Have I mentioned that I absolutely love the Sony RX100 Mark VI as a camera and a video camera??? It's an awesome pocket point and shoot camera. Much better than any cell phone camera. Of course it costs more than any cell phone and that is why it's a better camera. If you think you're a photographer carrying around an Apple iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy or any other phone, you're not a photographer. You're someone who just takes snaps with your cell phone. That is it, that is all. Sorry, not sorry to disappoint you.
So today I finally upgraded to the Sony RX100 Mark VI. It doesn't have the apps from the Sony Play Memories App store. Which is OK because I have all the apps on the Sony RX10 Mark II. I have to buy an adapter to attach filters to the lens. Which is OK again because I don't think I'll be upgrading cameras for a while unless I upgrade to the Sony RX10 Mark IV. I think the next item on my wish list will be the 2018 iPad Pro with the 512GB hard drive.
Today is December 31, 2018. Last day of the month and year. I am looking forward to 2019 and see what the year brings. The girlfriend is sick so we shall see if she comes to Parc Omega with me tomorrow. We were going to go to the movie today but I think that's out of the question. In mid February, I'll start looking for a job out in Calgary. I cannot stand living in Ottawa anymore.
Tomorrow I am looking forward to using the Sony RX100 Mark VI at Parc Omega. I have a 128GB card in the camera so that should be enough for all the photography and footage. I just have to bring a few batteries with me. That's the only thing that I'm not impressed with, with the Sony RX100 Mark VI. Battery life is atrocious with Sony cameras. We shall see tomorrow how many I will need for a day of shooting.
I am also looking forward to moving out west to Calgary. I do miss the mountains.
So I have a friend from high school who works as the finance manager at a local Jeep dealership here in Ottawa. Hopefully on Monday before three in the afternoon I will get a good news phone call from him telling me I got the 2018 2 door Jeep Wrangler. The only thing that's not good news is this past year I co-signed a loan for my girlfriend for a 2015 Jeep Patriot. Her ex really did a number on her credit and now it affects me. Maybe I shouldn't have signed it but I thought it would be better for her to not pay 20% interest on a loan. Instead we cut it down to 8% I think. Now it affects me which totally sucks.
I do hope I get the Jeep Wrangler. I totally hate the Hyundai Elantra. It's not good for my body anymore. I find it difficult to get in and out of the vehicle. After driving my girlfriend' Jeep Patriot I enjoy the SUV much more. We shall see on Monday.
I was hoping to do some photography today but it's just so cold out. It was -14 degrees celsius this morning and now it's -7 degrees celsius. I think I need to do more photography at Parc Omega which I can do from the warmth of my car. I haven't been to Parc Omega in a month. The girlfriend doesn't like doing the photography thing. That is not good for the relationship as I love photography and shooting footage of nature, landscape and animals.
October came in like a lion and came out like a kitty cat. A few video sales at the beginning of the month raised my hopes for a good month of October. But its been just subs (subscriptions) for the rest of the month. Nothing but $0.36 sales. Seems like anything of quality sales is hard to come by now on any stock site. I haven't sold a video on Pond5 or Storyblocks in months even adding a few hundred to each site this month.
We are moving at the end of the month so for the next couple of days, we'll be packing up all our stuff and we both get to work during the move so it's going to be long days and no opportunity for photography or to shoot footage. We got our first snow last night so winter is pretty much here in Ottawa. I still have my all seasonal tires on until November 5th.
I only have the DJI Spark. I'm planning on upgrading my drone to a DJI Mavic Pro 2 in the spring. The Spark only shoots in JPEG which limits my editing in Serif' Affinity Photo. The problems with the DJI Spark is the flight time. I have 3 batteries and I can only get about 12 minutes per battery in flight time. So I'm limited to about 36 minutes per location. There is no RAW file format for photography as well. I like to shoot video at 1080p/60fps. The DJI Spark is limited to 1080p/30fps. The distance also sucks. Since I lost my first DJI Spark due to connection issues, I won't fly it more than 300 meters away from me. With the above shot I was over the Ottawa River which really isn't a bright idea since I'd lose the drone in water if it were to lose power or if I lost connection. I've had my second drone for about 6 weeks now and I haven't lost connection to it which is good. I am still hesitant to fly it great distance or in an obstructed area where I lose sight of it or where I have a chance of losing connection. I do want a drone with a bigger battery and longer flight time. Also I want to shoot in RAW mode and I want to have an option of shooting in 4k. Next year I want to go to Prague with my girlfriend. I already have good cameras and a good camcorder. I want to have a better drone for those arial shots. I am currently saving all my photography money for a Sony RX100 Mark IV. I am planning on getting the DJI Mavic Pro 2 with my tax return. We shall see, the shall see.
This heat wave we've had for the past month has to break at some point. 29 degrees Celsius not including the damn humidity. Haven't slept well for the past 3 days. I want to get out and do some more photography. I've been only using my Apple iPhone 8 Plus for some random shots in the past couple of weeks. Luckily it looks like sales are picking up on Shutterstock. Pond5 and Videoblocks have been totally dead the last few months. Hope they both pick up soon.
On another note, fall is coming and I'll be heading out to Algonquin Park and Parc Omega more often in the coming weeks. I love those two places.
Finally flew the DJI Spark at dusk today. I'll have to view the video once I get them off the micro SD card but it will be interesting to see how well the footage turns out from the DJI Spark. Took a few photos as well. From the Apple iPhone 8 Plus, the footage and photos looked a bit noisy but I an fix that in post.
The rest of the weekends sounds like it's going to crap weather wise with 90% chance of rain for both Sunday and Monday. So the girlfriend and I are planning on just going to church tomorrow in the morning and a movie in the afternoon. Monday I want to pretty much read a few books and just relax.
I'm in love with the DJI Spark drone. One little hick up from today' flights. Lost connection again for less than 10 seconds today. The only thing I can think of is there were some power lines between myself and the drone. That is the only constant from the last two flight sessions.
I'm also thinking of at some point upgrading to a DJI Mavic Pro or a higher end drone as I need a drone that can fly longer. I'm limited to about 15 minutes with the DJI Spark. The video also looks good but only shoots at 1080p/30fps. I'd love to have a drone that shoots 1080p/60fps. I really don't shoot in 4k as I find it totally unnecessary. The DJI Spark only shoots in the JPEG format and not RAW so editing is somewhat limiting.
I bought the DJI Spark to learn how to operate a drone. It's been a great teacher so far. Right now I have other priorities like getting back to work. With fall and winter coming up quick, I think my drone use will be dead in the winter with the short, cold days and the long, cold nights. I'm trying to get as much drone footage in as I can.
Since my contract ended early due to shortage of work and looking for work on a Friday, I decided to give myself a break and have some time to relax I went downtown to shoot a time lapse of Parliament Hill from the Quebec side. There were a lot of nice and fluffy clouds. The clip should be up and approved soon on Shutterstock, Pond5 and Storyblocks.
This place is just so amazing. The American Southwest is completely mesmerizing. I went there 2 and a half years ago. It was about 10 months after my divorce. I was not in a good place emotionally and I just needed a break from work and everything. I've never been on a vacation by myself to anywhere. I just needed a place to relax. I had two choices at the time as I remember. Either go to Arizona or California.
In California, I wanted to go on the Pacific Coast highway for a few days and I wanted to go see a couple of the national parks. I remember watching several YouTube videos and seeing all the homeless in San Fransisco and Los Angeles. That alone swayed me to go to Arizona. One of my profs in college went there and I remember seeing his pictures of the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley.
Needless to say I made the right decision. I instantly fell in love with the state when I landed in Phoenix. I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.
Lets just say even with the louse cold weather I had an amazing time. It's an amazing wonder to see in person. Never seeing it before and walking up to the cliff to see the majesty of the Grand Canyon is a once in a life time experience. I only spent about 6 hours at the Grand Canyon but what six hours those were. I am hoping to go back very soon to try and recreate the experience. I would suggest that you go there as well as it should be on anyone' bucket list.
Just one of the videos I took over Fort Henry when we were in Kingston, ON over the August long weekend. The drones are a lot of fun to fly but I fear losing it. I try and keep it in visual site. I think next year I will upgrade from the DJI Spark to the DJI Mavic Pro just so I can take better video with the drone. The DJI Spark takes really good videos but I want something better.
Yes. It's the best prosumer camcorder ever built. It shoots 1080p/60fps. No it does not shoot 4k. I'm glad it doesn't. Yes 4k televisions are falling in price. In Canada, the major cable providers only have 1 or 2 4k channels. With dwindling cable subscribers I don't see the major providers upgrading their equipment to fully support 4k in the near future. I have a 4k television at home with an Apple 4k TV set top box which we, being my girlfriend and I don't hardly watch. We don't watch a whole lot of television rather looking at our phones or iPads or computers which only support 1080p or 1440p. But on a phone, you cannot differentiate between 1080p and 1440p. There are a few phones that have 4k displays but again, they're a small screen factor. That is why I'm still shooting 1080p.
Lets get back to the Canon Vixia HF G40 camcorder available for purchase here. Like I've written previously it does shoot at 1080p/60fps. What Canon does right with this camcorder is colour reproduction. It does come with 20x optical zoom and 300x digital zoom. Thanks to the sensors enhanced sensitivity, the Vixia HF G40 provides vivid, accurate recording through an improved signal to noise ratio. The camera shoots in both MP4 and AVCHD with MP4 being web ready. The camera provides dual SD card slots for never ending storage. I have 2 64GB cards in the camera and I can shoot the whole weekend and not fill up both cards. You can record to both cards at the same time just in case one fails. I did buy an extra battery for longer shooting. I can shoot about 90 minutes with the battery that comes with the camera and with my larger battery I can shoot over 220 minutes on a single charge.
The OLD screen is big and bright even during sunny days. The electronic viewfinder shifts to 45 degrees and is easy to use and see thru. For a guy with glasses, it's a big help. The optical image stabilization is great when you want to shoot that is far away from you. The lens is great on this camera being a f1.8 to f2.8 which means it's great in low light and is extremely sharp.
Here are some of the pros of the camera:
Great price
Great lens
Portable
1080p/60fps
Focal lenght
Multiple hot shoes to attach accessories
OLED screen
Viewfinder
Comes with remote control and lens cap
Weight of 1.7 pounds
Reach of 26.7MM to 576MM (35MM equivalent)
Wide angle and zoom lenses available
Has Wifi and FTP
Superb video
Superb colour reproduction
Here are some of the negatives:
Does not shoot 4k (is that a negative?)
You can buy two teleconvertors. One wide and one a telephoto. I currently have the wide lens and it's amazingly sharp. The camera does have audio in which unfortunately doesn't provide phantom power. I currently use the Rode Video Mic Pro+ available here.
When I was in Calgary last year for work I brought this camera with me. I decided to buy a Sony 4k camcorder thinking 4k is the future. Let's just say I sold the 4k camcorder and I kept the Canon. With the Canon I don't need that many hard drives as the files are smaller and I don't need as much processing power. If I wanted I could use my iPhone 8 Plus running iMovie to edit my Canon clips for my portfolios. You can check my portfolio links on my blog to see what the camera is capable of.
The Sony RX100 Mark V is possibly the best pocket camera in the world. Currently you can buy the Sony RX100 Mark VI as well but the Mark V is a bit cheaper. The Mark VI has a 24-200MM lens compared to the 24-70MM on the RX100 Mark V. The Mark V takes amazing photos and videos and I'm guessing the Mark VI is slightly better.
The Sony RX100 Mark V has a one inch type Exmor RS CMOS sensor with a 21 megapixel sensor (20.1MP effective) which shoots great photos and even better videos up to 4k. It can shoot up to 4K UHD video and regular video at 1080P. It can even shoot slow video up to 980fps. I've had the camera for over a year now and it is very reliable. I take it everywhere with me since it does fit into my pocket. You don't feel like a paparazzi with the camera. You will not get stares as you would with a gigantic DSLR and a 70-200 lens.
The Sony RX100 Mark VI does have a 24-200MM lens which is awesome and is the only reason I would ever upgrade to the Mark VI. The Mark V is very versatile little camera. It's pretty much travelled with me every where I go. From Calgary to Vancouver to Ottawa and down south to Florida.
The pros of the camera are:
Pocket size
Shoots awesome video
Shoots awesome photos
Easy to setup and use
Great for vlogging
24 photo burst rate (Raw images)
Non-invasive
Descent audio capture for such a small camera
The cons of the camera are:
It overheats when shooting 4K video
5 minutes limitations on 4k video
Battery life. Buy lots and lots of batteries. At least 2-3
Menu system is atrocious. But once you learn it, it's ok.
No input jack for better audio
For me, I shoot mainly stock photos and videos so I don't really need audio recording for my needs. This little camera does pretty much everything. I actually sold all my Canon gear and bought the Sony RX100 Mark V and a Sony RX10 Mark II when I was out in Calgary for work. I took it to the mountains whenever I was out there on weekends.
If you would like to purchase it, please click here and help me out a little. I do get a little back from Amazon when you purchase something. It helps me buy new equipment and software and helps me travel to new places to take better pictures and videos.
So I wanted to do a review of the Canon Vixia HF G40 last week. Life always gets in the way as a friend and fellow photographer lost her life to cancer at the young age of 28. I hadn't gone shooting for a bit with the camcorder as my day job seems to get in the way.
But this past week, I got to shoot the Casino de Lac Leamy fireworks. I had missed the previous show as I totally forgot about it. And yesterdays event, let's just say, whoever went to it got soaked in the torrential downpour.
This was the first time I had used a camcorder at night. Shooting video is a little bit different than shooting photos at night. Especially fireworks.
I had set the camera at ISO 100, f1.8 and exposure of 1/8th of a second. Let's just say that didn't work out as I thought. The exposure was way too low so I increased it to 100th of a second and voila, problem fixed. So setting with ISO 100, f1.8 and the exposure was 100/1000 of a second. Problem fixed. So I thought. My external mic died about halfway thru the show. Hence no sound on the video. For this Wednesday's show, I have a fresh battery in the mic and I know what my settings have to be. I also have a better idea of how to frame the shot as I framed it wit htoo much empty space to the left.
Overall, I think the Canon Vixia HF G40 is an excellent daytime and night time camcorder. You can control pretty much any setting on it as far as exposure, white balance, mic etc. I am really happy with the camcorder.
One of the reasons I bought the camcorder was to do a lot more video work at Parc Omega where I get pretty much all my wildlife shots. I hardly go there in the summer as the animals hide in the shade of the forest because of the heat. I'm planning to go a lot more starting in September as it's mating season and the fall colours start. Also the fur on the animals thickens as they prepare for the colder temperatures of Canada's northern climate.
So today I finally picked up the Canon Vixia HF G40 camcorder. I wanted this prosumer camcorder so bad. I upgraded it from the Canon Vixia HF R62. The G40 provides a few bit more controls when shooting video like Exposure and ISO settings. I can actually physically attach an external mike as well to the G40. It's more of a prosumer camcorder rather than a top of the line consumer camcorder. I will post a better review when I actually start using the camcorder in real life situations.
Lately, I've been doing shooting a lot of video as I have had plenty of photos on the various micro stock agencies. I'm just trying to build up my video portfolio. It's time consuming doing both but I do love doing both. Video clips sell for a much higher price but they are far and between what I typically sell. I do still sell a lot of photography. Not as much during the summer as most people are on vacations. I'm hoping sales of both video and photos pick up again in September.
I've been shooting a lot of editorial photography and video. A lot more video than photography. It's a lot of fun. I'm selling the photography as well. Shutterstock is a great platform to sell your photography and videography along with Bigstockphoto.
