 What's up my friends? It's camera time Check out my awesome Captain America shirt. All right. This is one of my oldest shirts by the way But this video is not about my wardrobe. It's about my camera setup. I make bike videos I've been making bike videos for about 15 years now and right now in this very moment in the year 2022 I feel like I have the perfect Setup of cameras and I'm gonna go through all the equipment I use to make the videos the cameras the tripods the different mounts SD cards batteries and a little bit about my computer and the editing software Are you ready? No Flat is no crash. She's no where me. Yeah I want to first say that you don't need the latest and greatest camera gear to tell a good story You really don't you could use your cell phone and make awesome videos cell phones take incredible quality videos these days So I don't want you to watch this video and be like oh, I don't have the same cameras as Ryan My videos are gonna suck because that's not true and I'm gonna talk about it more later But what it takes is effort you have to put in the effort You got to put the camera on the tripod and ride past it you get when you meet interesting people You got to interview them and when it's really hard and you don't want to pull the camera out and push record Those are the moments that you want to capture because you're telling a story that hopefully brings the audience in Emotionally to what's happening and that takes effort. You have to keep a good attitude really otherwise you'll just go into a dark hole but Sometimes it's hard like right now. Look at that Look at that Look at this baby. This is the GoPro 10 and this is the camera that I use Most and I've been using GoPro since the 8 and I first got a GoPro in 2020 when I did the great divide ride before that I used the Sony action cam But this really is the best action cam that I've ever used and why is it the best? It really comes down to the image stabilization You can be going like this down a bumpy road and the footage will look pretty much as smooth as can be So when you watch my videos, this is the camera that gets all the on-bike Camera shots so there's a lot of times. I'm holding it up like this. Hey, how you doing? No crashes. No whammies. Oh, lay. Oh, lay This is incredible. I also use this to get you know shots while I'm riding I will hold it forward for 10 seconds to get some scenics that way I will hold it to the right for 10 seconds I will hold it down so you get some shots of my feet pedaling and the sound of the gravel crunching Noticing that I have this clamp arm thing and so it's always clamped on To my handlebars at all times and I don't film from the handlebars I will just be riding along and I'll see something that I want to film and I'll quickly take it off Hit record and start filming it and then I'll put it back on my handlebars just for storage And the reason why I do that is I want to easy access I want it right on my handlebars if you have this thing tucked away in a bag You're not going to use it as often so you want it to be really quickly Accessible for those moments because it's it's an adventure. You never know what's going to happen Maybe there's an awesome rainbow happening. You want to get it before it disappears. You pull this off hit the record button Look at that rainbow And this is my GoPro bra, isn't it sexy? So I use the chest mount when I'm mountain biking because mountain biking is a lot more technical and you're bouncing around And you can't be riding one-handed holding a camera, right? So you want to put the GoPro on the chest and this gets those really cool POV shots where your arms in it and you see the trail flying down Another thing I really love about these newer go-pros is the sound the sound quality is Pretty amazing for being such a little camera with a tiny little mic and I help the situation With one of these this is called a dead cat little furry thing And what it does is block some of the crosswind when you're moving quickly because that can just totally drown out your audio So this will definitely help and I'm going to put you know a list of everything I use down below in the description so you can go through and Easily find these things if you want to buy this stuff. How is the battery life you ask? Well, it's not awesome It's not awesome on any of these small cameras So I always travel with lots of extra batteries and these are brand-new. These are like the higher capacity go-pro Batteries and I would say on an average bike tour. I probably use two Batteries a day depending on how much I'm filming, but that's a pretty good rough estimate And I also get a lot of questions if I use solar power. I don't I just bring lots of extra Batteries for each one of my cameras and I charge them with a power bank like a 20,000 milliamp power bank that can charge a phone like six or seven times Which is about equivalent to charging up a go-pro and then every few days I will charge up the power bank and everything else in a cafe or restaurant or maybe even a hotel and this my friends is the Sony RX 100 Mark 7 This is my beauty camera the picture quality is far superior to the go-pro the go-pro is great It has awesome image stabilization, but it's just a wide angle this thing You can get a little artsy with it. You there's a manual focus ring here So when you watch my videos and you see those pretty shots of flowers with some depth of field and the blurry background That's this camera. I also use this camera to put on a little tripod and do my ride-by shots And it's important to get a variety of shots to make the video edit more interesting in the end if you're just Using your go-pro it would get a little bit boring because it's only wide angle These shots that come from this camera add a lot of texture to the video They bring the viewer right in there with the flowers and the bugs and Whatever else I see another highlight of this camera is the zoom check this out It has a 200 millimeter zoom So maybe I'm looking at something very far away a mountain range or a bird or something I can stop and get off my bike and zoom this way in and get those shots This camera is also my interview camera You know, I love talking to people when I'm on bike rides and so I'll stop and start chatting with them And then I'll say hey, you know what I have a YouTube channel And I would love to share your story with my audience if I'm indoors. Yeah, I'm depressed I have to get outside. It's a desperate need to get out You know, I didn't have that before and this camera is just it's just better quality than the GoPro And the sound is better and the sound is better because I have a little Detachable shotgun mic this one's made by Saramonic and it really makes a big difference I just ran into this nice guy named Stan who's done the Colorado Trail five times. What inspires you to do this? Well, I drive a truck for a living and every two or three years I get like 30 pounds overweight and I come out here for diet and exercise and it works And just like with the GoPro the battery life on the Sony is not very good So I always bring a stack of extras and each one of these might give you about an hour of recording time So again, I might go through two of these in one day and I forgot to mention at the very beginning I shoot everything in 4k, which is more battery intensive, but it's worth it because it makes the videos so beautiful Now it's time to talk about my favorite camera or at least the most fun camera to use The drone and this is the brand new DJI Mavic mini 3 and it's tiny it only weighs 249 grams which is less than a can of beans Before this I had the DJI Mavic mini one and the two they're both great cameras And as you can see my videos, they take awesome footage. They shoot in 4k This one the upgrade is the camera quality is going to be better It has a much longer battery life. It's better in wind and the big thing these things right here They are not laser shooters laser cannons They are sensors the previous versions of the mini did not have any sensors And if you watch my videos, you know that I've lost a few drones. I Knew I was pushing my luck But I wanted to get a beautiful drone shot of this area you see Fluid over the edge the wind kind of caught it and then it freaked out and just wouldn't fly home It wouldn't fly home. So now the drone is forever resting out there in Castle Valley. Bye-bye drone Drones really allow you to capture those mind-blowing Wow moments, right sometimes I surprise myself with the footage that I'm capturing I might be stuck in the trees and have no idea what's above me I get this thing into the air and all of a sudden boom It opens up an entirely new world to me and when I'm on a bike tour I try to get this thing out about twice a day again I like to mix up all the different camera angles little GoPro little Sony little drone You put that all together and you've got yourself a pretty solid video And so when I get this into the air I like to get some forward shots following me and then I like to turn the drone around and Get me coming towards the drone and sometimes I get side shots where the drone is kind of just tracking me And then my favorite shot is getting the drone way up high and turning the camera Straight down and getting that angle of just what it would look like if you were just looking out of an airplane window I film everything Manually which seems kind of sketchy, but yes I will be on my bike with the controller in my hand pedaling and Controlling the drone and I do that because the tracking modes on these this actually doesn't even have a tracking mode The bigger drones do tracking modes only work when you're close to the object And I really like to get those big wide-angle views from far away These are the three batteries that I travel with and drone batteries have gotten a lot better Just five years ago 2018 when I was filming love cycles I had the Mavic Air and that thing only got 10 to 12 minutes of battery life now these big boys Can last for 45 minutes, which is awesome drones are super cool I love them But not everybody loves drones and I'm talking about people that go out into nature and want some peace and quiet So make sure not to annoy people with drones because these things sound like a swarm of bees When they're anywhere near you and they can be frightening you also want to check your local drone regulations about where you can and can't fly a drone you definitely can't fly near airports and Definitely definitely that's times two not anywhere near or in US National Park, so make sure to check where you can use this luckily when I'm on my bike trips I'm in the absolute middle of nowhere, so I'm not really bugging anybody and I'm not near any national parks And one more little tidbit About the drone. I made an entire video about how to bike in drone I will link it below, but something very important is use small storage SD cards You might get excited and say oh, I'm gonna put a 512 gigabyte card in there That'll give me like seven hours of footage, but that can be dangerous Let's say you're out on a three week trip and you're using this thing every day And you're filling that card up and by the end of the trip You get this thing stuck in a tree or you get it somewhere where you can't retrieve it Then you've lost all of your footage. Bye. Bye I'm smiling, but it really does suck so use smaller SD cards that give you about an hour of filming and then that will force you to Switch out the cards every couple of days and keep your footage safe Now let's talk about the exciting world of camera cables So obviously all of these different cameras a lot of times have different connectors some are USB C Some are regular USB some are lightning And so I always bring a big mass of cables for all of the cameras and at nighttime in my tent I plug them in to my power bank. This is the anchor quick charge 3.0 It's a 20,000 milliamp power bank. It is very heavy. This is big. That's life size right there But it's necessary if you want to keep all your batteries charged and speaking of charging in hotels I love hotels. They're comfy. It's fun to take a shower But a lot of times in these tiny towns the hotel rooms aren't very advanced and they might only have one power outlet so I always bring adapters like this so you can plug in multiple things at once This is key. Remember an adapter like this so you can get all your things going at the same time I spoke earlier about how I put my Sony on a little tripod and these are examples of the little tripods I've used over the years. They're nothing fancy. They just hold the camera upright while I ride past What's in the box? SD cards This is where I store all of my hard-earned footage You know, I get a lot of questions from people asking if I bring a computer and an extra hard drive And I used to but it just became Too stressful to edit while I was on the road and computers and hard drives are very heavy So I store everything in these little waterproof Pelican cases and depending on the length of the trip I might bring two of these and SD cards right now are way bigger than they used to be and way cheaper You can get cards that are up to a terabyte which will hold hours and hours of footage So make sure to get one of these little things. It will keep all of your hard-earned precious footage Very safe. Now, you're probably thinking to yourselves Ryan That is a lot of stuff. Where the heck do you put it all and that is the trick because when you're bike packing You don't have a lot of extra space because you obviously need food and water and all your camping equipment And where the heck are you gonna put all this camera stuff? Well, now you know the pains of being a travel filmmaker. It can be tough But I keep all of my cords and stuff in the GoPro box It comes with this little, you know protective box now and I keep all the batteries and cords in there and For everything else that doesn't fit. I try to put it in another little baggy In my frame bag. You want to keep your weight kind of centered on the bike All right, this is the computer that I use to edit every single video that you see on YouTube It is the Mac Studio M1 Ultra and it's this little guy right here and it packs quite a punch It's got a big brain in there and you want a computer with a big brain big powerful brain Because video editing is very taxing. The software I use is called Adobe Premiere Pro And this is a timeline that's open right here from the monumental loop People ask me all the time about editing software. It doesn't really matter what you use They all kind of get you to the same point. I've been using Adobe for about 15 years now so it's just what I'm used to and Over here is my hard drive setup. I have everything double backed up right here These are about 12 terabytes each so I can hold a lot of projects and There you go. I Think I'm going a little bit nuts. I've been making this video for too long Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you found it educational And I hope it helps you on your storytelling journey and remember at the very beginning of the video I said you don't need the latest and greatest to tell a good story You know when I first got started in this industry I didn't have the money to buy all these cameras and I made do I had one camera and I learned every aspect of how to use that one camera and again it all goes down to effort if you want to make a Dynamic fun engaging video you have to put in the time you have to pull that camera out When you least want to you got to capture those tough moments that pull the audience in you got to get those rainbows You got to get those dogs chasing you you got to get those interviews with interesting people And I know it can be hard. This isn't for everybody But if you want to become a storyteller a video storyteller, this is kind of what you got to do You just have to be Relentless in your craft and your first videos might not be very good. My first videos sucked really bad You go to the beginning of my YouTube channel You'd be laughing at the quality of my videos But every single video you're gonna learn a little bit more you're gonna get a little bit better and a little bit better I always tell people that I've never made the perfect video and that keeps me hungry to keep on Improving myself and it's fun when I'm out there filming. It's fun It's a challenge and it's I get to use my creative brain And it makes me feel good at the end of the day when I come home after a trip with all this footage And I get to put it together and share it with you and hopefully inspire you to get out and do something that you Never thought was possible So if you're new to my channel check out all my videos from around the world They're really fun at least I think they're fun and my mom thinks they're fun So that's too and please like and subscribe and we will see you down the road for more adventures