sensor it's not great when it comes to low light which is really its drawback but it gets the job done it's got 1080p 24 P it's got 30 P it's got 720p at 60 frames per second so I can do that nice move slow motion stuff like you saw on the 20k subscribers video where the whole video was done in slow motion film it at 60 P slowed it down that's what you get now when it comes to the frame that everything is mounted to on here this is an SP productions shoulder rig and it's a basic model because I knew I was gonna be building up on top of this so I didn't really want to pay for a lot of parts that I wasn't gonna use but what I liked about it is that it was under 300 bucks and it came with the follow focus now the follow focus on this isn't perfect but it has all the features that I need so it's got the stops that you can dial in there it's got the you know the whiteboard material if you will where you can put marks on there so you can control your focus and it hooks directly up to the lens so you can see that so when you turn this it is adjusting the lens focus on the camera which is absolutely you know it's perfect it's it's nice and smooth I have no complaints about whatsoever i mounted up perfectly the shoulder pad here this is you know obviously a shoulder rig so we'll go ahead and demonstrate that real quick this is designed to be able to go onto your shoulder so when you're doing running and gunning or you're doing it it's actually referred to as running gun believe it or not so when you're doing running and gunning and you're recording out in the field you know you have a nice a nice comfortable pad on here and it is fully adjustable right now it's it's adjusted so that the cameras farther out but you can move it in so it's closer to your body and I do need to add a counterweight to the back of this because it is still a bit front heavy the rig isn't a hundred percent complete but it's about 90% complete mental have any complaints about it but yeah if you wanted to move the shoulder pad forward for comfort just loosen these knobs right here just slide it forward where you want it to go lock it down and you're all set but I'm gonna be adding a counterweight back here about four extra pounds that way it's got a little bit more rear weight to it so your arms aren't as tired when you're holding that now when it comes to running and gunning as I mentioned here I do have the Nexus 7 tablet connected to my rig here through this home-brewed 11 inch articulating arm with this you know cheap eBay in case and then a ARCA Swiss cheese plates that everything is mounted to nice and sturdy it's not going anywhere and the cool part is with this articulating arm is I can move this around literally in any position I want it so if I had the camera down low and because the tqi doesn't have the articulating flip screen like the t3i inure do I can just move that to wherever I want it the cool part about this too is that I can flip it around so that it faces me that way when I'm filming myself I am perfectly in focus see we flipped it around and now I have a front-facing monitor on there and when I turn on the camera the software that's built into the DSLR controller app immediately turns on you'll see it turns it on there this and now you can see there's me oh so now we have a front-facing camera and everything is hunky-dory it was a lot cheaper to go with a tablet for this than it was to go with an actual 7 inch HD field monitor because the Nexus 7 was only 229 bucks and a HD field monitor that 7 inches costs over $800 so you do the math on that 229 Plus about 50 bucks with all of the stuff here to make it mount versus $800 yeah that's pretty much a no-brainer now on the front here which is the part that most people you know that catches their attention that has that real professional look is my pro a matte box and a lot of people ask what a matte box does obviously you have these shields on here that you can use to block the Sun they're made of metal and they are adjustable so you can swing them in and out if this needs to be up higher you can raise the side of this and get you know all the Sun flares and blooms off of your lens I also like that they are removable just with some thumb screws so that if you're doing indoor recording and you don't need these two you know obviously I don't need them indoors you just take them off which makes the camera rig just a little bit less bulky definitely needed though if you're gonna be doing outdoor stuff now not only is this block the Sun but it also allows me to install filters on here so that if I want to get a custom effects or look I just simply install glass filters that are designed for these particular frames they slide right into the montt to the matte box and you just lock them down and then you can get you know a more customized cinematic look or you can even just block out more sunlight if you have if it's a really bright day and you don't want to change your camera settings to block out the Sun because you there's a particular look that you're going for you can simply do it with these big filters right here so that's the purpose of the matte box now on the top here I've got my cowboy studios 160 LED light for when you're doing you know dark room you know interviews and stuff this is pretty much only gonna be it is dimmable as you can see here it is pretty much only gonna be used for CES I just have it on here because I don't have anyplace else really did to mount it and then I've got my zoom h4n which has the Don King hairdo sportin a little donking hair which blocks all the wind noise if you're outside that outputs directly into the camera it has XLR inputs in the back so when I'm doing my interviews at CES it's gonna be bringing the audio straight in to the camera and then it's got an audio output right here that the cameraman can be listening with headphones monitoring all the audio telling us if there's any problems now when it comes to the tripod I am using an FM 18 fluid head as you can see it's very smooth it is adjustable on how tight it is so I can tighten it up and it gets a much more tight movement which is good for if you're doing pans and stuff and then you know you've got this lever here which you can turn and then you get you know your up-and-down movements and stuff so then you get full customizable movement of your tripod and then it else it is also a quick release you just flip this knob and then push this button on the side and as you saw earlier you can slide the camera right off and what I like about this tripod is it also has a safety on there when you pull it back you'll hear it click hear it click now if you forget to to mount that knob and you go to tilt the thing forward if you didn't have that safety lock in there your camera would just fall off the front of the tripod and break but as you can see it's it's not going off cuz it hits that lock so this tripod was about 180 bucks it's not too expensive when it comes to videography video ography head tripod heads it is a lower-end fluid tripod but for me it gets the job done and then on the top here i forgot to mention everything is just mounted to the hot shoot here with a steel bracket I'm not too happy with that I don't want that much weight on my hot shoe so I might change that where I get another arm and I mount the the zoom over here on this side and when it comes to software my t2 I if you know anything about cannons is using magic lantern magic lantern is a custom firmware on here that allows me to just control all sorts of really neat stuff when it comes to the camera so guys that's pretty much it there's nothing else really to talk about here you guys are gonna see this camera used a lot more in the future I'm gonna be doing some more feature films with this and who knows maybe even one day I'll start filming weddings or something I don't know and we do interviews or something for hire make this camera work for me but we are gonna be using this at CES and it's definitely a lot of fun putting this together it is certainly not needed for YouTube video guys it is by far overkill when it comes to YouTube but because I am me because I am a DP or a director of photography deep down inside when it comes to videography this is my passion so I wanted something that I could have fun with outside of YouTube as well and and there's some videos I have in mind that I want to make with this that are gonna be very cool I hope you guys will check them out so as always I appreciate you watching this video I love you effect I love the fact I love each and every one of you for supporting this channel over twenty three thousand subscribers strong and yes I just dated this video by saying that but it's important to say that your guys's support is what keeps me going in all of this look down in the description we've got some links down there to my blog channel to the Facebook page to the to the Twitter go and check out those pages if you want to interact more with me those are better places to get hold of me than YouTube because there's just so many damn comments that come through my channel on a daily basis so I'm gonna get on out of here I'm gonna go and I'm gonna make some sort of really cool video or something you know I don't I don't know maybe I'll just walk around town with this thing on my shoulder and look like a complete and utter idiot