AP 0197: Which Cameras Do You Recommend for Creating Videos?

AskPat 197 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody Pat Flynn here, and welcome to 197. Episode 197 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today, as always I'm here to help you by answering your online business, blogging, entrepreneurship, start-up, podcasting, video, everything questions as much as I can, to help you five days a week.

Getting a ton of questions, thank you for all the questions that have been submitted to AskPat, and before we get to today's question from Vinnie, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is Flippa.

That's F-L-I-P-P-A, if you don't know what Flippa is, it's awesome, because it's the number one market place to buy, and sell websites. So if you’re looking to start a new business you might actually want to pick up where somebody left off. This is one thing that I know a lot of people do, and do very, very well. Actually over $125 million dollars has been traded on the marketplace, which is just crazy, and people across the world turn to Flippa to purchase websites that'll generate extra cash for them. You can also sell your websites too if you’re thinking about is.

So go over there, check out the market place. If you head on over to Flippa.com, you'll find the best websites, and businesses for you that are being sold, and you could probably pick up from where other people have left off.

All right now, let's head on over to today's question from Vinnie.

Vinnie: Hello Pat, my name is Vinnie Lynch, and my question for you today is, I want to find out what video camera you are using in your podcast tutorial on your site. The quality is really good, and I just wanted to find out what camera you’re using. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey Vinnie, thanks so much for the question, and for those of you out there listening if you don't know what podcasting tutorial Vinnie's is talking about, it's a six video free tutorial, no opt-ins or emails required. You can check it out at PodcastingTutorial.com. In that tutorial, is a lot of text information, but I also share six completely different videos about six different parts of getting your podcast up, and running, and I've gotten a lot of comments about the quality of those videos. I actually did spend a lot of time on them because I knew a lot of people were going to find that tutorial beneficial. So, Vinnie thank you so much for the question today.

To answer your question quickly, it was a Canon Rebel T3i. A Canon Rebel T3i, that's the camera I used in that particular video tutorial. But let me talk more about this. I'm going to answer a little bit more in depth than just that. Currently, I have a Canon Rebel T4i, either of those will work really well. They're DSLR cameras, so you can actually double them as really good cameras for taking family photos, and photos on trips, and things like that. But, I love it because it allows me to create high quality videos at a reasonable price. The price for the camera can range between $300 to $800 dollars depending on which model you use. Plus, there's the lenses as well. Now lenses, is actually where most of the magic happens.

If you've ever seen a video where the subject is in focus and the backgrounds blurry, that's called a bokeh effect. You can get that, not with the camera you’re using, but the lens on the camera that you’re using. That's the magic there. In those tutorials where you see a blurry background, and me sort of focused in the foreground, I'm using a fifty millimeter 1.4/f lens. That's the aperture, 1.4/f.

I'm still learning how to better use my DSLR camera. I can't totally explain it in technical terms. I know that there's a lot of other people out there that can do it much better than me, but that's the gist of it. That's what I use. A Rebel … And it's important because it’s a Rebel too. I've recommended a Canon T3i in the past and I'm … I've mistakenly forgot the Rebel part of it, and it was difficult for people to use the non-Rebel version, because the Rebel one has the LCD screen that can flip out, and turn around so you can look at yourself, and where you’re at in the view finder. And, if you don't have that you kinda have to guess, and you’re not sure if you’re in focus. It's really helpful to have that thing swing out.

So a Canon Rebel T3i or more recently I actually purchased the Canon Rebel T4i, and the reason I like the 4i versus the 3i is because the 4i has auto-focus on video, T3i doesn't have that. But, they have these special lenses on the 4i, and there's more of these coming out lately, because this is their sort of new technology. It allows you to auto-focus with video, so as your subject moves, whatever subject you focus on, the camera will automatically focus. And it will do it in a fairly quiet way, and that's really cool. So, those are the things I use.

Now I will say that in that video, especially in video one, I've also gotten a lot of comments. I've also gotten a lot of comments about the … when I feature different microphones. You'll notice in the first video I feature a number of different microphones that I've had in the past as a podcaster and they kind of do this really fancy, sort of showroom style circle around the camera. So what the camera's actually doing is, it's going in a 360. It doesn't go all the way around, but it does a nice smooth circular motion focusing on that item in the middle, that microphone.

And the way I did that … it's really hard to do that with your hand because it’s not going to be steady, but I use a tool that I actually purchased on Kickstarter called CineSkates, C-I-N-E-Skates, check that out because if you’re not familiar at all with how that works it just going to blow your mind like it did with me in that Kickstarter campaign. It's essentially a gorilla tripod. One of those really fancy tripods with the legs are made up of those little balls that you can sort of move around and twist and bend over different directions, but on the bottom instead of the things that meet the ground or the surface they're like roller blade skates. So you can actually set it to a position where you can then rotate it around whatever your subject is, and you get this really nice smooth circular motion. Again that's CineSkates, C-I-N-E-Skates.

That's really cool, and I've also gotten a lot of comments about, “How do you record what's on your screen?” A lot of people out there might know this, but if you don't this is the final component of how I created this podcasting tutorial series. I used a tool called Screenflow. ScreenFlow, and if you wanted to go check out my affiliate link for that, that's askpat.com/screenflow, thank you, I do get a commission if you go through that link. But it's one of my most used tools on my Mac computer, my iMac. It’s because it not only takes screen recordings or allows you to record what on your computer screen and talk over that, and that's a great way to give tutorials or go through special things on your website for your audience. But it's also just a great plain ol' video editor. I use it more than iMovie … I actually don't use iMovie at all. I use it to … whenever I have video from anywhere—DSLR cameras or something online or whatever—I just pop it in there it's just really easy cut and paste, plugin play type of thing. If you don't have a Mac you could use something called Camtasia Studios, Camtasia Studios is what it's called.

There's also a Mac version of Camtasia, which works just as well as ScreenFlow, but I just prefer ScreenFlow it was one of the first ones I used, and so many people ask, “Which one do you like better ScreenFlow or the other one, Camtasia?” To me they're both the same, but I had to pick one, and get behind it. I do like ScreenFlow, a lot.

So that's how I did it, Vinnie. The Canon Rebel T3i, although like I said I upgraded to the Canon Rebel T4i, and that's not to say that you have to get a Canon. Any good deal, solid camera will work. Again the magic really is really in the lens although you don't have to stick with Canon you could use an Icon or Samsung or whatever the case may be. But I was using that fifty millimeter 1.4/f lens to get that really nice bokeh effect in a lot of those videos. I used CineSkates to get the nice little circular motion around my microphones in video number one, and ScreenFlow was the good video editor for recording what's on your screen.

Awesome, thank you so much for the question Vinnie, I really appreciate it and I love talking tech and those types of things with everybody. So thank you for that. If any of you out there have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.

I also want to thank today's sponsor again, which is Flippa.com. A lot of you don't know this 'cause I don't talk about it very much, but I actually purchased a website on Flippa, and it was really smooth process.

I actually got to talk to the owner and go back and forth, and this was before all the Penguin and SEO stuff with Google's algorithm changes. The site was going okay until it got hit with a Penguin penalty. It's been on my list to come back to that site and revive it. It's actually a golfing website. It's probably something I'm going to talk about in the near future, but I'm very happy with that process and Flippa was a great place. It's always a great place even just to do any niche-market research. See what sites are up there, and what they're going for. Again you can go to Flippa.com/pat to check that out.

And as always I like to end with a quote, and since we talked about, a little about photography today I wanted to quote my good buddy Darren Rouse. You might know him from problogger.net, but he also has a much bigger site at Digital-Photography-School.com. Here's his quote. He says, “Consistently investigate what gives other people energy. Be the fan that fuels it.” Cheers, take care, and I'll see ya on the next episode of AskPat.