In this video, wildlife photographer Don Orkoskey walks viewers through the budget‑focused videography rig he assembled around a Nikon Z6 II to produce wildlife footage for his YouTube channel. He explains his motivation—expanding from stills to video while keeping costs low—and details each component: the Z6 II paired with a Nikon 80‑400 mm F‑mount lens via a Z‑to‑F adapter, a K&F matte box with variable ND filters, a low‑cost Neewer F100 field monitor (noting its limited frame‑rate and lack of camera overlays), a Takstar shotgun microphone, a Neewer V‑mount battery powering the camera through a dummy battery, a Tilta follow‑focus system with thicker gearing and a Neewer lens support, camouflage tape to conceal the rig, a SmallRig cage and mounting plate with rails and a cold‑shoe handle, and a K&F tripod head mounted on inexpensive carbon‑fiber legs. He highlights the shortcomings of the cheap monitor and tripod legs, outlines planned upgrades (better legs, a monitor/recorder capable of N‑Log RAW capture), and encourages viewers to subscribe and help fund these improvements. The video ends with a promise to show footage captured using the rig.
Chapters
In today's video, I am going to introduce you to the wildlife videography rig that I use. Now, if you're familiar with my channel, you may know me as a wildlife photographer, and if you watched my most recent video, on the Nikon D850, then you would have seen my entire rig for still wildlife photography. So when I put that out, I had some folks ask me about the videography that I'm doing because I'm doing a lot more for YouTube these days. And as a result of that, I need to create some video. So I've had to pull together a videography rig. Seeing as how I'm primarily a still photographer, I wanted to build out a wildlife videography rig as affordably as I could. So here behind me you'll see my setup and let's walk through it and I'll tell you what all we have there. So starting off, we have the Nikon Z6 II and you can see I have mounted a little phone holder on there. You'll notice that I have paired the Z6 II with an F-mount lens, which is why I have a Z to F adapter on there. This is the Nikon 80-400. It's an older model of the 80-400. Which has a fairly slow autofocus, but that's fine because as you see, I'm manually focusing this lens when doing wildlife photography. In addition to that, I have a K&F matte box here which has the ability to have filters placed in there. It is pretty bright today. I probably should have Uh, my neutral density filter on there. I do have a variable one. This lets you place 100mm style filters in there. I do have a lot of those as well. You also notice that up top I do have a field monitor. This is the Neewer F100, I believe is the model. As far as field monitors go, it is inexpensive, which is its biggest selling point. But that being said, that's about all that it really has going for it. With the Z6 II, the F100 by Neewer will only show you— in terms of video output— it will only show you a direct feed. It will not show you any of your settings, anything that you can see on your camera's monitor, which honestly kind of sucks. In addition to that, it will only work if you are at 1/60th of a second or slower. So it's probably a fine field monitor for things other than wildlife photography. For wildlife photography, wildlife videography, it's very helpful to be able to shoot at 120 frames a second. Like I said, this monitor will only go up to 60 frames a second. But when it comes to wildlife, this is probably not the best monitor to spend your money on. Save your money and get something a little bit better. In terms of audio, I have a Takstar Shotgun mic. It does an okay job. Again, keep in mind that my purpose with building out this rig was to be able to do what I'm doing as inexpensively as possible. I also have a little V-mount battery by Neewer, and I don't remember exactly how much power this thing has. It's, it's pretty small, but it's much, much more powerful than the internal batteries. that Nikon provides, and of course I just have a dummy battery hooked up to it so that I'm powering the camera with that. I have a nice Tilta follow focus here. I really love the Tilta follow focus. It is an absolute gem to use. And in addition to that, you'll notice that I have some camouflage tape that's on the lens as well as some that's sort of falling off of the body here. The reason that I have this camouflage sort of gauze tape essentially on here is really just to break up the— it's really just to break up the camera body and allow for the wildlife to be hopefully a little bit more comfortable. Other tools that are really helpful are things like this lens support that I have here that is also by Neewer. If I can get it to focus on it, there you go. The lens support is a really nice feature to have. And it basically keeps the lens a little bit more stable so it doesn't move around as much, especially when using the follow focus. In addition, you'll notice that the lens is kitted out not only with the follow focus but with the extra thicker gearing here, which those are also by Neewer. Well, actually this one's not. I don't remember what— who this one's by, but this one is by Neewer. This one that I have on the zoom. The zoom on this lens is very tight. You can see how much my setup is shaking with it, which is unfortunate, but that is what it is. Keep in mind, again, trying to do this as cheap as possible. In addition to that, I have to hold the camera up here, a SmallRig mounting plate that The camera body is sitting on. It is on backwards. Don't leave a comment telling me that because I already know that. The reason it's on backwards is so that I could fit everything else onto the rails that I have it on. I have 12-inch rails here to support everything. You can see a little bit more camouflage tape on there. I have a SmallRig cage for the Z6 II here. That cage is basically allowing me to hang things off of it. I have mounted this handle which allows me— it frees up that hot shoe area and provides me with a cold shoe at the top of that and allows me then to also use the cold shoe on the cage for the microphone there. In addition to that, the nut that is holding the monitor on there is also from SmallRig. This thing's great. I've, I've had other ones that I've tried to use in the past, but this is so much better put together. You know, it'll tilt around and move much easier than some of those flimsy ones like the one that comes with the newer monitor here. Now the camera, lens, monitor, all of that stuff would be Pretty much useless if not for the tripod that I have everything on. So first, let's talk about the tripod head. It's a K&F Concept tripod head. It works very well with this rig. It holds the weight nicely. The biggest challenge that I have with it is that I have it on an inexpensive set of tripod legs, and those do not hold up very well. They're carbon fiber and they aren't meant for this much weight. You can see, potentially see, how easy it is to shift things around. So the next thing that I spend any money on when it comes to this rig is absolutely going to be a new set of tripod legs, mostly because they'll be a bit less expensive than my second purchase that I need to make next. A new field monitor. I'd like to get a monitor and recorder, that way I can send N-Log video straight from the camera. It's RAW video for Nikon. That's going to have to hold off a little bit. When I do get a new field monitor, I want a monitor/recorder. Maybe birthday or next Christmas, I don't know. Hopefully it'll be sooner than that. One way to help me make sure that it's sooner than that would be to subscribe to my channel and like this video, watch some other videos, help me monetize it, because once I monetize it, I can start using some of those funds Towards upgrading the equipment and then bring you guys even better videos. So remember, I put this rig together as inexpensively as possible. The goal was to just have something that I could do some wildlife video with. Well, that's probably enough talking about my kit. Let's get some footage from it and let me show you what it can do. If you enjoy this content, it would be a huge favor to me if you would subscribe to the channel. I need to reach 1,000 subscribers right now. I am well away from that. Thank you again for being here. I really appreciate you, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
