Gadgetory

thank you for joining me as I thought but yep that's me ten years ago videos like this we're filmed on a Sony Handycam that actually belonged to my boss at NCI X's son so we're using the cameras onboard audio an entry-level photography light that we borrowed and instead of taking screen capture we just we zoomed in on the screen and yes that is that is actually electrical tape stuck to the front of the screen nowadays we put a lot more technology talent and time into our videos and I like to think that it really shows so thanks to being H photo for sponsoring this video we're will be doing a 10-year challenge not with facebook profile pics but rather with the production quality in our videos that continues to change as our channel ages and I have got to admit I actually got really nostalgic going through all this stuff and I'm not the only one Brandon can I get a holla that's not a holla B&H photo is the largest non chain electronics retailer in the US serving amateur and professional photographers and videographers since 1973 with fair pricing and a fantastic shopping experience both online and in-store B&H has been our go-to gear store for over six years now check them out at the link in the video description or learn more about our experiences with B&H at the end of the video the early days were pretty rough like put this one where we accidentally filmed an entire video without audio and then instead of reshooting it because I didn't have time I just dubbed the voice-over at my desk wow what is that that's the transmitter the infrared transmitter then there's this video that has audio but with unbearable background noise because the camera and its on-board microphone was so close to the computer hardware we were trying to film so there's a few buttons down at the the board you've got your OC Genie it's so funny for me to hear people hearken back to the good old days when Linus tech tips was better back when he was at NCI X I mean can you guys even imagine if I uploaded this video today why does he Vaughn get a probably cut off at the end of the clip that's the actual end of the video like we didn't edit that just now and sadly the quality of Linus tech tips basically didn't change for a solid year LT T's first real hardware purchase was a canon powershot sx1 is which was decidedly consumer-grade but definitely an upgrade over the original sony camera because that one recorded to tape so to ingest our footage we actually had to connect the camera to a PC over firewire or actually a Mac to be more specific and then capture the footage off of it so yes my friends that thing was from the era when faster than real-time footage capture was a feature what a pain-in-the-butt the SX 1 is actually recorded 1080p 30fps video fully digitally 2 SD cards and had a pretty wicked optical zoom but there were actually some ways that it was worse it didn't support any form of external audio so we couldn't even use that stupid gray Twinkie microphone mind you at that point the goal was not great production values online as tech tips which was supposed to be our vlog channel anyway because remember when I worked at NCIX we were actually working on to video series concurrently NCIX tech tips was believe it or not the higher production value one with editing some graphics and a little bit of preparation on my part the problem was that we couldn't make those videos fast enough to meet the demand from all of our partners so as a compromise and it was actually my boss's idea even though it ended up biting him in the butt when I ended up splitting later we created Linus tech tips which was still owned by NCIX at that time and the videos still went on the NCIX website but the company name was no longer in the title of the channel so the idea was to give me a bit more leeway to be edgier and not worry as much about quality which quickly turned into what I called the one take policy where we would just keep recording through stumbles with the goal of shooting as many as six to eight videos in a single session that would last just one to two hours you know what I like I like things that are called special edition you can see there's some more black stickers these are to prevent people from taking it apart never take apart a hard drive thank you for checking out my blog on the WD black and that was really how things were for a long while that is until we upgraded to a well okay looking back it's kind of cute to me that I was so excited about this but to a Canon x8n that I pre-ordered thanks to our increased NCIX tech tips budget back in 2011 actually you know what no in fairness this was a big upgrade because even though it was a fixed lens camera so barely even above a consumer camcorder unlike the old Sony one which used a proprietary interface for external audio sources really limiting our upgrade options the x8n had XLR which meant that we could finally use professional external mics like the Sennheiser II W 110 g3 later that year we would make our first hire Luke who by the way grossly misrepresented his experience in both camera operation and video editing yeah you heard me Luke start with welcome for our guest camera operator who is also interviewing for the tech tips assistant job and we also reached a hundred thousand subscribers this was after three years of videos that quite honestly like I can't even bear to go back and watch now like those of you who have been with us since then you guys are hardcore like just amazing that stuff sucked a year after that in October 2012 we finally got our first piece of real professional caliber gear at $8,000 the sony fs7 hundred would be our companies which hadn't officially started yet most expensive equipment purchased for years to come by the end of 2012 we had moved into the era of Lynas media group being a thing and - using his garage as a studio which actually worked great because we could open the garage door to give us some natural light because we still didn't have enough lights and we rented the whole thing into a state that I mean we thought looked kind of cool and techy including the original tech wiki set which believe it or not was not an actual green-screen but rather real white walls that were supposed to look kind of like I was inside one of those infinite white Apple commercials but actually looked more like I was standing in front of an ugly piece of drywall overall though even in spite of some stumbles this was when our videos began to look like not complete sports garbage for the first time we had two Kino Flo diva lights plus whatever cheapies we could borrow from NCIX when we weren't back there doing contract work we had a lav mic of our own and we had our fs700 still shooting at 1080p equipped with a new shoulder stock and a counterweight that seemed like a great idea for balancing the rig but in reality was just brutally heavy to carry around anytime we'd actually need it like our first year at CES where we made over 50 videos with just three full-time employees speaking of employees this is actually the first video that our fourth employee brandon ever shot look at that it's like the guy was destined for greatness isn't it you got some nice bokeh in the background there and everything I mean not that we paid for the privilege even though we had a decent camera by this point it would be over a year before we bought any extra lenses for it I actually never told Edie or Brandon to bring their personal lenses to work but like they refused to use the KITT one and I refused to buy anymore so everyone's a winner right anyway when we finally bought a couple of Sigma lenses we didn't really get a quality boost because they were the same ones that we had already been borrowing for some time now around the time that Brandon showed up coincidence we also released our first video with dedicated b-roll footage and it's actually frankly kind of amazing that we continued with the concept considering how bad these shots are a nine site I mean I thought at that time then it was just a waste of time I was like well come on you already have the hosts there you've already got the camera there you've already got the product if you want to see it closer just move your butt over closer to the thing and then just like step back when I'm ready to address the camera like what do you need to come back later for but we did and it was around this time that we also made our first PC build guide ever on Linus tech tips this was actually a supposed to be a statement piece for us it was the first time that we were gonna try to meet or even exceed the production values of the NCIX tech tips that we had left behind with my old employer and we spent a lot of time on the intro the graphics the lighting setup and we even tried to get like as much depth to the shot as possible by pulling the table out from the shelves behind me and then positioning Brandon literally cheeks to the wall at the other end of the garage one of the most amazing things about this video to me which ended up doing 50,000 views in the first day which was like a huge deal for us at that time is that I was still doing all of these videos unscripted with at most bullet point notes open on a nearby laptop or scrawled on a nearby piece of paper that changed when we switched sets yet again to the infamous Langley House and Brandon won another battle with me this is where the teleprompter makes its first appearance allowing me to read my notes while looking directly into the lens that is at least once we started shooting our a roll on a tripod because Brandon refused to try to hold the camera with the teleprompter hanging off the front of it what a lightweight oddly enough the kitchen set that we moved over to shortly after that became so beloved by our fans that even though we were only actually in the Langley house for just over a year here we are today years into our current studio and we we'll have people kind of harkening back to the good old days in the kitchen anyway by this point our budget started to increase so we invested more in lighting we bought a cheap piece of green screen cloth that was so thin we had to fold it three times over to prevent light leakage from the window behind even with the blinds closed and we got our first slider that we used to get shots like this one this is also around the time that we made our first purpose-made thumbnail image instead of just using a still from the video and also when we made a pretty significant shift into actually writing full scripts word for word or nearly instead of just doing vlogs so you guys see that eye contact on making with the camera there that's because the video is scripted ultimately we made this move as part of a change in direction towards reviews rather than unboxings and as a way to both improve the information density of our videos and to leverage our larger production team without causing inefficiencies so it was more work for me up front to create the scripts but it made the shoots much easier and less time-consuming because retakes were simple and editing was also faster because there was just less garbage footage for at that time Tarun to sift through in September of 2014 we celebrated 1 million subscribers with our seven member production team and over the following year we built out our kit with fancier things like diffusers which are especially important when you're using a jib which was another new toy that we use for top-down shots like these in 2015 we moved finally to the studio that we're in now in retrospect that seems like so few people to occupy this big of a space we continued to build on our kit with all sorts of random stuff closing out the year with our purchase of two sony a7s twos which became our b-roll and running gun show coverage cameras pushing our pork N and XA cameras to purely channel Superfund duty our IP in 2016 we bought our first big kid lights our to re sky panels which are super bright not to mention RGB something our channel was definitely severely lacking and then we kicked off 27 by getting a bunch of new gear to make our lives easier at shows like CES including our much more reliable Elektra Sonic's wireless mic packs a variety of pods of various sorts and a couple of knockoff easy rigs which we only just replaced like last week with the real deal because they're like $5,000 each honestly though worth every penny because these things have changed our lives and they allowed us to finally achieve my goal of handheld filming with a teleprompter anyway shortly after we got back from CES our new cameras arrived from red which while painful for the bank account and actually for our workflows at the time cuz like 8k footage there was definitely a workstation upgrade in there somewhere they also gave us kind of a sense of relief because at that point we had reached the top there was nowhere else to go with our gear I mean people shoot Hollywood movies on these things and yeah who did I think I was kidding Brandon always wants more stuff so last year after we changed over our set from something more SETI to something that I think feels quite a bit more natural we picked up a DJI Ronin 2 gimbal which allows us to take smooth walking shots like this one and then right before CES 2019 we bought a handful of Canon c2 hundreds to replace our poor a7 s 2s that are both in various states of disrepair and all of these things aside from the fact that we're just geeks and we love new toys to play with are essentially being purchased for the sole purpose of you guys being able to see and hear me in greater and greater definition something that over the past 10 years has surely become less appealing which I guess brings us perfectly into how B and H figures into all of this the vast majority of those purchases have actually been through B and H going all the way back to our original fs700 and even though I've only been to their New York store once on a day that it happened to be closed boy they've been very good to us over the years with fair pricing great customer service we've actually had to return a fear a few things for assortment of reasons excellent delivery time especially after their Canadian shipping got more competitive a few years back and generally great selections so it is no BS for me to say that it was pretty cool to have them reach out to sponsor this video because to me that's yet another indication of just how far we've come going from it's just even six years ago not being able to get an appointment at a trade show to be shown around someone's booth to being taken seriously by the real players in the production space so thanks to being H for sponsoring this video and thanks to you guys for watching if you disliked it well you know what to do but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description probably the newer stuff not the older stuff so much also link down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join