Stewart Carroll

Hey! Stewart Carroll right here. My spouse and I run a filmmaking and pictures YouTube channel known as Stewart and Alina. 

Beginning again in 2017, we launched to point out recommendations on easy methods to get essentially the most out of your gear, easy methods to edit your footage, and naturally, product opinions.

The place attainable, we wish to characteristic gorgeous places. Fortunately having the Scottish Highlands in pretty shut proximity supplies our work playground plus some critical journey and journey vibes as effectively.

Confession, we’re not that within the gear!  It’s what you are able to do with it that basically counts.

Nevertheless, it’s definitely been a number of enjoyable taking a look at what it takes to create our content material.  Possibly sooner or later we’ll improve to a type of pretty Sony A7 one thing cameras however within the meantime, try our shot package under.

Panasonic Lumix GH5 – this needs to be essentially the most reliable piece of package we have now ever had, and my love for this digicam can’t be overstated.

• unbelievable battery life
• zero overheating points
• ultra-sharp 4K footage
• in-camera rack focus between user-selected A and B factors
• an prolonged telephoto mode that takes a 4K crop of the sensor, supplying you with a lossless forty p.c zoom (takes a 30mm prime lens to a 50mm equal)
• astonishing construct high quality (we’ve drop-tested it many occasions)
• MFT lenses which might be gentle and small
• a dependable wifi connection to your telephone for distant monitoring
• good OIS for handheld capturing
• the record goes on! 

For capturing video, it’s honest to say that different cameras have higher steady autofocus for video, however the Panasonic GH5’s steady AF is kind of acceptable, and we don’t actually use it anyway. 

It’s good to have topics cross via a airplane of focus or come into and out of focus, however these are cinematic filmmaking methods that you just’ll see on a regular basis in high-quality movie or TV, so the AF limitation I discussed has been a key consider defining our personal cinematic filmmaking model. 

Panasonic Leica Summilux 15mm f/1.7 – it is a tiny lens that’s just about the one one we use lately. On a full body equal foundation, we’re wanting right here at a 30mm focal size that’s able to f/3.4 if we’re speaking about shallow depth of discipline and blurry backgrounds. 

This setup is ideal for filming:

• speaking head YouTube movies in our studio and
• for filming close-up product pictures (minimal focusing distance is 20cm)
• filming mid-shot and wide-angle on-location YouTube movies within the wilderness
• vlogging because it’s simply large sufficient with an outstretched arm to get a pleasant headshot with a shallow depth of discipline

Panasonic Lumix G 42.5mm f/1.7 – if we need to make somebody look superior, that is the lens of alternative!  If our arms had been lengthy sufficient, we’d vlog with this lens. This basic 85mm equal FOV portrait lens appears to be like unbelievable on a gimbal. 

Suppose hero shot parallax with swooshing rotating backgrounds that look epically cinematic. The truth is, we just about constructed a complete marriage ceremony movie enterprise on this shot. Maintaining focus isn’t straightforward, however if you get the knack for it, you’ll be making movies like no different. 

DJI Mini 3 Professional – DJI has exceeded all expectations with the Mini 3 Professional.  How is it attainable {that a} 4K, 10-bit flying digicam can weigh 2 hundred and forty-nine grams and solely price this a lot?  We have now entry to greater and dearer drones, however that is our go-to drone eighty p.c of the time. 

All of it comes right down to measurement and weight for us.  Our drone adventures are virtually all the time filmed within the wilderness, so they aren’t near the automotive.  This implies carrying gear, and if you’re already lugging all of your YouTube filming package, much less is healthier. 

The one downfall of the Mini 3 Professional is its capacity to deal with excessive wind.  Don’t get me flawed, it’s astonishing for its measurement, however the DJI Mavic 3 is far more highly effective and extra secure in excessive winds. 

On a current journey to Iceland, I used to be going to take the Mini 3 Professional, however thank goodness Alina satisfied me to take the Mavic 3 as effectively.  Given the winds, I wouldn’t have dared launch the Mini 3 Professional.

DJI Mic – this needs to be among the best merchandise of 2022.  Taking direct intention on the wildly profitable and fashionable Rode Wi-fi Go II, the DJI Mic is absolute design perfection.  For touring, all the pieces is housed in a rock-solid charging case. 

While you open it up, the receiver’s attractive touch-screen show informs you ways a lot battery life and storage is left on the 2 microphone transmitters. 

The important thing characteristic for us is the inner recording on the transmitters. The little wi-fi items that you just clip to your jacket to ship the audio again to your digicam additionally document a backup audio monitor. 

The sound high quality is very nice, and the actual fact it’s a very forgiving configuration that doesn’t clip too simply is a plus.

Insta360 X3 – the ‘shoot first, re-frame later’ capabilities of 360 cameras proceed to tickle my fancy, and to be trustworthy, I don’t know if the novelty of this may ever put on off. 

I genuinely assume that after know-how catches up and we will have a a lot larger decision and better high quality re-framed picture, then this would be the future. 

We’re image high quality purists, so mixing in motion digicam footage with our pretty GH5 footage might be tough, however we have to remind ourselves that not less than fifty p.c of our content material is consumed on a smartphone. 

In terms of filming our adventures, we love attaching a 360 digicam to the bodywork of our automotive with a suction cup and creating epic street journey hyper lapses which might be silky clean because of the 6-axis stabilisation constructed into these cameras.

DJI Osmo Motion 3 – this changed the GoPro Hero 8 as our new favorite motion digicam.  I’ve a smooth spot for the Hero 8 as a result of it was so small and dependable, introducing us to the astonishing Hypersmooth digital picture stabilisation. 

With the Hero 9, 10, and 11, we have now seen enhancements, however the digicam is now a lot bigger, and it’s honest to say progress has been gradual. 

DJI did one thing attention-grabbing with Motion 3 as moderately than try to reinvent the wheel (like they did with Motion 2), they’ve created the very best motion digicam at the very best value. 

With 4K at 120 fps, good picture high quality, and assured reliability, that is our present motion digicam of alternative.

Sure, of us, we personal much more package than what’s listed above, however along with some energy banks, reminiscence playing cards, and different equipment, that is the core ShotKit we use to create our content material!

It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Stewart and Alina

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