Flying from IRAQ to TURKEY (buying all new camera gear)

So since we're just having a little chit chat right now, we thought we would also talk about like the emotional side of this upgrade.

We shouldn't talk about that. I'm an emotional wreck right now.

Let's talk about it. I think it's important.

Yeah.

Okay, bye. Take care. See you later.

I'm so sad, so tired. Our flight is at 4:40am a.m. which I think is the earliest flight we've ever had. I don't even think my body went into REM sleep last night. My alarm went off and I was just like.

Oh, why? It's this area. We should not exist.

I don't know if I even want coffee. I feel like it's just wrong in the middle of the night. I need to be sleepy.

What a crazy 24 hours.

It feels like forever ago that we were having that snowball fight with the two of us from back to.

And then we went to Saddam's palace and then we were at the most holy city in the Yazidi religion walking.

Around barefoot in the rain.

Then we went to see where the front line was with the fighting with.

Isis and we ate an entire fried fish wearing traditional Kurdish dresses.

And now we're about to board a two and a half hour flight to Turkey.

I'm very sad that we're leaving Iraq.

I feel like my mindset is really shifting over the past like three days. So like when we first got here I was like, oh my gosh, we're in Iraq. We're in Iraq.

Every moment.

That's what I kept thinking. Oh, I'm walking down the sidewalk and I rack. Oh, I'm eating at a restaurant and I write like it was like everything I wreck. Alright, alright. But now like it just feels like any other country.

The people here have been the nicest people in the world. I still can't believe it.

We have definitely felt the most welcome here that we've felt anywhere. And even like our tour guide, like he's a tour guide. Like he interacts with tourists all the time. He did not have to let us sleep at his house and then bring us to the airport at 2 o' clock in the morning. Like who does that?

More people should come here.

I seriously, I think we booked three days here thinking like we'll get there and we'll feel scared and uncomfortable and we'll be glad. Like it's a really short trip but I could have spent so much longer here.

Yeah, I'm glad we came.

Yeah, for sure.

It was better than I ever could have thought.

We're gonna sleep for two and a half hours on a plan.

We made it.

Forgot we needed a visa. Luckily it looks like you can just apply and then download it and you don't have to wait 24 hours. Hopefully. This floor is very hard. Once verified, your application will be mailed to you within one hour.

I got my visa and then my phone died.

My payment just went to a blank screen.

Alright, we made it into the country. Now we just have to catch a bus to our hotel.

We're on the bus. No problem. We've only been landed for the last three hours.

This bus takes another hour and it's.

Only like 7 in the morning.

The bed.

We were completely useless the rest of yesterday, but we slept for a very long time last night and now we're feeling great.

We're about to head out for a big day. But we're not here in Istanbul to do the normal travel thing. Instead, this was just the cheapest place to stop over between Iraq and our next destination. And we just needed a few days to prepare.

So even though we're not doing any actual traveling in Istanbul, we have a lot of exciting things to do today. But some of it might be kind of sad.

Let's go. When we very first started travel vlogging, we used this camera for a whole year.

And now for over the last two years we have been using this camera, the Sony A6500. And it has been so good to us.

Sadly, it's time to say goodbye today.

How you feeling?

I don't know. Mixture of emotions. I hate making big purchases because they get buyer's remorse like nobody's business. But at the same time, I'm so frustrated with this camera. We're currently testing to see if the crane that we've been using for the last two years can balance the Sony with the new 2.8g master lens. But I think it's gonna be way too heavy.

Amazing. This thing still works.

Can you see it moving? Oh, it's so cool. So much heavier on my shoulder. All our talking parts are gonna be like 10 seconds now because that's as long as I can hold it. So one of the biggest things that was keeping me from switching to a full frame Sony was I didn't want to have one of the huge like 70 to 200 lenses because I don't want to carry a backpack everywhere we go. And that's what you'd have to do if you wanted to get carry that zoom lens. But it turns out there's something called the Super 35 mode on these new cameras. And so you can use a crop sensor lens on a full frame camera. So we can still use the zoom lens that we have that has the wire zoom. And then we'll use this as a lighting. That's the plan at least.

So anybody who buys a new camera knows that it's a really big deal, it's a big purchase, but just the fact that it's what Nate has in his hand all day, every single day.

So it's like buying a new thing that's going to be glued to my hand. Oh, so many decisions.

Hello.

Wow. So bad. That was a totally crazy experience. We're on our way to the next camera store. We walked by this alleyway that had like a billion people waiting in line for some kind of food hole in the wall restaurant. And so I was like, well, we have to get whatever this is. So I get in line and Nate goes to the next camera store to look around. So I just thought like, I would be in line forever, Nate would finish, she'd come back and meet me. It took like two seconds. So while you're in line, you pay a guy, and however many you buy, that's how many bags he gives you. So he gave me two bags. So then I get to the front and the guy is taking these wraps, throwing them down, taking the food, putting it on there, squirting the sauce. And before he's even done wrapping it up, he's like, man, back please. And I was like.

Open, please, open please, madam. Thank you very. Thank you. Bye bye.

And they were only a dollar each. And it turns out it is the raw meatballs that we had on our food tour last time we were in Isabel, which we love. So I'm so excited.

Thank you. Okay. We didn't buy anything. The whole thing that like started this shopping experience was that this camera has really, really been acting up. Like for the past month it's been like kind of breaking. But recently it's been like really broken.

And so we just took that as an excuse to just go ahead and upgrade. We've had this camera for two years and the truth is we've been tempted to upgrade so many times cuz there's always something newer, bigger, better. And we know that the newest and the biggest and the best isn't always the right choice for us. Like, you have to have a camera that works for you. And this camera has really worked for us for two years.

It's the camera that helps you tell the better story. And because this one's like, a little bit lighter, a little bit more mobile. We can capture more of the shots that we want to. And so even though it's been tempting for the last two years to upgrade, we've stopped ourselves because we feel like this is what works best for our style and for telling our story.

And the truth is, there's always a camera that's like, oh, we're coming out with this soon. And so we're always like, oh, wait. So that one comes out, and it just keeps getting pushed off. And this lens acting up has really made us realize, like, okay, it's time. We're gonna sleep on it and revisit the camera store tomorrow.

It's hard to make, like, a $5,000 decision in, like, two minutes or an afternoon. We've really been here all afternoon.

Okay. After a good night's sleep, we woke up with a lot of clarity, and we knew exactly what we needed.

So today.

We purchased the Sony A7 III and the Sony G Master F 2.8. 16 to 35 millimeter lens and.

The DJI Ronin S gimbal because our other one wasn't strong enough to hold this new camera. So a completely new setup. But that's not all. I need some help over here. We also bought the DJI Mavic 2 Pro because we don't have ours right now because we shipped it home before we went to the Middle east, and we really need a drone for where we're going next. Plus, I've been looking for a good excuse to upgrade to this one with a lot bigger sensor, but we also got one.

It's just the fly more package for this. Two extra batteries. We pretty much spent all of our money today.

That's really all. We didn't get anything else.

Scoot over so you can come in here with me.

Oh, man. What a day.

Oh, wow.

How you feel?

Oh, I don't know. So many emotions.

Buyer's remorse.

I'm just trying to think if I've ever spent that much money at one time in my life.

How much was my wedding ring I bought?

That cost more than your wedding ring. I never told Kara how much your wedding ring cost, but that costs more.

Than your wedding ring.

I bought a car with cash once, but I can't remember how much it cost. That probably just cost more than the car that I bought.

Everybody tell them. It's gonna be so worth it. We're gonna look so good in our new camera.

I feel like we should explain our thinking behind the upgrade. So yesterday, when we left off we were trying to decide, like, whether do we just buy a new lens for our old camera and keep using the same setup that we've been using for the last two years, or do we just, like, go the extra mile and up everything like we've been thinking about.

For a while, the extra 10 miles.

That's kind of like my personality, though. Like, if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it all the way. If we're gonna travel, we're gonna travel to 100 countries.

We've been asking ourselves why we wanted to do this, and we've been wanting to do this for a long time, but there hasn't really been, like, that push for it until our camera broke. So when we first started traveling, we had the G7X little dinky camera. But we had never vlogged before. We had never told a story through video before, and it was all new and challenging and exciting. And after that first year, we had it down pat. We weren't really doing anything new with our videos. And that's when we upgraded to the camera that we have now with just one lens and the stabilizer. And that was a whole new world. It completely changed our style. We were super challenged with all of our gear.

I feel like we've been progressing in, like, our storytelling and, like, the way that our videos are structured, but we haven't had an upgrade in quality in the last two years. Like, your editing has gotten substantially better in the last two years, but, like, we haven't upgraded the quality from, like, a camera standpoint in a really long time. And we just felt like. Like, we always want the next video to be better than the next. And so it just felt like it was time. You know, we've been working on everything outside of the gear, but now it's time to upgrade the gear.

We're really excited about this. We think that it's gonna give us a new energy in our video, you know, like, having all of these new toys to play with. I think we're gonna feel like we need to, like, live up to the quality.

Not that we needed this to, like, still be excited about vlogging, but this, like, definitely moves our excitement level up several notches.

Plus, we thought it's the beginning of a new year. We have so many awesome things coming up. It's a. Especially this month. And if we were ever gonna make the most of new toys, it was today. So that's why we just did it.

So I feel, oh, it's not in the box. The camera's not in the box. This is just a prop. I feel like I really like the style of our videos right now, and I didn't want that to change. And so, like, that was my biggest fear with upgrading this gear. But as long as I'm strong enough to hold the Ronin with the Sony on it, it shouldn't change the style of our videos. The quality should just increase. So that's the goal. Hopefully you won't see a big style change with this. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe it'll change for the better, maybe. But I really like what you have going right now.

So since we're just having a little chit chat right now, we thought we would also talk about, like, the emotional side of this upgrade. Before making videos was our job. Before, it's what we did every day for a living. We watched Casey Neistat and still do and find him very inspirational. And we remember seeing him crash his drone and being like, oh, I gotta.

Go get a new drone.

And, like, went and bought a new one and replaced it, like, right then and there.

Who just goes in like, oh, yeah, just I need to go pick up a new drone. And then, like, that's something that's a purchase I would think about for weeks. And then, like, when we got our.

Drone, I missed that in our timeline. Like, we got a drone at one point and that really, like, changed things. We literally agonized for months on, like, should we buy this drone?

I think we waited till Christmas. I think it was like, that's when you get new toys. But, like, now this is, like, turned into work. So if this. If it seems completely crazy to you that we just, like, went out and bought thousands of dollars worth of new.

Gear, we feel like it's crazy too.

I completely understand where you're coming from.

But, like, we remember that feeling and it's still crazy.

This feels completely crazy, but we look at it as, like, business investment now. So here's the real problem now. This box, this box, this box, this box. And last but not least, this box, we have a carry on and a backpack, and they're both already full. I don't know what we're gonna do with all of this. I'm gonna, like, just look like mega tourists getting on the plane. Like, I'll just have to put the strap on it. I have, like, four cameras strapped around me. They're like, sir, why. Why do you have your drone strapped around your neck on a lanyard?

Okay. I feel like this video is so different than anything we've shot. In a really long time.

We started in Iraq. This video started in Iraq, like, three days ago.

This is, like, a really big step for us, and it's like, you'll see the changes. So we just thought we should share with you.

We never thought we would be in this life. And we really are just super grateful that we're able to do this.

And that's how we should end this. This. We should say thank you. Because without you all watching these videos and supporting our journey, there's no way we would have the money to go out and, like, buy all this new gear like we were. We're amazed that we can afford to keep traveling and making these videos, much less go out and buy all this gear that's going to allow us to upgrade the quality of these videos. So thank you.

Let's open them up.

Sorry.

No. I don't know. I thought this was a walking road.

So we're going to eat.

We're going to eat. We're going to eat.

Michelangelo, I think he thinks you're Cristiano.

What? We're having a great time. This doesn't hurt at all.

That's a very expensive thing you're balancing on your head.

I thought it wasn't in here.

It was supposed to be a joke for the camera. It was a lie.

Oh, I know what I wanted to say. At some point, we'll show you what it all looks like set up. But we have to be up at 4 tomorrow morning.

Oh, God.

And we still have to figure out how to pack all of this. So at some point. Wow.

Wow.

I think this. This case is going to be left behind. Wow. Look at that.

Wow.

This could be the first Karen. Nate unboxing video.