 There are a few things that stand out to me when I go back and look at the first video that we ever made about the primary Linus Media Group camera, our Sony FS700. First, I'm amazed at how many of the comments on that video are about how stupid it was to buy and how overkill the camera is for the type of content we produce. Second, I'm amazed by how right those comments were. I mean, I knew absolutely nothing about this device and how to unlock its capabilities. All I really had was these hopes for how we could use it to evolve our content and grow this brand new company that I was starting, as long as we could find and keep the right talent around who did know how to use it. And then third, I'm amazed that in spite of me not really understanding this stuff very well, when I made the call to spend $8,000 on this based on the promise of affordable 4K recording in the future, I mean, it's still the most expensive piece of equipment that we've ever purchased as a company, how well it has kept up with us as our needs have changed and how it continues to adapt with us. A mere few days ago, it actually finally got the easy, flexible 4K capability. Oh, by the way, if you think 4K is for chumps and are more interested in triple surround curved 34 inch monitor gaming rigs, that video is coming soon. Make sure you're subscribed. Anyway, the 4K capability that I always wanted from it. So I figured now would be a great time to show you guys how it got there and some of the other ways that it's changed over the last two years. The Cooler Master Neptune 240M features an exclusive pump design and their new Silencio fans to provide impressive near silent performance. Click now to learn more. Our early camera rig was very basic. We had decent audio from day one with a Sennheiser EW100G3 in the kit lavalier mic, but mounted to our pretty simple tripod and head, we just had the camera body, the wussy battery that comes with it, the hand grip that comes with it, the built in screen, which is in the least ergonomic position possible by the way, Sony, the bundled zoom lens that can't even maintain a constant aperture when zooming, and the built in SD card recording slot that's responsible for many of the cameras early limitations. There wasn't an upgrade for that at the time though, so we kind of had to live with that. But the first thing that we did change was to upgrade the battery to some cheap third party high capacity ones for all day operation at trade shows. And Edzel and Brandon, I guess, also got so frustrated with the kit lens that they started bringing their own lenses in for us to use at work. Something that we actually didn't address by buying our own company lenses until less than a year ago. LOL. The next upgrade was one that caused some pretty heated conversations internally, especially between me and Brandon, because it represented not just a $400 plus dollar investment into this LISTECH teleprompter, but a significant stylistic change in our content. I mean, a move away from the off the cuff product impressions with the dynamically moving camera that made Linus Tech Tips Linus Tech Tips to this premeditated scripted content with a static camera placement and then B roll. I caved eventually, and honestly it and the Red Rock mount, something we originally bought to fashion a ghetto shoulder rig for show coverage, and a Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet have turned into a symbol for what I think was a huge turning point for us as content creators. I mean, YouTube has changed, and by adapting to this more professional style when we did, we put ourselves on the leading edge of web tech review production quality rather than allowing ourselves to fall behind. Even if it means I'm reaching for my little remote at my hip here all the time. I know quite a few of you are wondering, what the heck is he doing down there? Next up was another upgrade that Brandon pushed really hard for, but that I didn't want to get. You can probably see a pattern developing here. And we picked up a small HD AC7 external HDMI video monitor. I figured, well, there's a screen on the camera. Why do we need another one? But once again, Brandon was right, because not only did it help keep images in focus, it's and a flexible arm mount were a huge ergonomic improvement, especially when shoulder mounting the camera. So you can put the screen right in front of you or shooting from awkward angles. Now, Glam B-roll adds production values to your video, but it also adds a lot of time, especially when you're manually screwing and unscrewing mounting plates every time you move the camera from tripod to slider or shoulder mount or whatever else. So Brandon asked for another tripod and a few sets of quick releases from Kessler for fast camera relocation. And I kind of went, yeah, no problem. You know, I looked at the tripod. It's cheap. No big deal. But what these freaking plate and release combo units are almost one hundred and fifty dollars a pop. I mean, what do they make them out of? He was right about the time savings, though, and they've probably paid for themselves and saved pocket change that we would normally have had to use to swap out camera plates. But, man, I don't even know what to say about those. They were too expensive, but I also wouldn't return them because man, are they ever handy. It was around this time that Sony released their firmware update for the FS700 finally that would give it 4K recording. Too bad that it unexpectedly cost hundreds of dollars and required you to send your camera into a Sony service center in order to have them perform the upgrade. Fortunately, they have a location about 15 minutes from our office. So aside from the inconvenience and cost, the only really annoying thing about the whole experience was that they refused to service our broken hand grip record button, claiming that it was normal wear and tear on the button and I was over a month out of warranty. I mean, it turns out that they diagnosed it wrong anyway. So I found some other eight inch cable with a jack on the end, soldered it onto it, and it works like a charm now. In fact, I think it even gives our camera a bit more character, but it was still a little frustrating. The next one was a big upgrade, the second most expensive item for us yet, including all the accessories. So we picked up some Eneloop Pro XX batteries for our wireless mic so we wouldn't have to change up the batteries as much. That was no big deal. But then we got the recording unit that we needed to finally record in 4K or so we thought. It cost $5,000 for our convergent design Odyssey 7Q recorder and Anson Bauer battery charger and mounting plate, two 512 gig SSDs with proprietary firmware to work with it and a couple cables. And it was only when our pre-order arrived that I realized I hadn't really read the fine print and 4K recording wasn't even enabled yet. I mean, we did get higher bitrate 1080p recording, a slightly bigger and noticeably better OLED external display with more onboard diagnostics and stuff, and the firmware update to record 4K RAW, including continuous 240 FPS raw recording did come pretty quickly. And that did come in handy, but I'd have probably held off if I'd known that the 4K ProRes firmware was going to take a year after that time, because the 4K RAW workflow is terrible. It's so much data. It takes up so much space. It's really hard to work with. It was at this stage that I finally bought some lenses so that Brandon and Edzel wouldn't have to bring their own to work. There wasn't a real quality upgrade to the content or anything at this time, though, because we replaced Brandon's Tampon 24-70 with our own Tampon 24-70. Sorry, did I say Tampon just to bug Brandon? Ha! Because I meant Tamron. And then we picked up Tamron's 90mm macro lens for close-ups as well. The next round of upgrades has some pretty cool stuff in it. Our Sennheiser kit lav cable started fraying for the second time, so we preemptively picked up a Countryman B6 Lavalier. Pretty sweet. It sounds better than our old one. It is so small that I can just tape it to anything with tuck tape on the inside of my shirt or hide it in a buttonhole. And it's actually waterproof, something we took advantage of when I did the ice bucket challenge. And it was also around this time that we finally upgraded our old tripod head to the Manfrotto 509HD and man, I'm not a camera dork, but even I can tell the difference. It makes smooth tilts and pans so easy that I'm not convinced we even need Brandon around anymore. And unlike our old one, which in its defense did serve us well and has seen so much overburdened action that the rubber on one of the knobs came right off, the lock is much more conveniently placed on the left side of the tripod, so a right-handed shooter doesn't always have to be reaching around the tripod, which is pretty nice. Which I guess brings us to wrap up time and the reason for us to do this video now. Out of the box two years ago, the FS700 could record 1080p at up to 60 frames per second continuously with audio and up to 240fps slow-mo with an 8 second burst and up to 960fps in a 2 second burst if you were willing to sacrifice three quarters of your resolution. The issue was that for both continuously recorded and slow-mo burst footage, the SD card media was simply not fast enough for high bitrate video files that are suitable for color correction. And while physically the camera has been rock solid, other than that time we got it wet and it wouldn't turn on till I disassembled the housing and dried it out for the weekend, some significant upgrades were needed for it to stay competitive now and moving into 2015. But they pulled it off and I've got to hand it to Sony. I don't always like the way they run their business, but through their partnership with Convergent Design, they really delivered and we love this camera. It was a great investment. Which leads us to the last upgrade when we actually didn't have to pay any extra for. Now, while you may have noticed that we've done some 4K uploads in the last little while, we were actually using an older firmware that took 4K raw footage and then down sampled it to 1080p ProRes. I mean, we did discover that it looked really good even when you re-upconverted it to 4K, so that's why some of our videos have been in 4K, but it's actually been kind of fake-o 4K. Two days ago though, the proper 4K ProRes firmware dropped and now we are ready to go full 4K whenever we shoot with our FS700. Because we've also got our brand new secondary camera, a Panasonic GH4 that does internal 4K recording to high speed SD cards, and we've got our upgraded workstations from the whole room water cooling project. So bring on the 4K, baby. We are ready. Guys, thanks for watching this behind the scenes look at the gear that we use. 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