Christmas shopping

Since the beginning of our YouTube-journey, we've always worked with rather (not to say: extremely) minimalistic gear; 1 camera and 1 gimbal (stabilizer), that's it. But over the years, the number of times where our equipment has failed us and ruined an entire day of filming is ... painfully many. 

These small DLSR camera's we use are great for travelling and easy to use for quick and dirty run-and-gun type shots. But being so small, they also lack a big screen. And this is a big downside, because it's hard to tell the quality of the image on such a small screen, especially when outside in full sunlight. Because of that, the first thing we did after a day of filming is anxiously checking the images on a computer, and hoping we're not gonna find out that the focus is completely lost somewhere halfway through a shot, or the lightning is off - to name the most common of things that can go wrong. So, if the weather allowed for it, we usually brought along our laptop, to be able to check the images on the location itself; see the photo of Marc squatting down behind his latop on a sidewalk in Rome (with a spoiler of the topic of one of our new videos, left in the photo). This process is far from ideal obviously, as it's quite the hassle to bring along and set up your laptop in the middle of filming, and the laptop obviously can't be operated in wet weather and neither in the freezing cold. 

So, having found out the hard way, we realized we really needed a solution for this, so we finally bought an external monitor, which shows the exact same image as the camera in real-time, only a lot bigger. This is surely going to make our filming both more productive AND better - as we are actually able to check the quality of the image in a glimpse. We also bought a new camera, so that we can film the same scene from different angles and change between the footage for a less static look. We first bought a Panasonic S5, but we had some real bad experience with it in Rome recently, so we re-sold it and bought another - even more expensive - one. The camera we bought now is the Sony A7 IV, which has the best (person-tracking) autofocus in the entire industry, and is also an extremely good camera in low light conditions, allowing us way more film-time at the end of a day when the sun is setting, next to simply giving even better image quality. We also bought a portable (battery-operated) 'studio' lamp, which will help us even more in filming in low light conditions. Next to that, we got countless smaller neccesities and accessories like lenses, tripods, batteries, cables and mounting adapters and what-not. All in all we spent almost 7.500 euros on new gear :S (and insurance!); pretty much the entire bank account of Imperium Romanum. But if you dream big, you gotta act big! 

Of course, this huge investment couldn't have been possible without you guys, so we want to thank you with all our heart for your amazing support! The next 'season' of our videos is nearing launch-readiness, and we expect to be posting again as soon as january'again (first exclusively on Patreon). 

Merry christmas all! 

Floris, Alain and Marc