My first youtube video

This photo is available on my print shop here

Hello friends,

Today I have something quite exciting to share. I finally got to make my first youtube video!

I was invited to climb the mountain peaks of Son La, Vietnam for 3 days. And while this might just be the greatest physical challenge ever to an out of shape fat-ass like me, I shot some probably some of my most favorite photos ever in this trip. And I’m very happy to be able to capture some footage and make a video for this.

It’s nothing fancy really (translate: it’s pretty f*cking terrible), but I hope you like it 🙂. The channel is below. Video should be out when this newsletter comes out, if there are no unforeseen problems 🤷.

Aaaaand, here are some of my “shower thoughts” I guess, about everything that happened.

1. Fujifilm 400 imported from Japan

I guess I teased this film stock on the last post, but here we are.

This film stock is one of the main “thing” in my video.

I got some of this brand new, mythical, organic, home grown in Japan film stock from the darkest of the dark webs: Facebook marketplace. I’ve heard about Fujifilm started manufacturing this a while ago, but now I can finally see it with my own eyes.

And damn, does it deliver on the “Fuji greens”. None of that made in USA Kodak bullshit

Aaaand… this is like… 90% Classic Negative. Yes, the film simulations in your digital Fuji cameras. Is that sacrilegious to say?

Damn, this digital cameras company made some damn good film stocks. Who knew?

Does this give me some regrets about selling my Fujifilm camera? Juuust a little bit, maybe. Well, it doesn’t have the texture and “feel” of a film photo, which is my main drawn to film for me. But I’d be lying if I say Fujifilm don’t have some damn good color profiles 🙂 .

Maybe someday I’ll get back into digital with a gfx50r. I do like that a lot. I wish Fuji would just make a full frame camera though, so I can just adapt my FD lenses and get the same focal characteristics. But that probably will never happen 🤣

2. Filmmaking is hard, man

• I need to hold the camera for longer than I think I need… most of these shots ended way too quickly. Having more coverage turned out to be quite important in the editing room.

• Maybe I’m gonna record some voiceover next time anyways. When I get over the fact that no one cares about my stupid voice except myself.

• When I was younger I got very self-conscious about this, but now I guess I’ve realized life’s too short to not pursue your dreams with everything you’ve got 🙂 .

• What we fear the most is usually what we needed to do, I guess.

• There are more things I want to say, and having subtitles and texts just kinda feels cumbersome often times.

• I wanted to record some for this video too, but I already finished editing it, and putting voiceover in would mean taking the whole video apart and rebuilding it from scratch. I just decided to say f*ck it, I like it enough as is right now, and I needed to move on to the next thing.

• I already spent like a week editing this one, figuring out my workflow, color grade and all. Good things is I think I figured most things out. But now I’m just itching to go out and shoot again. To not dwell on the past.

3. Why I replaced the DJI Pocket 3 with a Sony ZV-1 for my pocket, one camera fillmmaking setup

I brought the Pocket 3 on this trip to record some videos here and there. It’s the first “serious rodeo” for this camera, and… I’m trading it back for the zv-1.

The Pocket 3 is a fine tool, really. It’s just not the right tool for me for the style of video that I want to make.

There are just too many little things that irks me and stands between the way. Here are the reasons I replaced it.

Reason 1: Fixed aperture

I really underestimated how annoying this would be. I want that “correct” shutter angle, which means the shutter speed is mostly fixed at 1/50s unless for other artistic reasons.

The DJI has fixed aperture, and with fixed shutter speed, all you have left is ISO and ND filters to adjust exposure.

And that means probably introducing a bunch of noise unnecessarily into the footage… aaand changing ND filters often.

And damn those are annoying to swap. I don’t even have that large hands. They are also fingerprint magnets. And they made me uncomfortable, holding onto the gimbal part to take one out.

The Sony ZV-1 has variable aperture and a built in ND. Which means I can just let it ride Shutter speed priority and be done with it, turning on ND if I ever want shallower depth of field (which I don’t care of, most of the time).

Reason 2: Too cumbersome

With the Pocket 3, everytime I want to take a shot, I have to take it out of the case, maybe swap ND filters, turn on, record, turn off, and then put back into the case.

And while that doesn’t sound like much, it adds up. It feels like I’m always spending like 1-2 minutes fiddling with the camera just to get a 10 seconds shot.

Doing it with a main SLR camera in my neck and another pocket film camera doesn’t help.

With the Sony ZV-1, I can just flip the screen out and it’s ready to go. It doesn’t need a case, so I don’t have to take it out of a case. And again, variable apertures eliminates the annoying ass magnet filters fiddling.

Reason 3: I overestimated the gimbal features, and underestimated having zoom.

The DJI captures very smooth footage, no doubt. There’s a lot of things you can do with it that I’m not even scratching the surface…

Thing is, I… don’t care about most of those things. The crazy camera movements. The subject tracking, etc. I don’t really like filming myself in the vloggy way. My favorite part of this thing is… I can hold it still and pretend it’s on a tripod 🤷.

And underrated is zooming. I thought the “lossless” digitial zoom on the DJI would be good enough. But in the end and the quality does take quite a hit when you get to those higher ISO.

Having different focal lengths for filmmaking is essential I think. More focal lengths = more variety. And variety is the spice of life and all.

In the end, it’s still kinda sucks to give up that stabilization. The DJI is way more “shiny and cool”, which is the reason I picked it over the ZV-1 in the first place, as my choice of one camera do it all for filmmaking.

Buuut the ZV-1 has the ol fundamentals.

And in the end, like photography, I think the fundamentals of filmmaking is finding good compositions and tell stories from what you put in the frame anyways.

More often than not, I think the crazy gimbal shots, without meaning to it, they are just… fluff.

Btw, I think these 2 cameras would actually compliment each other very well for a portable filmmaking setup, but filmmaking is never the priority for me anyways. I’m not gonna juggle even more gear for it.

So… that’s all for now. I don’t even know what is this post anymore. Just me vomiting thoughts I guess. Thanks for enduring this with me 😏

Until next time,
Peter

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