Coffee, Gear Talk, & Chill (LIVE! Come & Hang Out)

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We are live. Mike, you got to hop on, brother. Me and Mike are live from the Audi studio today. We're just hanging out, drinking coffee, talking about gear, talking about all of the things. See if we're, we're live here. What are you guys up to on this awesome Tuesday? It's very cold where I'm at here in Texas, so I want to know what are you guys up to. I got to change this thumbnail here.

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Oh, oh, oh, oh. We might do some editing on here live if that's what you guys want to see. I don't know, we're just hanging out drinking coffee, drinking coffee and Hiyo. Recently tried this drink, it's supposed to give you a float. It's non-alcoholic. I don't really know, I don't really know if that's true, but we'll see. One second, guys, I'm trying to get this thumbnail done. Boom! Upload thumbnail. Gear Talk, let's get it! Where you guys watching from? Where are you guys watching from? Live stream. Boom!

All right, we're good.

All right, let's get into the studio here. Analytics. There we go, we're up and running. Trying to figure out where to see the comments. Okay, all right, we're live. Mike, you got to hop on the live and ask some questions. I know it's a rough life. Yeah, I'm drinking high-o today. What are you guys drinking on this Tuesday? We're just chilling, hanging out. We have some gear that I want to talk about, possibly some cameras and microphones. We've done some review videos on them, but Yeah, this morning we had a real estate shoot. Um, 2:00 I got a— one of our coaching clients coming in. 4:30 we have a brand story shoot video that we're going to do. The Rasa Films, what about the A7? 5. A7V, do you mean the A7IV? Welcome to the livestream. Let me know where you guys are watching from. The A7IV is an incredible camera. I'm actually probably going to buy one this year. I have the A7III that I've been using for all of our photo stuff. That's what we've been using. But the A7IV, it's incredible. That's one thing, I think the A7IV can film in 60 frames per second and the A7III can only film in 30 frames per second, which sucks if you're wanting slow motion stuff. Watching from the Howdy Studio, Mike. Welcome to the live stream. Where's A7? Yeah, so if you don't know, we're in the Howdy Studio right now, but here we go. A7III. I have filmed like countless jobs on this thing, and it, it's from 2018. I did a review video over it, but it's from 2018 and it is— it's a beast of a camera. Like, it's full frame, obviously, so you can see nice, gorgeous. It's been great. Like, we've dropped it like countless times. We've— I almost dropped it in a river in San Antonio and, uh, It was, it was scary, let's just say that. It was like 2 inches from going straight into the water. I'm from Brazil and would like to know about the rumors regarding the A7V being released early this year and its specs. Let me look into that real quick. Let's see, Sony A7V release date. It's expected to be released between January and March of 2025. This is a later release than originally planned. It was supposed to be announced October 24th. That was a quick release. Q1. Yeah, Q1 in 2025. Let's look at the specs. That is confirmed. The R5 leak specs. Uh, whoa, those are some crazy, crazy numbers. This is saying a 44-megapixel sensor, 4K, 120 frames per second. With no crop, that's incredible. 44 megapixels. I think the A7 III has like 26 or 27 megapixels. That's crazy. I chose to buy the Canon EOS R at the same time instead of the A7 IV and I regret it. Later I switched to the Sony FX30 and 67. That is a deadly duo. I, I'm wanting a 6700. I'll probably buy a 6700 before I buy an A7IV or A7V. Oh, A7III. Yeah, the only reason I bought this camera was because 3 years ago is whenever I started this, this company, and I didn't really know much about cameras, but I wanted to get into real estate and this was like one of the top recommendations for real estate stuff. And so, I mean, yeah, I paid like $4,000, or no, it was like $3,000 and some change for this thing. And it's been, it's been great. I filmed a bunch of weddings, I've done corporate work. Obviously the FX30s look significantly better. I mean, not to like the average consumer watching it on social, you would never be able to tell. But whenever we're filming on our end, there's lots of differences. Like the screen, the screen on the A7 III sucks. It's awful compared to the FX30. It's not touchscreen. Like there's touch features, but there's no touchscreen. It doesn't make any sense to me. There's a lens here. Throw a lens on it. It makes me nervous without a lens on it sometimes. Say what up, Mike? You're right in the background. Everybody say hi to Mike. Say Mike in the chat. F in the chat. Yeah, we're just hanging out today. That's crazy you're from Brazil. You do a lot of, uh, filmmaking or anything over there? I want to go to Brazil so bad, so bad. Yeah, I'm in Texas, United States of America. Hey, can, can they hear the music? I have music playing in the background, but I don't know if it's going through or not. Yeah, let's go. Been working with filming and photography for 20 years. Dang, you got a lot of experience. I, uh, yeah, I've only been doing this for 3 years. Then again, I'm 23 years old. I was in college whenever I started. Narasa Films, have you joined our, uh Facebook Insiders Group. Somebody just requested to join, so I just— it reminded me. Unless that was you. Yeah, our Insiders Group, um, we go live every Friday. I try to go live every Friday. Uh, we just talk about this kind of stuff and growing. Online using video, because video is— it changed my life, it's changed many people's lives who own businesses, who want to open doors to new opportunities, reach more people, etc. Been working for 20 years in the industry. What are some, some of the things that you film? All right, let's see if we can accept this member. Oh, it is you!

Nice, man.

Thanks for joining the Insiders group. Approve. Love it, man. Welcome to the club. Hey, make a post in there introducing yourself. It's always good to have connections like that. Yeah, we're just hanging out. I have, uh, my my first— or I say first, I guess, of the day— my first coaching client of the day at 2 o'clock. And I've been helping her out with, um, I've been helping her out with just her business, the business side of things, as well as the camera side of things, and learning different tactics, different strategies whenever sending like packages to clients, that sort of thing. She's, she's claimed it's been extremely helpful. So it's been cool to just see, see somebody else benefit from the things that I've gone through already. And a lot of the times I want to make this YouTube channel and this content like about, like if I were talking to myself 3 years ago, like, what would I want to know? What kind of cameras? Like, um, who are the ideal clients to go after? Like, what kind of stuff do you like to do? Make a lot of outdoor sports videos for companies. Everything except weddings. Weddings are, uh, very intense. Let's just say that. I, I kind of chilled out on weddings. I actually raised my prices, like, I, I think I almost tripled my prices because I didn't want to do it anymore. And so if somebody's going to be paying me triple the amount, then I'll consider it and I'll, I'll get through an 8-hour day. But not it. Weddings are a lot of work. They're a lot of post-production editing, especially the way I do it, because I like— I'm— I don't know why, but my brain automatically assumes it has to be like a Netflix film or documentary, and I'm like, it has to be perfect, and it drives me nuts. Outdoor sports videos, Mike does. Mike, who's sitting in the back over there, see him? He's on the couch. Oh no, he's on the chair right there. Mike does a lot of sports stuff. He shoots a lot of videos and photos for football. He does a lot of baseball, basketball, softball. That's kind of his favorite thing to do is sports. And there's sports teams everywhere. Make 2025 the year you make faster checkouts happen. Sorry for the ads. I don't pay for YouTube Premium. Got him, man. What time is it in Brazil right now? Also, do you make YouTube videos? Marassa Films, do you make YouTube videos? We're just hanging out, man. It's cool to talk to some of you guys. Um, there's multiple people who I've never met, and so it's just cool to get to hang out and talk to you guys. I kind of went live at a weird time unexpectedly, so I don't expect a ton of people to come on here, but thanks for being one of the subscribers, Narasa. We're at 1,168 subscribers, I think, today. It's been such a cool, uh, journey so far, and honestly kind of crazy that we're even using commas in our subscriber count. It's crazy. It's 4:27 PM in Brazil. Making good money selling photos of sports events like road races. Ooh, there's sadly not a ton of races here where I live. The bigger cities there are, but using facial recognition and buy them if they want, dang, that's legit. Facial recognition. I use a website called Pixieset. It's kind of targeted for photographers who do a lot of weddings. Sorry for all the burping. I just, I just drank this carbonated high-o. It's pretty gas if you haven't tried it.

Running events.

Yeah, that's, that's dope. Are you working today? I guess you're wrapping up your work day. That's so weird, it's only 3 hours ahead of us. Yeah, it's currently 1:29 where I'm at. This afternoon we're shooting a brand story of a realtor, a group of realtors. Um, we're doing a project where we're taking the best businesses of our city and people are signing up for slots, and we'll go out there, do a little brand story video. Takes like an hour to shoot. And we put together this big video where everybody can collab on Facebook. And it's a, it's a cool local community outreach that we do just to kind of get in front of these business owners, get in front of these new people. Ideally, we have like newer clients every single month or every quarter whenever we do these. They come on here and sign up in these slots, and then it opens a door to do future jobs. And that's just— I think that's going to be one of the things that we focus on in 2025, is nurturing new relationships as well as like doubling down on our previous relationships, because the clients that have already worked with us are the reason that we're even here. And so also trimming all the fat at the same time, trimming the fat of the clients who aren't necessarily priority. That's going to be, that's going to be a big project for 2025, cuz why would I have 30 clients that are lower-tier clients whenever we could have 5 big clients and make quadruple the amount of money working half the time. That, that's the whole idea with that. They take a selfie and the system uses facial recognition to display all the photos featuring them. From there, they can choose and purchase the photos they want. You can also make custom offers if interested. This has been a very profitable system here in Brazil. Example, a single event with 500 athletes can generate income in just one day. What system is that? I might have to look into that. I've never heard of the facial recognition. I mean, I feel like it makes sense that that would be a thing. I just haven't ever seen anybody use it. Then again, Abilene is like significantly behind the times, so often I have to go to big towns like Dallas or Austin to see what the newer things are doing or happening. That might be good for Mike to utilize. I wonder if we can recognize through football helmets. How do I— I wonder if I can— I don't know if I can add to Tags. Yeah, if you guys have— you, you probably have, if you watched our videos, you've probably seen the studio right here. That's where we film, um, a lot of our clients' podcasts as well as like this is where we office out of. And so we edit, we keep all of our equipment. All of our equipment is over here in a tool chest right there. And, uh, yeah, this is where we keep all our equipment. This is where we do the editing. This is where I make a lot of YouTube videos, which I'm trying to do more of. What kind of, uh, what kind of content do you like watching, Narasa Films? What kind of content do you like watching? Because I've done like camera reviews and I'm still like a small enough channel to like— I'm still discovering what it is that people want to watch, and so far it's been the reviews that people like watching. We, uh, we do a lot of reviews. I've done vlogs. Reviews tend to do the best. I think we're about to have my FX30 video that I made recently, it's about to hit 10,000 views. We also have a podcast here. How much do you charge for a podcast? So the way we have it set up here is we do pretty much strictly members. So we have like memberships that we sell. Uh, I think we have like 5 or 6 slots that we have available, and they basically come in and we have everything set up in the studio for them. Like if they're having 4 people, we'll have a 4 people, uh, 4-person setup ready to go for them. All of our lights are on. We have usually have another light, but we packed up everything. Because we have to leave here in a little bit. But we usually have it all ready to go. All the microphones are ready. We already sound checked. And the, uh, like, the whole point of it is like they come in, sit down, do their thing on the podcast, leave, and we do the rest. And so they get 4 episodes a month. They get a bunch of reels cut up with captions from their episodes, and we put it on Spotify, Apple and YouTube, all 4 of them. And that's about $1,200— $1,250 a month. And so it's not like the most expensive or profitable thing, but it is— it has been a very good consistent income for the studio to pay for the space, to pay for payroll, all the softwares and subscriptions that we need. Like, it's been awesome for that stuff. But when life happens— I enjoy watching equipment reviews and tips. Okay, a lot of people like the equipment reviews. I look— that's one of the things I watch all the time. For some reason, I love watching about cameras. I love learning about cameras. Um, anything that can help me do my job better, I love learning about. So like, yeah, the Osmo Pocket, uh, DJI, the little Osmo Pocket review I did, it did great considering I only had at the time 150 subscribers and I was getting 2,000 views, 3,000 views. The FX30 video popped off, it got almost 10,000 views, and then all of the other videos I put out they really don't do very well, which is fine. I'm still trying to discover like what it is that the people want from our channel, and I'm leaning towards equipment reviews so far. The problem is that you always want to keep buying when watching these kind of videos. Yes, my wife would agree that I buy too much equipment. But hey, you only live once. You can always make more money. That's what I say. Yeah, I can watch one YouTube video and then all of a sudden decide to spend $3,000 just like that because I'm like, that looks legit. But then I can write it off as a business expense now. Because I run a business. So that's really, that's really been, uh, the whole reason I get away with that stuff. Like, we can go to Best Buy or Amazon or Walmart and just, oh, I want some $500 headphones. Oh, business expense. I have to go to the US once a year to buy equipment because it's too expensive in Brazil. What the heck? Can you order it? You could surely— you could order it on Amazon or order it from the US. I mean, I guess you have to have it imported. That might add a lot of, a lot of cost. I didn't even think about that. I usually just order everything from companies like MPB, um, KEH, a bunch of used equipment. Uh, Facebook Marketplace is great. Amazon is pretty much my last resort if I can't find anything used because it's easy to return things on Amazon.

They make it really easy.

Hey, make sure to follow while we're here. Make sure to follow the Instagram, keep the conversation going. Darren Dravon, right there. If we order online, we pay 100% tax on the value of everything coming from a brod, and our currency is currently worth 7 to 1 against the dollar. Oh my goodness. So you have to make a trip to the US. Where do you usually go? I've always wondered that. People from other countries, if they have to come to the US for whatever, like, where is the first thing they think of Koei. Nice, she's got the follow. Oh man, these are great shots. What was, uh, what was this one shot on? Those look great. Usually go to California, New York, and Florida. This year I'm going to Orlando because it's cheaper. Coincidentally, my wife and I wanted to visit Texas next time. Yeah, come on down to Texas, we can meet up. We're like right in the middle of Texas, so you probably have to fly. The Dallas. We can make it the trip to Dallas. It's like a 2-hour drive. That's awesome. What camera did you use to film that one? See, this is why I love YouTube, because I'm talking to somebody from Brazil right now, all the way across the world. I want to do more live streams like this. It's just a matter of finding like an hour to just sit here and do this. Today we have like— we had a gap between lunch and our 2 o'clock appointment. And so I was like, let's just—

let's freaking go live, see what happens.

Texas is awesome, man. There's also like way less taxes, just saying. There's a lot less taxes than California and New York. People have been speaking very highly of Texas lately on YouTube. Yeah, everybody's moving here and it's for a reason, because it's, it's, it's awesome place to live, man. There's no, there's no state taxes, which California is— has insane state taxes. Cost of living is pretty good. We're not all cowboys like everybody thinks. All right, got a few more minutes left and then I'm gonna hop off, get ready for this coaching session. Yeah, what are your plans for 2025? Oh, that's cool. I can put comments up. Let's go!

That's legit.

I didn't know I could do that. You just start doing that for all of them, man. Boom, it's up there. I have the FX30, the a6700, and an a6000. In your opinion, what should be my next camera? Well, are you needing— like, what are you going to need another camera for? Cuz in my opinion, I would sell the 6000, get either an another 6700 or another FX30 or even an FX3. If you want a new A cam, then get an FX6. Those things are legit. My plans for this year are to make a lot of money because I have many big clients here. Dang, send some over here, dude. That's awesome. Good for you, man. Hopefully we can make some money while we're doing it too. Last year was pretty good. We doubled what we did in 2023, and 2025's goal is a, uh, million revenue. I don't know if we'll hit it or not, but that's our goal. FX6 or FX3? Since you already have an FX30, I would say get the FX6. The FX6 is awesome. I've used all of those cameras. I don't have an FX6 yet, but I'm going to buy one. The FX6 has internal ND filters and it's insane. You literally just push a button Welcome to the live stream. I saw somebody else join. Where are you watching from? Grammarly doesn't just help you with polishing emails, it also lets— yeah, the internal ND filters are— I, I'm just jealous. I wish they were on the FX30s. Honestly, it is a little bit more expensive, but if you're going to be making some big money Might as well. Lack of IBIS on the FX6, you think it's a problem? I don't, I don't think it's that big of a problem. It is heavier, so it's going to be harder to have as much shake. Um, there's also, uh, you can put it into, what is it called, the Sony, um It's this, uh, dang, it's on the tip of my tongue. It's a software that you can put it in and it, it uses all the gyro data to stabilize it in post. Then again, I haven't used an FX6 handheld very much. A lot of people like the handheld look. I love on the FX30s the, uh So there's IBIS, and then there's also the, the software, like active stabilization, normal stabilization, whatever. That works great. Sometimes it's honestly too much. It looks a little bit, uh, wavy, kind of makes me dizzy watching it. But I film everything, probably 98% of things, handheld. Um, pretty much the only thing that I use a gimbal for now is real estate stuff. The gyro data takes too long to stabilize. Yeah, I haven't honestly used it that much. I've heard it works great though if you have— I guess there's a better CPU help. I haven't had too many issues after the, uh, the active stabilization, the internal, or the IBIS, plus like Premiere Pro's warp stabilizer. I really haven't had any issues, and if it's bad enough then I just don't use the footage, unfortunately. I agree with the FX6, it's a shame it's so expensive, but I'll try to save it. Hey man, you can get an FX3 too, like that's an incredible camera. If you want a smaller camera, that's going to be your choice because it's literally— I don't know if you've ever used— you've probably have, but it's literally the exact same size as an FX X-T30, exact same size, it just has a full-frame sensor. Great at nighttime. The FX6 is pretty great too. It just depends on like what you like to use, man. If you're, if you're like running, running around like throwing your cameras in a bag, like if you don't have a lot of time to set up your shots then you're probably gonna honestly lean towards the FX3. The FX6 is like, I mean, you can put it on a tripod, you can put it, um, some people have put it on drones, which is insane. Any filters a must-have? Absolutely. I have to put all of ours on externally. I use a matte box and I bought some glass. You can you can put in the matte box. But outdoors, you have to have it. If you don't have ND filters and you're a videographer, then you're missing out. Because I can tell when people don't use ND filters because you got to bump that shutter up freaking high, and then it looks all choppy. It just doesn't look good. Doesn't look good at all. All right guys, well, I gotta go. Um, I got a meeting at 2, but thanks for hopping on the live stream, hanging out today. I'm gonna be doing more of these, so make sure to hit the notification bell, um, so you're notified. Thanks for the follow, uh, it's good talking to you all the way, um, from Brazil. The FX6's image has something special about it, has very little rolling shutter. Man, it is incredible. It is incredible camera. I, I am pumped to get one because I have two FX30s right now, and if I have two FX30s as my my B-cams and an A-cam as my FX6, then I won't have to buy cameras for years. Like, it's, it's awesome. But anyways, thanks for hanging out, guys. We'll see you guys in the next one.