Full show notes for this episode can be found at https://jakehower.com/3-how-an-amatuer-dslr-shooter-built-a-massive-online-audience-with-dave-dugdale/

welcome to episode number three.

Thank you for tuning in again, if you've heard the first two episodes, if you're

new to the show welcome I'd encourage you to listen to this episode and then

go back to the previous two where we interviewed Ryan Spanger about web video

and Jules Watkins about using just your iPhone To shoot high quality video, right?

In this episode we're speaking with Dave Dugdale from learning DSLR video.

com.

Dave is an amazing guy.

He's built a, an incredibly large audience online as an amateur DSLR user.

Essentially what he's done is he's I guess recorded his experience

with with learning how to use.

The DSLR camera and published it online for everybody to follow along with him.

We discuss a whole heap of amazing topics.

It's an incredible episode, probably my favorite to date.

So I hope you enjoy certainly stick around till the end of the show where

I'll reveal our next couple of guests.

So we've got some very exciting people coming up in the next few episodes.

So stick around to the end where I'll reveal them.

And again, thank you to everybody who's provided.

Feedback for the previous two shows.

It's been really incredible.

If you'd like this episode or the previous episodes, please head

across to iTunes and leave a review.

I'll be publishing some of the comments that we get in iTunes in future episodes.

That's it.

Let's get stuck into the interview.

. Welcome back listeners.

Today I've got Dave Dugdale from Learning DSLR Video.

Dot com on the line with me.

Welcome, Dave.

Hey,

thanks for having me on.

I know these podcasts.

I've done quite a few myself, maybe 20 or so years back, and

I know they take a lot of work.

So thanks for doing

this.

Yeah, no problems at all.

It's certainly this is, we're now into our the third episode that I'm recording

and it was a no brainer to get you on.

I shoot myself with the DSLR and we've been shooting for about six months

and I found The resource you've built over it's a learning DSLR video.

com to be extremely useful for myself.

So I'm really excited to have you on the show

today.

Hey, thanks for having me.

It's fun to share knowledge with everybody and these podcasts

are a great way to do it.

And I know when I've done podcasts myself, I've usually

do it for more selfish reasons.

I'm like, I want to interview this guy because he knows a lot

about X and he could help me.

Yeah, these podcasts are great for sharing information.

It certainly is.

And it's a great way to, to speak to potentially people you

may not be able to get hold of.

And as you say, just.

Just ask them some questions and you can get a lot out of yourself.

So I know the past two episodes that I've got, I've I've had a heap out of

it that I've implemented just on my own.

All right, Dave.

So for our listeners out there, what we're going to do in this episode, we're

going to be spending about 30 minutes and we'll dive a little bit into Dave's

background and we're going to then spend a bit of time looking at how.

Dave's gone about setting up learning DSLR video.

com and how he's built such a, an amazing audience over at the site there.

We're then going to bring you some some of Dave's top tips for shooting with

the DSLR and yeah, we'll go from there.

So Dave, why don't you, why don't you kick off with a little bit of

your background of prior to setting up learning DSLR and also, yeah.

Why you chose to go ahead and set up that particular site.

Unlike your first guest, cause I think that's the only one you've

got posted on your website so far, but I guess he had an education in film school.

I am not like that.

I don't have any film school education or whatsoever.

My background is actually.

I did, I studied audio engineering in school.

Actually I have a bachelor's of music.

And I used to design real large scale sound systems like churches,

arenas, football stadiums, airports.

Sound systems that were very large.

So I have a strong foundation in audio and then, as your question to why I started

it my when our first child was born about 10 years ago, I, I decided to stay home

and she kept working because I'd have the first shift, as a stay at home dad.

And then when our second child was born, I actually went back to work.

But during that time that I was a stay at home dad, I don't know if

you have kids of your own, but they don't do much in the first few months.

They basically sleep and eat, you change diapers.

So I had some extra time on my hands.

So I started a number of websites.

Some have done quite well many years ago and yeah.

What I was doing several years ago when I got really interested in DSLR is

because I've been shooting video for, I don't know, ever since YouTube came

around to do help promote my real estate websites and they were doing really well.

It was a technique that was working really well for me.

I was creating spoofs and funny videos and stuff like that.

Mostly with a camcorder.

But then I remember watching an apple yeah.

Promotional video and I really like the look and I wanted to spoof it, but I

didn't know why the shot looked a certain way and I kept studying it and looking

at it was like asking on the forums and people said that's just a usually

that's a real shallow depth of field.

And I was like how do I get that shallow depth of field?

And people were like you can just.

Buy a DSLR.

They're pretty cheap now and you can shoot video with them.

I was like, Oh, let me try that.

And when the five D mark two came out it was too expensive.

And then the 70 came out, it was too expensive.

And then the T2I came out.

I was like, Oh, I'm buying it.

It's cheap.

Let's try this.

That's how I started this whole process is with the website.

I was just like let's create another website.

Cause websites are pretty easy to create.

And I just, I, at first I thought it was going to be more of a brain

dump where I would just find.

A particular topic I wanted to look, look at our test, like auto lighting optimizer,

for instance, on the cannon cameras.

I was like, if I turn it on, what does it do?

If I turn it off, what does it do?

So I, why not create an actual video of it for my own sake so

I can go back and see later.

And so I published it to the website to share with other people and people

enjoyed me doing those type of tests.

So they're like, encourage me to do more.

And I kept doing more and more as I was learning.

So I was like, yeah.

Maybe making one or two videos a week on things that I was learning.

And that's pretty much why I started it

fantastic.

It's I just say a bit of a brain dump to start with, but You've certainly built

up an amazing resource now and i've Spent hours and hours on the site and on your

Vimeo channel and YouTube channel going through all the videos and whenever

now I'm trying to look at something or correct something with my videos, I'll

just pop across to your site and bang in a few keywords into the custom search and

nine times out of ten, you've covered.

Covered my issues.

So it's great.

I'm glad I could help.

Yes,

absolutely.

So it's a, it's really good.

I'm let's let's move on to some of the stats and your audience

surrounding learning DSLR video.

com.

Why don't to give a little bit of perspective.

If to our listeners, why don't you just run through, maybe some of the like

website video visitors how many videos you might have on your site and where

the majority of your community I guess comes to whether it's the site or whether

it's your YouTube or Vimeo channels.

Sure.

First off, in terms of visitors to my site, I've been.

typically hovering around 100, 000 visits a month.

I think I haven't looked at my stats in a while, but good 40% of

those visitors are from outside the United States, which is really cool.

Cause I get a lot of people like yourself from all over the world,

which is, it's a lot of fun talking to people from just about everywhere.

You're asking how many posts, that's a good question.

I'm pulling it up right now.

I guess two or 300.

Yeah, I've got to about 250.

And I've got about 30 drafts.

I've got always ideas.

I got constant ideas of things that I want to try and do next.

So I got about 30 posts that I want to do that are just sitting there ready

to go, but I just don't have time.

In terms of where I really see the growth, the huge amount of growth for me is yeah.

By far, it's on YouTube, and I'm up to about 40, 000 subscribers on

YouTube, and my videos get watched for about 400, 000 times a month on

YouTube, which is just blows me away.

I'm just amazed how many people watch my videos.

And then on Vimeo, it's a much smaller audience.

My videos get watched about 30, 000 times a month or so.

So it's a really neat tool as my audience keep growing because the beginning of

the year of this year, I only had 14, 000 people are subscribers on YouTube.

So the way it's growing is amazing.

And I could see this time next year.

Probably having 100, 000 and that, provides me with a lot of, I don't

know, neat resources and stuff.

Having that kind of popularity because, like having a relationship with one

of the largest camera stores in the world, B& H, they just send me stuff.

They're like, Dave, what do you want to look at?

We can, we'll send it to you.

So I would make a little bit of money off of my affiliate network that I

built up with B& H, but by far my biggest growth is definitely in YouTube,

I've got if you want to run through like stats with Facebook, I got 3000.

Followers on Facebook and a couple thousand on Twitter and I don't know,

maybe a thousand on Google plus.

So social networking wise, those that's where I stand.

Yeah, absolutely.

YouTube, it's probably correlates with a lot of the stats around YouTube.

That's what now the second biggest search engine in the world.

And I'm sure it's probably fast approaching Google itself.

And it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be surprising if in the

future, it actually overtook.

Google is the biggest search engine, in my opinion.

Yeah.

So video is very powerful tool.

So how do you go about moving moving viewers

from YouTube to monetizing them?

Do you, are you pushing people or encouraging people to come back to your

site or are you monetizing it with with AdSense on the YouTube videos or is there.

A way that you've seen or you're getting the biggest traction from.

That's

a really good question.

I don't push it too hard.

I know there's some people on YouTube that push it extremely hard to

get people to their website and I haven't really pushed it that hard.

For instance, a really good example of this is your

description field below the video.

I typically put just about all the text in because if I typically when

I do a video, sometimes I'll write a script, I won't read the script.

Obviously, I just want to know what I'm going to say.

And then when I'm talking to the actual camera, I'm not reading.

I'm just I do a kind of a paragraph at a time.

So I'll read it on the screen and I'll turn towards the camera and it won't

come out exactly the way I wrote it.

But that script is already there.

So I usually put in the description.

But Getting back to this really good example is if you put, if you're

talking about, let's say shutter actuations and how to find which

one, which site will give you the most accurate shutter actuation.

So if if you're going to buy or sell a used camera, you might want to know

how much life is left on the shutter.

Do you put those links in the description below the video or

do you put them on your site?

Typically what I'll do is I'll write the put the script below the video.

But then I'll encourage people to go to my site to get the actual link.

And some people complain about it.

They're like, why don't you just put it in the description?

I'm like come on, I've got advertisers on my site.

So it's not a bad thing.

It's just one click over to my site and you can find the links there.

I would like to push them more to my site.

I'm not too aggressive about it.

I know other people are.

But I think that answers your question.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

And I can certainly I can appreciate where you're coming from with

some of the negative comments.

It's amazing.

Some people just don't get that the reason you're able to produce

this particular content is because you're able to monetize it.

I know I've had a few comments on our Facebook page with some of

the Facebook advertising we do.

They're saying, Oh, Hey, why are you advertising to me?

Get get away with your advertising.

And I'm how do you think you're using Facebook for free?

It's because of advertisers.

It's it's quite quite amusing sometimes.

Okay.

Let's let's look at a little bit going to a little bit then around around your site.

So you've got over 250 posts.

How long would you say, or would you estimate you'd have

to put into the creation of each video and the proceeding post.

It depends.

There's I would things that I would call cornerstone pieces.

Ones that I would like to spend a lot of time on because I know it's going

to be extremely popular because I might be one of the only few guys in the

country to have, let's say, two cameras that I compare against each other.

In that case, I always spend, because B& H gives me a full 30 days to review

products and I'll spend the full 30 days working on that kind of video.

I won't be working on every hour, working hour kind of thing,

but I'll spend a lot of time.

I'll spend a lot of time with those cameras because I know those will be

extremely popular and some of those videos will get watched 400, 500, 000 times.

So in that case, I'll spend a lot of time, but an average kind of

typical post that I know is only going to get watched maybe 10 times.

I'll probably spend it might be the idea might be in my head for a few

days and then I might write it down.

So just writing it down might just take 15 minutes.

And then I'll actually record it, which might only take I usually can do it on

the first or second take and usually my video is only three or five minutes long.

So recording the video will only take, maybe 20 minutes and then

editing will take a lot longer and then rendering and then uploading and

then putting out to the social media.

I'd say all in all, if I'm doing a typical video, yeah, you're looking

at maybe three, three and a half, four hours, something like that.

Yeah,

absolutely.

I'd say I got a little bit of envy back there.

You're talking about if you're only getting 000 views,

you won't spend as long.

I know.

I'm investing four or five hours in videos that are getting me at 250 views.

I think if you build really good content, and

I think And you got to look out.

I don't even really consider competition, but because there's a lot of other

people that do similar videos to what I do, especially in comparison

videos, and they do an outstanding job, but you should, do a little

bit of research find out what other people have already put up on YouTube.

So search for the most popular videos and then yeah.

You might say, Oh, I didn't know that.

Or or you might watch the videos like, Oh, I want to know more about this, but

he didn't talk about it and then fill in the gaps and create a very complete piece.

I think people are really appreciate that.

And also, there's the other big thing too.

I think a lot of people neglect is not only watch those top videos, but look

at some of the top comments because they might say, Hey you totally got it wrong,

and that's the funny thing about YouTube, especially with the audience that I

have now, I can publish things, publish a video, and with 10 minutes, I know

if I've got it right or wrong, because they'll tell me if I got something wrong.

It's Dave, you screwed this part up.

It's ah, darn, Definitely look at the comments because you can learn

a ton just from reading all those.

Yeah, that's

great.

That's that's really brilliant.

I know I I look at our stats in terms of some of our videos

we host with with wistia.

com and they provide pretty great heat maps in terms of viewers and

where people start watching, stop watching, et cetera, et cetera.

So I can I can gauge from that how engaged people are with the audience,

but certainly again, I'm very envious.

That you're able to do that within 10 minutes without without

the need to even look at stats.

It's the comments give you the instant feedback.

I do look at stats too, especially one of the things I learned

early on, which I think is a big thing with most YouTube videos is that if you

are going to be in front of the camera and you have a two or three minute video,

you don't want to, you're going to.

You're going to lose a lot of, you're going to lose a lot of your audience

in the first 20 or 30 seconds if you're on camera for that long.

So if you're talking about a camera or you're talking about whatever

you're, whatever you're selling or whatever you're doing, cut away

to a B roll shot of something.

And you shouldn't be on screen for more than 15, 20 seconds.

I try to limit even less than that sometimes, not that I don't.

Having myself on the screen is a bad thing.

It's just that it's much more engaging.

And if you're trying to make a point on something and you can reinforce

that with really good cutaway B roll type shots man, it just, you, what you

do is you look at your, the YouTube analytics and you watch what happens

with a video with B roll versus not.

And it's just night and day.

I learned that early on that, the more B roll I put in, the more people stayed in.

Glued or even rewound and watch things over again throughout the whole

three to five minutes of the video.

If you don't, they drop off quickly after, like I said, that their first 30 seconds.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Hold that thought for just a second, Dave.

I think that's a fantastic segue into some of the techniques and some of the

gear that you use to To, to shoot the videos and making them more engaging.

But I just have one more question which I guess is related to both of these

points you seem to produce a fair number of videos where you're actually doing

a, like a a shoot off or a comparison between, probably the latest one

would be like the T4i against the T3i.

These are obviously quite popular type style of videos, are they?

Oh, yes.

In fact, it's in terms of building the YouTube audience

that those are my number one.

Because you can look in your stats and find out where you're getting

the most subscribers from each video.

And I'm getting, hundreds a month or more on those particular comparison videos.

Because if you think about it, I don't, Where you live but in my part of the

country a lot of the Not even the small mom and pops but some of the regional

camera stores have been going out of business like ritz camera and wolf camera

filing for chapter 11 and I think I don't know if you can blame me and some

other people on youtube, but It could be due to comparison videos, because when

you walk into a camera store and you start talking to the guy or girl behind

the counter about a certain camera or lens or filter or whatever like that,

you have no idea if that person is.

Shooting 50 weddings a year and is extremely, has a lot of

experience to draw from and can guide you to the right camera.

Or is somebody that takes pictures of his cat with an iPhone?

You don't know, you don't, but with somebody like me, who's built up

somewhat of a personality or brand on YouTube, and you can see where

you can see the quality of my work.

You can see instantly the quality of my work of what I'm doing.

And if you don't like it, you can obviously move on, but if it's.

The type of look that you're going after you're definitely going to

come back or subscribe to my channel.

And when I do a comparison video and my level of expertise, cause I, I like, I've

only been doing this for three years.

I'm not like a Shane Hurlbutt or, a famous DP that, works on Hollywood films.

I'm just, a guy learning.

And I think a lot of people can connect with that.

And I tell people this, Hey, I'm learning.

I make mistakes, and then a lot of people find it.

Accessible to my style because they're learning to they like to learn along with

me and I learn a lot from their comments.

They'll say Dave, you might want to try it this way.

And Oh, I didn't even think of that, think that I'm going off on a tangent,

but I think I answered your question.

Yeah, no, definitely.

And I must say that's that was the exact reason that I subscribed

to you in the first place.

I was looking at the comparison between a 60 day and a 600 day.

And I did, I come to the conclusion based off your video that The 600D was

going to be suitable for me because I wasn't doing a lot of stills photography.

I was just needed it for for video.

And I guess some of the key differences were more, I get potentially more related

to the stills photography with the

60D.

Yeah, the both of those campers, both those cameras have the

same exact image quality.

They have the same sensor.

They might have a different processor in them.

I can't remember.

I think they do.

Yeah, they do.

But the digit four processor and it's the same A.

P.

S.

C.

Sensor.

So image quality.

For both video and still is going to be exactly the same, but how you get there

and like you were saying, photography wise, the 60 you might have a few

things that you might like better.

That might get your results quicker, but image quality, you're going

to end up with the same image.

If you have the time, for instance, maybe one shoots at a faster frame

rate and you might be able to catch that shot because one was able to

shoot one frame faster per second and you weren't able to do that, whatever

you're trying to accomplish quicker.

So yeah, the latest Canon M camera that just the ESM camera

came out has exact same sensor.

So image quality again is the same where everybody's wondering and waiting when

the new APS C sensor is going to come out.

And everybody's thinking that's going to be in the new Canon 7D.

Hopefully we'll see that pretty soon.

Fantastic.

All right, moving along.

Let's let's go back to some of the shooting techniques for for

making your videos engaging and I'm going to be nice and selfish here.

So I'm shooting a weekly news update for for our audience

where we're a travel agency here.

So I shoot just a quick recap of the news each week.

I want to make them more engaging.

They're about five minutes long.

Each of these videos I'm shooting by myself and it's generally in,

in the office or in the, in, in the immediate vicinity of the office.

You're just talking about the fact that people will for 30

seconds if it's face to camera.

How am I best to go about introducing B roll?

Should I be shooting with a secondary camera or can I achieve some good

results with just the one camera and actually spending the time to, to

go off and shoot some B roll either before the main shoot or after the main

shoot?

Oh, you can definitely just do it with one camera that the times that I use

two cameras at the same exact time and they're both shooting at the same exact

time if I'm demonstrating something in real time and I'm not cutting away,

if so let's say I'm demonstrating a certain procedure on the camera itself

and I'm demonstrating how to go from one mode to the other or how to use the

touch screen or something like that.

You'll see me on camera.

I'll talk to the camera.

When I look down towards the camera and I'm actually fooling around

with it with my fingers, then I'll get a closeup shot of that.

That's when I would use two, but everything else.

So if you're a travel agency, let's say, and you're talking about the

weekly recap or something like that.

And you're talking about a new island that's popular and.

You happen to go there and you've got some great cutaway shots of people water skiing

or jet skiing or doing stuff like that.

And you're talking about jet skiing and I got great deals on

jet skis or something like that.

I have no idea what you do actually.

But if you have that, those cutaway shots they can make all the difference

in the world and keeps it in terms of retaining your audience.

And yeah.

And not having that YouTube dip in terms of losing viewers, because if you can have

really good engaging B roll, like exactly when you're talking about that particular,

and to really enhance what a story you're trying to tell will really help you out.

And in terms of the B roll, what's the best type of B roll?

Are we talking little pans and zooms and using sliders or something like that?

Or can it be as simple as, I don't know, if you haven't got the time or the

location to, to introduce video as your B roll, can you introduce images potentially

into the, in the editing process?

Oh, sure.

You could definitely the one thing I've learned a long time

ago there's an awesome research resource and it's on digital juice.

I learned many years ago they have a thing called digital is digital juice

TV and you'd have to go back way in the archives with some of the stuff they have

back there is just absolutely brilliant.

I don't know if you can share that link.

I'll try to find a link for you on where to find those archives deep buried.

But one of the things I learned a long time ago from those guys were just pros

that they're way ahead of their time is if you do have something on the screen,

you want to have some sort of movement.

If the camera's moving, that's great.

If.

If just your hands are moving in the frame, that's okay too, but if you have

a picture, don't keep it stagnant, try to do a bit Ken Burns type of thing

where you're zooming in or panning left or doing something like that

keeps the interest going, having a stagnant picture on the screen for

three to four seconds while it might.

Seem like it wouldn't be that bad of a thing But if you just had that little bit

of movement with a simple, keyframe pan and tilt or whatever you want zoom It adds

so much more Professional feel to it I think that kind of answers your question.

It does.

All right, now let's go.

I think there's potentially at least one more very important aspect to, to I guess

getting a good quality engaging video.

And I would imagine it's the soundtrack.

I guess it's a two part question.

Where do you find music to include in your videos?

And two how how do you decide is it is it essentially just a little bit of just.

I guess you, you getting a feeling from a particular soundtrack as to

how it's going to affect the video.

It depends on the video, obviously.

If you're talking about the type of videos that I make, like comparison videos and

stuff like that, that are really popular.

I do other videos like corp, I've done some corporate videos, some real

estate videos, if, stuff like that.

So they're all going to take on their own feel are.

For instance, if you're just talking about a comparison video, what I've

learned with those are if you're going from topic to topic and you have some

background music and I use, I have a relationship with a premium beat

dot com and they've got a very large selection of really high quality music.

My, they, yeah.

They do charge a bit for their songs, but they're royalty free.

So you can use them as much as you want after that, after you purchase it.

But those songs are great in terms of using as background

music for when I'm talking.

Socially, you don't want anything with like lyrics and it can be distracting

while you're doing a voiceover.

And when I noticed if I have a 20 minute comparison video and i'm

going from topic to topic a lot of times You'll hear in the background.

It's a subconscious level is the musical end as I finish a thought and I'm

moving on to the next item or thought.

I'll start a different background music and I'll let that music start

up and it's a lot of people don't even notice that, but it really carries

the whole piece along a lot nicer.

So I think that answers your question.

Yeah, it

does.

It doesn't.

That's yeah, your videos are just incredibly engaging, so I can see

that you're doing something right.

Thanks.

Now just one thing, I'm just on your site right now and I've noticed I guess it's

relatively recently you've started playing around with the thumbnails of your video.

How are you are you seeing better click throughs or better

playwrights by doing this?

Oh yeah, I love I just started doing that recently.

I love, that's one of the things I love about DSLRs is not only do they take

awesome pictures, they take awesome video and I love taking pictures.

I like carrying just one camera with me.

And what I started doing, if you're looking at that one, that's like the

Sennheiser G3 comparison video where I'm standing where with all the transmitters

and I've got the Denver skyline in the background, that's a composite picture.

And I'm a huge Scott Kelby training fan.

I don't know if any of your audience knows anything about that, but I have

learned so much in photography that crosses over into video all the time

and for a year, I don't know, I'm not, I don't have any relationship with them.

They don't.

Provide me any kickbacks or anything, but you can get for 150 200 a year.

You can watch all the videos You'll never even watch all of them because

there's so many of them and there's different techniques you can learn and

this one is by a gentleman His name is joel grimes and that's his kind of style

so it's I Shot the picture HDR of the landscape because I was right there.

I just set my picture up I did five bracketed frames

for the landscape behind me.

I You know, I tone mapped it within Photomatix Pro and then the picture of me.

I'm down in my basement studio I just took a picture and they're

all done with hot lights.

No flash Although I really do need to buy some flashes Or strobes.

And I just took that and I followed the example that Joel Grimes gives

in his lesson on Kelby training.

And I think I don't, I haven't done a lot of research on it yet, but I

know when I personally see a thumbnail like that, I am way more inclined to

click on that than some guy sitting in a office with really poor lighting.

And it's not really showing you what he's It's going to demonstrate.

So I, I don't know for a fact that I'm getting higher click through rates on

that, but I got to, because I know a lot of people comment on the actual

thumbnail itself, so I think it's working.

Yeah it's pulling me in now you're looking at you've got,

I'm just looking at your homepage.

You've got essentially a grid of nine videos and that one just stands out.

And truly above every other video there it's so engaging.

I know I've been playing around with it a little bit, just started playing

around with it and it seems to have increased our play rates, but yeah it's

certainly something that our audience should consider looking at as well.

Yeah,

and I think if you look at some of the top YouTube people, like the

top 100 YouTube people, you're going to find that the common theme that they all

do compositing, and they might make the background totally yellow, and they've

got their subject title and big text so you can read it on the thumbnail.

There's a lot of things that you can learn from some of those

top 100 people on YouTube that are just making a ton of money.

I went to a YouTube conference a couple years ago, one of the very first ones.

And a project manager came out on stage and said that some of the very

very top people on YouTube are making a hundred thousand dollars a month.

Yeah.

I know I'm definitely not at that level.

I'm like in the top 5, 000, but I'm not.

Definitely in the top 10 or 100 quickly approaching that though.

No, I don't know.

I'd be, I'd be just amazed if this time next year I've got

100, 000 people following me.

That would just be because one of the things I'd like to do with the site as

I make more money with it is to, do some different projects, passion projects.

I'm working on one right now.

It's a promotional piece for a local photographer and just spend

as much time as I want on it and get the story where I want it to be.

And I'm not asking to get paid for the project and, but, maybe after

it's done and I put it out, maybe I make some sort of training tutorial

for it that I can sell, but I would, be able to pick my own projects and

work on things that I want to work on is where I'm heading with the site.

On that, I don't need you to reveal numbers or anything like that,

but is the site, is it sustainable now?

Is it a full time income for you?

I

think since the launch of my first product last month I can say

yes, it's getting to the point where it's making more than my other sites.

Because my real estate sites used to be the bread and butter for many years

and done extremely well, but they've Fallen by the wayside because I've spent

so much time on this darn DSLR site.

It's taken away from my other sites.

When it comes down to it, this site is so much funner than real estate.

So that's why, you follow your passion and I really enjoy it.

And it's just a lot of fun.

I get so much great feedback when you, and it's like crickets

over on my real estate site.

Nobody cares.

I could be, I could code up the best, thing on that site, but nobody cares.

Fantastic.

I agree.

It's if you're engaged with with your own, with the project you're

on, it just makes it so much easier.

It's not work.

Really?

Yeah, it isn't.

No, I didn't really enjoy

it.

All right, Dave.

I've got one more question for you before we go ahead and wrap up.

Now this sort of putting you on the spot a little bit.

And Let's say you've got 1, 500 you're new to the world of video shooting.

We want to get a DSLR camera and some other kit without having

to hold you to exact prices.

What would you buy with that 1, 500?

First off, if I was a beginning shooter, I would go

with a crop sensor camera like the Canons have and I would actually

go to get a refurbished Rebel.

A lot of times these refurbished ones you buy directly from Canon.

You can get extremely good deals.

In fact, there was a deal today.

You could buy rebel t3i for around 350 dollars And it's only got not

many actuations on it whatsoever.

So it's basically a brand new camera I just picked one up because i'm doing

a training course on the t3i right now and I wanted to keep it for a While so

right there you've only got 350 bucks and then the first lens I would suggest most

people get is a 50 millimeter, a fast 50.

And that's going to teach you a lot of things.

I would say just stay with that one particular lens

for the first month or two.

And you can learn so much from that one lens.

Before you even get into zooms, just deal with the fast 50.

Maybe the 1.

8 and that's only 100 bucks.

So now you're up to 450 bucks So then I would graduate into a a zoom that has

is and there's lots of different ones out there I particularly own one that

works well for a crop sensor and that's 28 to 135 all this stuff, is listed on

my gear page as well And if you go to my site, it says my gear at the top.

So having is really important, especially for video the next one I would definitely

get like a video road video mic.

They're only like 150 bucks.

The pro version, maybe 200 bucks.

I actually get the pro version.

If you're using one of these Canon cameras, cause the.

Preamp inside the cameras are pretty terrible.

So you want to turn down that preamp as much as possible.

So you want a very sensitive microphone.

The next thing I would buy I don't know what I'm up to now.

Let's see.

I'm up to about 600, 700 dollars.

Yeah, I'm probably, no, I'm actually probably about a thousand by now.

Next thing I would buy is a tripod and a fluid head.

That's slider.

And maybe a glide cam device, a monopod, and then you're

going to need some ND filters.

And actually at that point, I think I've already broke your bank.

So this, people like your last guest talked about, he said we're at a

wonderful time right now because you can basically have access to all

this wonderful gear and do stuff that people couldn't do for 10 years ago

for, 50 to a hundred thousand dollars.

Now we can do for just a couple of thousand dollars, which is

amazing, this hobby that you're getting into don't be misled.

It's not a cheap hobby.

It adds up.

It keeps pulling at your wallet.

I, I was buying more stuff today.

I'm like, damn, I just keep buying stuff.

I keep buying stuff.

It doesn't seem to stop.

It's oh, I need that.

I need a light.

I need, yeah, a polarizer.

I need a monopod.

It just keeps adding up.

But I would say if you bought those items that added up to about 1, 500 Within the

first year, you're just using those items.

You can learn so much and you can produce unbelievably good work with those as

you learn, and then as you get better, what I've did after a couple of years,

I went to a full frame because it has some other advantages and you get

better glass with the full frame, but.

Just, gosh, you can buy things like refurbished or used lenses and really

get you started for a cheap price.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's listeners.

I'm going to pop in links to everything we've been discussing in this episode.

And I'll certainly make notes to pop in a link direct to Dave's gear

section which will have everything that he's discussed here as well.

Now.

Okay, Dave, let's we'll just wrap up there.

I really appreciate you taking the time today.

We're a little bit over the 30 minutes that's that I asked of you, but, and so

I appreciate you staying on the line.

Obviously you're fantastic at how to videos and training.

You've also just mentioned that you've put together a bit of a product.

What's that product and who who's going to benefit from, for, from

getting this particular product?

The first one I did was on the Canon T4i and it's a beginner's guide.

It's It just deals with the actual camera itself.

So no accessories.

I'm not going to teach you how to use a slider, a glide camera, or how to

use a, external microphones and stuff.

It's a three hour over three hour course.

And all that time is just spent on the fundamentals of video.

I'm not teaching anything about stills.

It's all about video.

And there's so many things to cover.

And there's so many settings and parameters that you can screw with.

And I try to get you up to speed as And show you all the things that I've

learned over the last three years and the mistakes I've made and, how to get

the best results out of your camera, just, just the exposure on these cameras.

If you're off by a third of a stop can make a big difference when

you get to edit your video and the lighting and, ah, there's so many

different things, picture styles.

So I demonstrate a lot of that stuff in that video, the Canon T4i.

And I'm making one right now on the Canon T3i.

And then I've got some other courses I've got planned that I've started

on terms of editing and transcoding and rendering and stuff like that.

But that's.

Pretty much just getting started.

It's a real beginner's type guide.

If you've just bought the camera for Christmas or something like that, and

you're looking to get into video, then I think this will really help you out a lot.

This particular camera, the T4i, this is Canon's newest

camera, is it?

Yeah, it's their latest offering on the Rebel line, which is extremely affordable.

Won't set you back like the, 5D Mark III will.

And it's a great.

Great.

And in fact, if you've got the right lighting, and I've demonstrated this

before in my videos, if you've got the right lighting and you compare

the, because I've cut between both of them, the the T2i, which you can get

for, like I said, used for 300 bucks because they don't sell them anymore.

And the 5D Mark III.

You will have extremely a hard time telling the difference between the two.

The only time that the 5d Mark three really starts to shine in

terms of video is when you get into when you start pushing the ISO well

above, 800, 1600, stuff like that.

And I'm a run and gun type of shooter.

So having.

Access to really good lighting.

Sometimes it's not possible.

So that's one of the major reasons I've got the 5D Mark III is I can

use it just about anywhere almost in, in pitch black lighting conditions

and you still get amazing results.

That's great.

So that's it sounds to me like the product is is going to save.

Our viewers, if they go ahead and purchase it, it's going to save them a lot of

time having to go through the manual.

And I'm sure you've probably you've gone through and picked out some

shortcuts that they can pick up.

Yeah it's, I pretty much go through everything that's in the manual.

So you don't have to read it.

I talk about, how long it takes to charge the battery and all that stuff.

I go through all that stuff that the manual talks about.

And a lot of things, and the manual is 350 pages long.

And it's really biased towards photography, so it

doesn't help you out much.

You only have one or two chapters on the video, so it's not much of a help.

So that's why I created the course.

Because when I create more advanced courses, I don't want

to say, hey, go read the manual.

Instead of just, hey, watch this course.

And then it's a prerequisite to more advanced courses I'm going to be making.

Fantastic.

I'm looking forward to the to the T3i course.

I'll be getting that straight away.

All right, Dave.

Again, thanks very much for coming on this episode.

You've shared absolute gold throughout listeners.

I hope you've enjoyed that episode.

Can I ask one favor of you, Dave?

This is going to be posted on a multimedia marketing show.

com.

Could I ask?

That's that you maybe pop in from time to time on the site and answer any

questions that our listeners leave in the comments below below this

episode.

Sure.

I'll give it, yeah, I'll definitely take a look at, see what the comments are.

That's fantastic.

So listeners, if you have any questions for Dave, you can just

pop across to the show notes.

I'll include the link.

To that in just a second but apart from that, Dave, I really appreciate you

coming on, on, on board the show and I hope to speak with you again shortly.

Yeah.

Nice talking to you.

And thanks for doing this podcast.

Cause I know that they're not easy and they take a lot

more time than people think.

So thanks for sharing all this information and, I think everybody

collectively wins when everybody shares information like this.

Thanks very much and listeners I'll speak to you again very soon