Travel Videography: What Gear You'll Need!

1. Introduction- Travel Videography Gear: Hi, I'm [inaudible]. I'm Kristen Siya. We've both been full-time content creators for nearly a decade and we're here to share our insider tips and tricks with you, so you too can earn a living traveling the world and creating content that inspires. In this class, you'll learn about to gear your favorite travel creators are using to make viral videos. Not only do we dive into the camera kit essentials, but we also elaborate on camera settings in a way even your grandma could understand. After taking this class, you'll have an idea of what gear you'll need to build your ultimate child walking kit. This is also part 3 in a five-part series of classes we have on travel blogging, which you can do individually or you can complete as the whole. The information in this course can also be applied to other genres as well. But since we're both in travel, that'll be our focus. Let's get started. 2. Camera Bodies: Hey, guys. Welcome to our gear guide. We're going to be talking about the camera equipment we use, and why we use it, what we use it for. There's a lot of equipment out there, but we chose these items for a reason. We're going to be going over camera bodies, lenses, we got GoPros, we got stabilizers, we got audio, and we got drones. There's a lot of different gear here. It's taken us several years to build up these kits, so don't feel overwhelmed because there's so much stuff, because all you need when you're just starting out is a single camera. That's all you need, a point shoot or even just your phone. Just your phone, really. You can capture video on any of these devices and then build up your kits as you develop your filmmaking capabilities. There's also an entire bag of accessory that we're going to be going through as well. Main cameras, this is probably the one that you are going to start out with because it's your main camera. Picking your filmmaking device takes a lot of time and a lot of personal preference. Now, there are essentially fiveish types of cameras that you're going to be looking at when choosing your main camera. This is a DSLR camera. It is, I want to say an older technology. It was the technology that first came about. It is the bigger, bulkier cameras. This is the 70D, I used to film a lot on this. This was my first big camera that I started on and it was a great camera for that. Why did you change, Nadine? Well, in last few years, mirrorless technology has exploded and it's gotten cheaper, it's gotten better. It is in my opinion better than DSLRs for multiple reasons. One, it's lighter; two, it's thinner and smaller, great for travel. Third, it is mechanically simpler because it doesn't have this mirrored shutter, that's why it's called mirrorless. Both of us shoot on Sony's, but there are obviously many other mirrorless cameras out there. We just find that this has the best features for what we want to achieve. We love the looks, we love the customization it provides us with. Going back to the mirrored versus mirrorless, you can have silent shooting with it, which is again, really nice when you're filming on location. All of these things make mirrorless just a much more attractive travel cameras. It's why we recommended the most to you guys because we also use them ourselves. Now, we're going to the point-and-shoot, and the cell phone. Point-and-shoot, first of all, is great for vlogging. The Sony is awesome because it has a flip screen, which is really nice. If you have something in your teeth, you at least know about it before you start filming. You can throw this in your purse, you can throw it in your pocket. It's got great quality. Sometimes when I'm filming with the RX100, this is RX100 Mark V and we both have the VA as well. I can't tell the difference between the footage that comes from this point-and-shoot and our mirrorless camera. It's that great quality coming from this little tiny device. You can shoot 4K with it. It's great and it's also much more rugged. It's got great stabilization. It's got really good built-in audio. Really love this camera. It's a good all around single-use camera. To get you vlogging, this Sony RX100 series is the top of the line for the small sized, great vlogging, no extra lenses or anything involved. The Canon G7 X series, I believe is the other also very comparable to Sony. Both of those are used all the time by vloggers. They are always highly recommended and we highly recommend both those cameras to you. When I film on this Canon more like the 70D, I use the G7 X a lot more because it's matching. It's a lot nicer if you're using two different cameras to stick within the same family of cameras or the same brand at least. Then there's just your phone. If that's all you have right now, don't think it's any less than everything else up here because you can do so much with your phone that's just probably in your pocket right now. Nadine and I have both films big branded campaigns, people that are paying us money to make a video with just our phone, and it looks awesome, especially these days. If you're just starting out, don't feel you need to get these big cameras right away, if it's not right quite within your budget. Practice your filmmaking skills on your phone. Practice your vlogging on your phone. You can do it all just on your phone and then move up as you feel comfortable through each of the different lines, point-and-shoot, and then choose between your mirrorless or DSLR Camera. Don't be intimidated by all this. Master what you have. If that's just your phone, master it until you become better than it, and then upgrade. Then the fifth one that you don't see here is action cameras, which we will go into detail a little bit later on. Then there's also lots of reviews online for specific cameras. There's new cameras coming out all of the time. We cannot possibly keep up with all of the new cameras, which is awesome and exciting. If there's a specific camera that you're hearing about or you're interested in, check out YouTube and check out the reviews. There's dedicated reviews for each camera you could possibly want, and they'll break down the specifics of that one, and then you can decide if that's the one that's right for you. 3. Camera Lenses: Lenses, these are the lenses that we use. Take it away, Nedie. First off, there's two main types of lenses that you're going to use. There is your prime lenses, which are fixed length, which means when you put it on the camera, that is the length that you get. Then there are zoom lens, which can zoom in by twisting the lens on the camera or zoom back up. All these lenses are either a zoom or prime lens and their are pros to cons of using each. The benefits of using a prime lens is that they are cheaper and they're more compact, but you only get the one length. Whereas zoom lenses give you more flexibility in a single lens because you get a wider range of focal lengths. Of looks, yeah. This one is yours Nedie, and this is a 18,2.8. Yes. This is a beautiful wide angle that is perfect for a variety of different shots. We use this for interior shots because it really makes a room feel a lot bigger. You can capture all of the different angles of the room. It's also really, really great for landscapes because you get that wide sweeping motion. I also like to use it on the crane because it's really, really good for movement. When you have a wider angle, you get more of the edges so it just flows a lot nicer. If you're ever vlogging with the big camera, you put a wide-angle on there and you get to see more of yourself. Good establishing shots. Yeah. It's less in your face. Good also for room tours too. yeah. In all kinds of interiors or boats. Yeah. A good wide-angle, I feel this is like a staple for travel. Totally. Oh my God, it changed the whole game for me when I got a wide angle. Yeah. this was my first lens not this one specifically was the first lens I started with, that one was the first lens I started out with. This isn't even a Sony lens, but you can get adapters so that you can put these lenses that are not Sony lenses onto a Sony camera. There's a lot of different lens types out there that you can mix and match between different bodies. This is the 11-16 millimeter and then it is an F/2.8. Yeah. Again, good for wide. This was a really nice cheap lens. It just gives you more variety. This one is a prime, so it is stuck at 18 focal length, whereas this one gives you a range. It goes between 11-16. Different cases, different uses. Just again so you know, when you have it at 11, you're going to see more in the shot than when it's at a 16. With this lens you're going to actually see more than you would with this 18 fixed lens. This one here is the Sony 16-35 millimeter and it's an F/4. This was the lens that changed it for us, in terms of getting establishing shots, getting those wide landscape shots. Really great for time lapses too, especially if you're getting a time-lapse of the sky. It really looks amazing getting to see so many more stars using a lens like this. I absolutely love it. Yeah. This one is slightly less of a F stop, so you're not going to get as much light into the lens, so it's not as good for low light scenarios like these two wider lenses are that go to F/ 2.8. Because the lower the F-stop is, the more light, so it's better for darker scenarios. I was actually just saying, talking about the sky getting a time-lapse, it did change it for us because this was our first wide lens, but this one here, the 18 out of 2.8, that's going to be even better for a nighttime videography or photography. This is not a Sony lens but again, you can attach it to a Sony lens using an adapter. This is an 18-35, so same look. This is like a beauty lens. If you want to know how to get that buttery look. [OVERLAPPING] Blurred background and just focuses on beautiful Nedie. It's definitely a look and these Sigma art series are really good for that specific look. I use that like on the Canon camera, I used to film with that all the time because it was just gorgeous. But if I want to film landscapes, this is not really a good lens for landscapes. No. Then this one here, this is also one of my favorites. This one is the 85 millimeter 1.8 again, sexy. It's going to give the exact same field Nedie is talking about if you want that shallow depth of the field and really great for portrait photography or videography, getting details. I love doing a landscape shot using my wide angle lens and then going to the 85, it's a nice variety to go back and forth with the two. It doesn't give you any the distortion, that's why if you are doing a lot of portraits or if you're doing a lot of face shots of other people interviews, you want to aim toward that 50, 85, 35, depending on your camera range because it doesn't distort it. Wide angles do give you a bit of distortion. On the side you'll see. Whereas the higher you go up, the less distortion you're going to get. We've got a 24-70, you're going to be able to zoom in a lot closer to your subject but you also have the 24, so it creates somewhat of a wider shot as well. This one's great for vlogging. If you're vlogging on your mirrorless, you're going to want to keep it at 24 so you can see more than just a close-up of your nose. But if you want to turn it around and get a close-up shot of something, then you'd switch it on to the 70. This is a great kit lens to have because you can get wide shot and then a close-up shot just using one lens. Yeah. All-around lens. This is our main all-around lens that we film the majority of our stuff on right now because it is just so versatile. It's very diverse. There's such a big range of things you could capture. Yeah. Then we have another. This is a Canon lens. This is probably the L series. It is a 24-105. This is a very big zoom lens. If I pull it all the way out, actually it's not that big, but it's a heavy lens too, which is something you need to consider as well if you were traveling with your gear. Also, just talking about traveling with your lenses, we don't bring all of our lenses on every single trip, but it's good to have something like the 24-70 with us. Then having an 85, then we're pretty much set and maybe the wide angle as well. Then the beast. This is the safari lens or also known as the creeper lens because you can zoom in so far. It's a 100-400 and it is a 4.5-5.6. This is great if you're going on a safari in Africa and you really want to get beautiful video or photos of the animals, this is going to get that for you. We'll leave more detailed description of all the different lenses that we currently use and have used down below. Hopefully this gives you an idea of the range of lenses, but if you're just starting out, I'd say something along the lines of the 24-70. Again, it's great because you get that more wider looking feel and then a zoom in. That's where it start and then you go from there if you want to get a different look for your videos. But it's definitely an investment and something that takes time to accumulate as well. In general, when it comes to lenses, when you are considering which ones to fill out for your kit, it's just looking at the different focal lengths and what you want from it. It's like Christine was saying, pick a good kit lens and then you can go wider if you want something wide. If you want those wide angles that are usually between 10,16,18, anywhere in the middle is great for all the rest of travel and then 100 plus, is really your zoom levels. Then when it comes to F-stops, the lower it is, the more bokeh the background, but the more expensive the lens typically tends to be. It's better in low light too. It's better in low light as well, but that's why you pay for it versus the higher F-stop, it's just going to be the relatively cheaper or more affordable lenses. 4. Audio: Audio is one of the most important parts but most overlooked part of video making when you are starting out. But as a viewer, when you are watching a video, if it has poor audio quality versus not as crisp visual video, then you're more likely going to click off that video. It's important whether you're filming on location, getting the audio and location, or doing a voice-over and post to have that crisp, clean audio. Point-and-shoot cameras are one of the beginner cameras that a lot of you guys will be starting out on. Now, the downfall when it comes to audio with point and shoot cameras is they don't have an external mic input, meaning that all of the audio is created on the board mics. The downside to this is that when you are in loud spaces, it's not actually loud here, but if it was loud, you would hear everything because the onboard mics are omnidirectional, meaning they cover all around you. It gets quite loud if you're trying to talk to the camera in a crowded space. One of the tips that we like to do when this happens is trying just find a little corner to sneak behind and then you can get a little bit more clear audio. Another downfall of point-and-shoot cameras is that if it is windy, you get that wind noise. If you look at these fuzzy little higher bats. It looks like eyebrows. That look like eyebrows on the top, this is one of our solutions for that. They are makeshift wind muscle so you can buy on eBay or Amazon. They just velcro on like that. Kristen, you attach these on yourself and we have our own attached on via stickers. They're great. It really does help when you're in a windy environment. Most of the time the audio that comes from these cameras are pretty decent, but if you want higher quality audio, well. When using cameras that have external mic inputs, it gives you more options for better audio quality, because then you can take an external mic and attach it. As you can see here, we have three or four. Four. We have two of the same different mics. These are all directional mics, meaning that whatever way that mic is pointing, that is where you're going to pick up the sound from. Whereas an omnidirectional as [inaudible] was saying, it gets the sound from all the way around. If you're doing things like interviews or vlogging, for example, in crowded spaces, a directional mic is a way to go because it's going to pick up the sound for where it's pointing out. It's going to be pointed at you, it's going to get your talking bits nice and clear. Yeah, really, really good for crowded spaces. Concerts, festivals. Concerts, festivals, yeah, this is what the majority of vloggers use. Is one of the directional mics that you see below here. Now if you look, there's also something very fuzzy and extra on these mics. It's not just for decoration. No. No, it is called a mic muff or a dead cat, there's other weird names for it. But basically what it does is it blocks out wind, so if you're in windy environments, this will help block out that noise, so you're not getting any weird distortion and you're going to still get nice crisp for the most part audio. You pretty much will require that if you are going to be doing any outdoor filming as a travel blogger and it's even a slight breeze, there are good investments. When you are recording audio, one of the big things that you need to pay attention to is your audio levels and the decimal bar. On every camera, you are going to see a decimal bar and it's going to tell you when you talk where the lines go across and where you were falling in, or what decimal level you are falling in. On that bar, ideally, you want your audio level to fall at the negative 12-decibel range, and you don't want it to go any higher than the zero range because that means you'll be peaking and it's a lot harder to bring down peaked audio than it is to bring up quiet audio. Yeah, because you're going to start hearing that distortion and you can't really get rid of that. You'll notice that on these external mics too, you'll have, for example, this rode mic here, you've got a zero and then minus 10 and a plus 20. It really depends on your environment and what you're filming, and how loud the situation is. Generally, though we film in minus 10 because that works for us because we can always increase the audio in posts when we're editing. If you're filming in a loud environment. It's a good idea to move that to the negative decibel range as well. The mic is just a little bit more quieter, and if it's in a really quiet situation, you want to move it to the plus 20, to just give you more volume. Another external mic option is the level of your mic which is what Kristen and I are both wearing right now. It's good for very, very crowded space. You just get that really, really nice tone to your voice. We're both wearing lapel mics right now, or lavalier mics are also called. Then this is the way to go. When it comes to lavalier mics, are wired and wireless ones, definitely I'd recommend the wireless because it gives you more options to play around with, but they are pricier, put in a higher price point. We use these a lot when we're traveling and filming events. These are the crazy events and festivals or the very busy crowded restaurants or crowds. They work amazing for that, you just carry this little battery pack in your back pocket and the receiver is on top of the camera there. But they are more expensive and they definitely take a little bit to set up. If you require them, if you want to take your audio game to the next level, they are a good investment, but start with these, work your way up. It's also nice to when you're getting travel videos and someone else is behind the camera, for example, and you're in front of the camera, you don't necessarily have to be facing the camera for the audio to sound good. Or you can be super far back and it still sounds really good and clear. We have also these beautiful little handy recorders here, which are good for recording sound on location. Which is really nice ambient sound. Or for also doing voiceovers, these are really good, but you don't necessarily need these to do voiceovers because you can use your phone or your point-and-shoot. One of the little tricks that I do, I feel like you'd probably do it too, is you can go under your bed covers. The reason why is because a comforter absorbs the sound, so it's going to make it nice and clear and crisp, also, you can do it in a closet full of clothes wherever you are, you just want to make sure that the sound can be absorbed. Then this is an example of at home one so if you are recording voiceovers and not really needing it on the road with you, and you're just going to take it back home, you can, of course, just get a stand one that you put in your office and record your voiceovers. Yeah. it's really nice and clear and crisp to this one. Yeah, these are just two different versions of portable recorders. This one I I is a more expensive, higher-end, just records better audio, you can go crazy with audio. You can spend a lot of money on it, but just picking and choosing how you want to record your videos will help you the most. But you want to make sure you're getting good clean audio because it's so important. Another thing you can do with audio is you can be artsy with it, extra creative. You can capture sounds during your travels, whether it's a bus going by or children playing in a school ground, and that really adds another element to your video making. Takes your filmmaking one more step up. Yeah, it pulls the viewer and even more. 5. Drones: Drones, the flying camera robots. Yes, they add a lot more to your story if you are looking for a different way to visually tell your story when you're traveling. We have three different drones here that we use ourselves, each have their own pros and cons, and reasons why we use them. This is the Phantom 4. We got it because this was the only one, before these guys, that was in our price point. We really wanted to bring this type of cinematography to our videos because it literally gives you a different point of view. Really great for establishing shots and to get just these beautiful shots of the places you're at and really see the big picture of it. This one here is a little bit on the bigger, heavier side and it is a little bit bulkier to travel with, but at the time, it was worth it. Now we're basically using this little guy all the time because it's so small, this is the air. It literally fits in your pocket. This is how big it gets. When it collapses down, it's super small. You can fit this in your purse, your backpack easily, and the quality of it is really good. DJI keeps upping their game and drones keep getting smaller and better. This one is the Mavic Pro that we use. It's also from DJI. It's a little bit of the in between here. It has a better camera than the Air because the bigger the drone typically, the better the camera quality. It is still compatible, so it folds up, really great for travel. The newer versions of the Phantom do actually have a better camera. It's a trade off for what you're looking for and how much drone baggage do you literally want to carry because these can get quite heavy. Yeah, but DJI definitely is the brand to go with when it comes to drones. But this is the range that we would typically recommend you guys if you are first venturing into drones to get comfortable at first. A couple things to note about drone photography is there have a lot more different rules and regulations than just typical filming. The first one being is that if you are traveling with your drone, each country has their own specific rules, and regulations, and laws regarding drone use. Some countries is a no drone country, meaning that they will confiscate your drone at the airport. Not even that, you can end up in jail. Not to scare you, but to scare you, because it can happen. There is a lot of things you really do need to read up on if you are considering drone use, and that is definitely one of them. Other countries are just really regulated, meaning that you have to register, you have to take courses, you have to do a lot of different things to set up into be legally able to fly in those countries. Another point of view is commercial versus non-commercial, which is again, more regulations, more paperwork. There's so many different things that are changing each and every year, and it's hard for anybody to keep up with, but we are going to leave some links down below to point you in the right direction, to keep you up-to-date with what you need to know if you want to fly legally, if you want to fly safely in countries around the world. First of all, we both encourage you to look up the rules in the country you're going to, but generally speaking, some of the rules are do not fly near airports. Do not fly near public spaces or big groups of peoples, that means no stadiums, no schools. No schools, come on, guys. No big events or anything like that where there's big crowds of people. Unless you have permission, of course. Festivals and stuff, just get permission first. There's a lot of different permission. No national parks. No national parks unless you get permission. There's several different apps that will tell you what airspaces you can fly in because each airspace has different classifications. These apps simplify it, and break it down for you, and tell you the areas that you're not allowed to fly in, areas that you can fly in. We'll include those links to those apps as well and the resources that we use in our resource page as well as below. 6. Camera Accessories: There's several different items here, each has their own use and their own purpose. We're going through each one, tell you what we use them for. There we go. First out, let's start with the cases. A lovely. Pelican case. This thing is awesome, especially if you're going on a boat or something and you want to protect your equipment like your phone or your point-and-shoot camera, this thing is awesome. It's like a waterproof, durable, hard case for your gear. This one is a mini waterproof pelican case and it stores, let's see what's in here, SD cards. That's because very important for cameras, because you store all your footage on this so you want to make sure that case that you keep your SD cards in is durable and it's waterproof. Because before we used to use one of these, I can't tell you how many times I've broken SD cards and lost SD cards. No one wants to loose their footage That's really bad. This is a really good one I have. I don't know what brand this is but you can find similar. Amazon. Some lights. We have some portable lights here. This little cube light. It's cute and it's light and it's easy to bring with you. It's great for like lighting things. That's what lights do so here we go. This one is an aperture light. It's one that screws onto the top of your camera on a tripod or a couple of different mounts. You can mount it on and it goes on like this. It's quite bright as you see. It's essentially a travel version of those lights that you can't quite see but they are shining on us because as you're traveling, sometimes you just need a little bit of light on your face. Actually, these are really good for if your filming anything dark or if you want to light up a room. There's a lot of different uses for this. Night scene, especially if you're like vlogging too or you're filming someone else, light up your subject. Filters we've got the UV filter here. Protects your camera from scratches or dust particles in the air. We've got a polarized filter which is great for reflections in the water or shiny surfaces or adding color to the sky. Then we have an ND filter. It's essentially sunglasses for your lens and if it's super bright out you'll want to use an ND. Then this one is a variable ND, so same sort of thing. The only difference is you can adjust the shadiness of your sunglasses. Each of these lenses, as you can tell, has its own purpose. The first one that you should definitely start with is the UV and they build your way up to your filmmaking style. The next part is lens cleaning and sensor cleaning kits that you definitely want to have. I think a lot of people forget about adding this to their cart and it's super important. This is for your lens. Literally, it's like a turkey baster and you just get in your lens. Basting. Basting that lens and getting out any fluff or dust particles. It's good for sensors too. Like things, you don't really want to touch. If it's hot out, it works for that as well. This is a sensor cleaner so has this liquid here, you put just a tiny drop alongside the side of this little washer thing. It's just like one sweep in the sensor because you can get dust particles in there but you do not want to touch it with your finger or this is like it's risky to use this. Sensor cleaning is an extreme thing. Ideally, you never really want to get your sensor dirty. You want to take your lenses on and off as quickly as possible so you don't get dirt or dust inside of your lenses, but if you do, that's where that comes in handy. Then we have lens wipes. This is for cleaning the actual glass of the lens. We said, you should always have a UV filter on your lens so you don't have to clean the lens itself. You just have to clean this filter and if it gets scratched you chuck it and get a new one. Then also got serum. These are little lens cleaners. Because sometimes you get finger smudges or other types of smudges, dirt on it. You just wipe it off with these. This is what you would typically would use. It is just like a microfiber cloth. This is like if you get really dirty and it has this little trump version of it. Same idea just brushes it off your lens on that end, then this is like almost like a felt that scrubs the little. It's good for like fingermarks specifically, I'd carry that one. Yes, fingermarks. They're all different cleaning tools. I highly, highly recommend having all of these if you can because there have been many times we've been filming and we get dirt on our lens. There is like dot and it's just so annoying. Usually, you don't realize it soon enough and have your footage dawn on it in an awkward spot usually on your face. You don't want to use your clothes because this is made of specific material that protects your lens. Here we have some Peak Design brand. Peak Design is a brand that makes these little clips for your lenses and your cameras as well. You can actually screw your camera into this and pop that in here. This goes onto a bows or can go into a camera bag strap. This also it goes into here and you can put two lenses on. One lens on either side and have it on your bows or your bag as well. It's like easier access basically to your lenses. They're just like additional carrying accessories. You can go crazy with the carrying accessories. Lastly power pack. You're definitely going to want to carry one of these, especially if you're out and about all day long filming, you're going to run out of battery juice. You're going to want to charge your camera, also charge your phone. It's really good to have. A nice thing about this Sony's, I know not all cameras are able to charge via power pack. If you're doing any off-grid travel, anything that you're not doing your plugs having, your camera's be able to be charged via USB, it's super, super handy. That's my other real nice things about having a power pack with you. Last thing you want is to be out traveling your camera, batteries like flashing and there's an amazing experience and about to happen. We use our power packs quite a bit to charge up our cameras and our phones and our other cameras and our secondary cameras quite a bit. 7. GoPros & Accessories: Action and adventure gear. Now there is a lot of different types of gears for every kind of action or any kind of adventure that you are looking to go through. But the main type of camera that we use, I would say the majority of people or travel video makers use, are GoPro. What's so fun about GoPro is all the accessories that come with it, depending on what you're doing. If you're doing something underwater, if you're doing something in the air, if you're doing something like biking down crazy hills, there's something for it. We'll just go through some of our favorite accessories and essentially what we use them for. This is the GoPro Hero 5. This is the 6. There's 7 out and there's probably more beyond that. They're all great cameras. When it comes to gear though, this is where things get a little bit fun. A couple of the straps and then things that we use are, so this one is the head mouth strap. I'd say I use that fairly often. I'd say I use it fairly often as well. It can go on any type of helmet. We also use it as a makeshift watch strap. That's better than that. I think that's actually better than the actual wrist strap which I never use. Which is right there. Don't use it. Like baby ones. This one is a very big bulky one, we don't really use this one as often. It's the chest strap, so it just goes on. It's a full-body harness. But it does give a different perspective. It does and it is good for a lot of higher stuff like biking. I think they took it on skiing or snowboarding. That was a really good one. That would be good for that. Stuff where you'd like you really need all of your hands and you don't really have a helmet or you don't want that helmet perspective. My favorite GoPro accessory are the poles, because we use GoPros a lot when we're diving or snorkeling, and having the poles is great for selfie shots because it gives you an extra arm, basically length, so you can get more behind you in the frame, as well as getting close up to fish or coral or whatever. It's easier to do that. We have floaties here. Floaties are really good if you're doing water activities. Because there will come a time I'm telling you, it's hard because like everyone I know wear your GoPro, releases from your hand and the worst feeling is seeing it sink to the bottom of the ocean. When you have a floaty, it doesn't do that. It goes to the top of the ocean or lake or wherever you are, saves your GoPro. One of the ones I find really helpful as well is the handlebar mount. There's an updated version of the handlebar mount. This is an older style, but there's a lot of activities I use handlebars for like paddle-boarding, biking. That one's really good. This is just a mini handheld tripod that you can put a GoPro on if you want to selfie-style it. This is another one we use, I'd say fairly often. This is like a road trip because it has a suction cup, so you can suction it onto surfaces or onto glass and get those time-lapse road trip shots, you just put GoPro right on there. Especially like those tire shots outside of the vehicle. It secures your GoPro. You can roll it outside, inside, just a section down there. I really love this baby here. This is the camera grip. We've talked about it in the stabilization section. It gives you that smooth, creamy luck if you're following somebody and you don't want that shakiness then using a stabilizer like this really gives you that effect. Although the new versions of the GoPro are getting better and better with their stabilization. It's like you almost don't even need it for a lot of cases to. The other less used items that are more specialty, I would say are the dome. This is for half underwater shots. It gives you a cool line there photography or video. A specialty item, we don't use that one as much. Same with the 360 time-lapse. This is a little egg timer. You just crank it up. For 60 minutes it's going to tick and rotate your whole camera around. If you want a long 360 time-lapse, this is cool for that. Super cool. These adhesive mounts are something if you're going to get any type of accessory, these are the ones to get because you can mount them until pretty much anything. We have them all over air stream. We have them on our car. You can use them on kayaks, stand-up paddle boards. Air. Realistically, anything, but they are semi-permanent. They're very hard to get off. It's a onetime use thing. They're not really reusable and stuff you want to have multiple time. It's like filming multiple times with. This is another one that I used quite a bit and this is the longer GoPro go pull, reach. This is my underwater go-to device if I'm scuba diving or snorkeling because it really allows you to reach and get those shots with the fish. I love the poles. The poles are the best. Really long. That's another heavy use item. I use it quite a lot. It is as a walking stick too if you want, when going for a hike You could do that. Multipurpose. This magnetic mount is crazy, but it's good for, again, road trips if you wanted to get that out of the car shot of the tires or whatever, this will definitely stay on. If you ever wanted to run over your camera, then you need one of these. This is like crush-proof. It's crazy. You can also add an external microphone to this if you want. It's pretty cool. Those are the main GoPro accessories that we use with their cameras. But like we said, there are dozens of them out there. Pick and choose which ones are suited to the activities that you're going to be doing. 8. Tripods & Stabilizers: Stabilizers and? Tripods. Let's talk about stabilizers. There are many different options when they come to stabilizers. This one here, this is the DJI one for your phone. If you are filming on your phone and you want more of that smooth cinematic, beautiful shots this thing. Anyways, yes, I would say get one of these rigs because it will take your videography to a whole other level and people would be, "How did you do that?" You'd be, "On my phone." This one is the main gimbal that we use. It is called a three-axis gimbal, that is the type that it is. There is a variety of different ones, but this one is the Zhiyun Crane, and we love it for our big camera. Our Sony a7SMA2, sits on top of there and it gives us a whole variety of different smooth shots that we can take with it. We like it because it's really compact. As big as this is, it is actually fairly small for a stabilizer. Stabilizing gear gets a bit crazy. There's a lot of moving pieces, but we've really really enjoyed adding this to our film making repertoire, but it takes time to master and perfect a gimbal and to set up the gimbal with shots. If that's what you want, then this one is one that I definitely do recommend, the Zhiyun Crane and there is the Zhiyun Crane 2 out now and possibly even more, out in the future. Would you say to get your camera balanced on here, it's hard at first, but once you got it's a lot easier right? Yes. It definitely takes a little bit of time to get it balanced and we actually added a quick release plate right on here to ease that process so we can slide our camera right on and slide it right off. But I believe the Zhiyun 2 now actually has a quick release plate installed. This one, we actually had a similar rig to Nadine and Matt, but we wanted to have something a little bit more simpler to bring on our travels. We went with the Osmo DJI again. This has a camera that's already built in it and it's super easy to learn and use. People who barely pick up a camera can use this and get some really good video out of it and for all of these rigs we're using them for shots if you're following someone who's walking along a path, it gives it that smooth, crisp, flowy footage rather than holding your camera on your own and you get that shakiness from it. If you're running around a person or a building, you want to get,I know know, you know what I mean? Yeah, more dynamic. More dynamic, yeah. Yeah, but smooth, very smooth. [inaudible] and go down, like I said, it is an art form in and of itself. That's what you're interested in. Tripods, the less exciting version of stablizing. Necessary to add to your kit. These ones are actually all small tripods because our large tripods are in use right now. There are small differences in the different types of tripods, but realistically, as long as it can hold the weight of your camera, it's a good tripod. There are moving fluid heads that you can look into so you can do more creamy pan shots. Yeah. But for travel, we don't find that we use the tripod as much for those types of shots because it takes a little time to set it up. Yeah. We're constantly on the go and getting shots in the moment. Using a tripod, it doesn't happen as often. It's really used for time lapses or photography. That's what we find our main purpose for tripods are. Gorilla pods, on the other hand, are much more useful. There's a variety of different gorilla pods usually made by Joby and the different sizes correspond to the different weights of your camera. If you have a bigger camera, you need a bigger gorilla pod, smaller, smaller, Smaller one. This one's good for a phone. The benefit of the gorilla pods is essentially they can wrap around odd surfaces so they can be a tripod or they can be. A nice bracelet? Or they can fit around things or. Yeah. You can put it around a tree, put it around a pole put it around a person or whatever. Or you can just hold it as this selfie stick. It's like an extra half an arm length. It's good for clogging. Really good for vlogging and good for all around. You can vlog and then you can put it down. You can use it as a tripod or you can use it as a stabilizer. Yeah, so this one is just a mini tripod is made by Sony. There are several different kinds of these. Their purpose is to provide another handle for smaller cameras to sit on top so it makes it a lot easier for you to vlog with. Then you can flip up the back home. I got a tripod. What's really great about this tool is you have the record button here, so you don't have to fumble if you're vlogging behind the camera, finding the record button, you just hit it, right here. This one is made by Sony and the Sony cameras. But there are other kinds of these like mini tripods available as well.