Weekly Recap #13: "Looking back, but moving forward"
The end of 2017 is here! The past few months since I started this blog have been pretty hectic. I felt like I had gotten into a groove with scheduling weekly meetings, writing blog posts, booking clients and routinely meeting up with mentors, but somewhere around the end of September just seemed to pick up speed & never slowed down.
My wife & I had a good little family meeting last night to plan some of our scheduling goals for 2018, and I'm feeling really excited to jump into the new year. As cheesy as it sounds I'm looking forward to starting fresh, having new goals, planning & executing projects with new clients & pushing myself to try even more new things. While I haven't been the most consistent with this blog, I'm actually looking forward to creating a more well thought out brain storming/writing/shooting schedule for The Creative Dad Network & I'm hoping to become even more a part of this content creating community.
The fellow dad's I've shared this project with this year have been really gracious in giving creative feed back and have also really challenged me as a father & it's that skill sharpening aspect of this community that I'm most looking forward to.
Here's a little highlight of some of my favorite moments of this year:
Now for my top gear recommendations of 2017. I've definitely talked about quite a few of these items in the blog or on social media, you can also expect more gear reviews in 2018, but I get asked so often about the gear I use so I figured I could list them all here.
Favorite travel adventure bag:
Favorite compact travel camera cover:
Favorite vlogging camera:
Sony RX 100 MarkIV (Cheaper than the mark V, still shoots 4k, has a flip up screen, decent in camera audio, and fits in your pocket)
Favorite mirrorless camera under $1500:
Sony a6500 (a6300 is great for the price, but over heats more often)
Favorite lens:
Sigma 50-100mm 1.8 Art Lens (it is a crop sensor lens, but still works well as a 100mm prime lens on full frame bodies)
Favorite lens under $200:
Canon 40mm 2.8 pancake lens
Favorite adapter to convert Canon to Sony mounts:
Favorite camera for photography:
Canon 5d Mark IV paired with a Sigma Art Lens
Favorite Drone:
DJI Mavic Pro (the fact that it's a 4K drone that is extremely easy to fly & fits in my camera bag with all my other gear keeps it ranked high on the list)
Favorite camera for video:
R3D Raven (for the price & weight, it's Dragon sensor captures some of the most balanced looking color & highlights I've ever seen on a camera)
Favorite portable mic:
Favorite portable LED light kit:
Favorite laptop/2 in 1:
Microsoft Surface Book 2 (simply a fun, powerful machine & it still has the ports that I need & a magnetic power cord that is crucial for using a laptop around 3 toddlers)
Favorite software for editing videos FAST: Final Cut Pro (on a spec'd out iMac, preferably iMac Pro. I trust the program, fast background rendering, less file conversion, and I still trust color on macs more than I do on PCs)
Favorite portable hard drive:
Western Digital Passport SSD (no partitioning or special formatting for PC or Max, small/compact & blazing fast transfer speeds)
Favorite random handy gadget:
Favorite item I didn't think I needed but was glad I purchased:
Sigma USB dock (extremely useful in calibrating my sigma 18-35mm 1.8 art lens)
Favorite backup charger:
Favorite kids tablet:
Favorite camera to go on adventures with kids:
Favorite new place to go with the kids:
Favorite project this year:
Crew Photo:
So there you have it, a few of my favorite things. Expect to see more videos of me using those items in the near future explaining why I love them & what I would like to try out next. If you ever have gear you love & would recommend that I try out, by all means send those right on over.
Thank you to all of you that have followed/subscribed/or liked in 2017, and definitely looking forward to all the 2018 has in store.
