PhotographyBanzai.com

Since starting my photography Youtube channel in January 2011, I have used various brands of equipment. The main camera kits were Pentax , Nikon F , and Canon EF-M . I have tried various other brands of gear along the way as well. Hindsight is 20/20, but had Nikon released the Z5 in the first round of their Z cameras at a decent price, I think the current mirrorless full-frame camera market share situation could have turned out differently for them. Not to date this article too much moving forward, but the current body-only price of the Z5 is $1000. With the 24-50mm kit lens it’s $1300. “Prices subject to change” and such… This is a lot of camera for the dollar. I remember going from Pentax APS-C to the full-frame Nikon D600 when that camera was $2000 just for the body. Looking at initial MSRP it was $2099 for the D600 vs. $1399 for the Z5, so not quite as impressive at first but still an uptick in functionality per dollar. Especially true considering one was released in 2012 and the ...

I wanted to talk a bit about how things are going and some of my plans. My most popular videos on YouTube lately are the hands-on camera gear videos filmed at Camera Craft in Rockford Illinois. Thanks to the shop for allowing me to handle the cameras and record footage there.  What the channel looks like on YouTube. This simple unassuming gear video recorded at the camera shop is currently my most popular video on the channel. That collaboration doesn’t allow for super detailed videos, but based on feedback and popularity, I think those videos are truly helpful to people. I do want to continue with that. I don’t know when I’ll be able to make more of those videos again with the COVID-19 situation. Even if things are slowly opening up, it doesn’t mean the virus has gone away. The shop is open now as long as you wear a mask, so I could ask the owner what’s possible, but right now it doesn’t feel fair to them and people I live around to increase my contact with others (staff and espec...

I like trying to slowly improve on how I work. In the software industry it’s called iterative development. The same ideas can be applied to video production. In this case, over 9 years of making YouTube videos I’ve usually had to setup a camera and take it down for any recording I did at home.  The compact recording setup. That takes a good deal of time that could be avoided with a dedicated recording setup. The constant slight changes also introduced unwanted variability to the result. Links are potentially affiliated in this article, I earn from qualifying purchases!  Here is my related video on YouTube about the change. Basically, I’m referring to the type of videos where I’m talking to the camera or recording some type of mixture of content where a lot of it will be voiceover, but I still want my face in the video sometimes.  While I can’t totally dedicate a camera to this type of recording, I can often have one of my Canon EOS M50 bodies for that task. There isn’t t...

I was able to make 2019 the best year ever for my related YouTube channel. In this article I’m going to reflect on the statistics and compare it to my previous performance. This level of effort came with sacrifices. Hopefully, in time, I’ll be able to make the online media and video thing… my thing. I still don’t feel like I’m that close. Anyways, on to the statistics!  Some of the primary statistics for 2019. For calculations, I’ll be going by the internal totals for the channel rather than the public stats. There is a difference between the two of over 100,000 views due to videos I’ve deleted over the years. On the admin end, those videos count toward totals. Also, sorry if some of the calculations are off! I’m not a math wizard and won’t likely be proofreading this too much. It’s all just for fun and to get a general feel for how I did in 2019. For some of the initial comparisons, I’ll be including the 2019 data. Though, for the rest I’ll be using the time span 1/29/2011-12/31/...