- Oh!

Almost.

Cinema Series.

(knife blade snaps)

Oh, it's like a nice easy sticker to open, that's uh-

just use my eyeballs next time.

Ooh.

Sticker.

Instructions.

(paper crinkling)

Fancy lens cloth.

Soft case with

built in lens cloth, oh yeah.

Super soft hard case, like the softest of cases.

Inside you have the money item.

(ambient electronica music)

Check out these tasty quartz lined ND filters.

Delicious look at that, Mm!

ND1000, that's like pure black.

You take this, place it into your hand,

it completely vanishes and then you are-

you're done, you're good to go, you got, you got nothin'.

That's the way I store my filters,

just to you know, save bag space. Ha!

(rhythmic rock music)

(ambient techno music)

♪ You're full of confidence and cheap cologne ♪

♪ You're showing off your moves in hope for attention ♪

- What's up everybody! Peter McKinnon here

and welcome back to, yes! Another two minute Tuesday.

It's so great to have you here,

and to see all of your smiling faces.

Guess what? I'm gonna try and make you a promise today.

I might break it, I might not.

I'm gonna try and stick to two minutes,

and I'm gonna do that by committing right now

by putting two minutes on the clock.

(echoing boom) Let's go!

Okay, so today we're talking about how to make your photos

and your videos more professional,

and you're gonna do that by using filters

in front of your lens.

There are so many different types of filters

that you can screw on to your lenses,

that you can even magnetize to some of your lenses

depending on the mount.

But these are going to give you drastic changes

both when you're shooting photos

and when you're shooting video.

Now we talked about ND filters before

and that'll be the biggest change

that you have when you're shooting videos.

Having nice depth of field in the background

like we have right now, where it's smooth and creamy

and delicious, and it's very blown out.

It's a very shallow depth of field.

That is a very professional look that a lot of people want.

Now when you're outside and it's super bright,

usually when you're shooting at a very wide aperture

and if you don't know what that means,

you can check this video here which is camera basics,

you want to shoot at that wide open aperture

to get that nice, soft, shallow background.

But if you're outside and it's so bright

and you open up that lens to let tons of light in,

well it's already too bright and now you're

letting even more light in, so how is that gonna work?

That's when you put an ND filter over the front of your lens

and the best way to explain it

is like sunglasses for your camera,

everyone uses that analogy for a very specific reason.

So check this out. Let's say we're outside right now.

This shot that you're looking at,

that's how I want it exposed.

We're at 1.4, that lens is wide open,

nothing's shallow, it doesn't look good.

You'll see as I just move this piece of glass,

this ND filter in front of the lens,

look how much better that looks!

Now we have that professional look outside

despite how bright it is.

(clicks keyboard)

I just realized I didn't actually tell you the reason

you need an ND outside for video while I'm editing this.

So really quick, a little caveat

so that this all makes sense,

is when you're shooting video,

you want to maintain your shutter angle.

Meaning you want to shoot video, double your frame rate

so that it looks the smoothest when it comes to motion blur.

If you're not shooting double your frame rate,

the motion blur isn't natural,

so it feels jittery and it just looks weird,

and people watching your videos and your films

will just think, "This looks a bit choppy" or "interesting"

and that's because your shutter speed

is not matched to your frame rate.

So if we're shooting at 24 frames a second,

and we're shooting video on a DSLR,

we're gonna move our shutter speed to 1/50th of a second

and you always want to keep it there.

You can compensate for the brightness outside

by cranking that shutter up to you know, 1/250th

and it would look fine on your screen,

but then that motion blur won't look good.

So you have to keep that shutter speed at 1/50th.

But herein lies the problem,

that the footage is just too bright,

it just doesn't look good,

which is why you slide the ND filter over the lens

which basically exposes everything properly.

Another reason why cinema cameras are so expensive

because they have built in ND filters,

they don't even need anything over them.

I'm shooting on one right now, for example,

where's the button, where is it?

Look at this, all I have to do is press this button

and it adds and de-filters at different stops

right over my footage.

It's incredible!

Anyways, I figured I would just kind of throw that in there

because the video doesn't really make sense without it.

Moving on.

So that look is going to make your films,

your projects if you're working for somebody,

yourself, for a corporation, anything,

it's gonna make your projects, your work, more professional.

That's using an ND.

Now we're gonna talking about something called a polarizer.

If you've never heard of it,

it's also a filter that screws on the front of your lens,

but what this is going to do is bring out more

of the blues in the sky.

So it's gonna punch those colors,

it's gonna extract that nice saturation

from these very vibrant scenes

that may not otherwise be picked up

from your camera as vibrant as you see them.

A good example of this is when I went

to the Bahamas a couple years ago.

I made sure to shoot all my tropical photos

with a polarizer on because it made those blues

way darker and richer blue, it really pulls that out.

Another good thing is using these polarizers

on your done shot, because your drone footage

is gonna look even better and more colorful

when you have a polarizer on.

But my favorite use for a polarizer,

because they're also known

to cut reflections out of windows,

is if you're doing a time-lapse from a hotel window

and you have that reflection in the background

of your actual room that you're staying in,

you want to get rid of that, you throw a polarizer on,

it's gonna cut right through the glass and look amazing.

And then it also doubles as giving you that refection.

You'll notice a lot of Hollywood directors and DPs

use polarizers to get the reflection out of a car window

when you see someone driving in a really cinematic scene.

Half their face is perfectly exposed

and the other half might be all the trees passing

on the road that they're driving in,

and that is one of my absolute favorite

types of shooting styles when I see that in a movie.

It's super cinematic, it looks incredible,

and you're gonna get that with the polarizer.

I'm pretty sure that was already two minutes,

so I apologize.

I mean no, I'm not sorry!

We're crushing good content right here.

All right, next up is something called the Black Pro-Mist.

Now you might be like, "What is that, Pete?"

"What does that even mean?"

Now let's be honest, when you see big, blown-out

highlights in your camera footage

when you're shooting with your DSLR or whatever,

it doesn't always look that nice,

but a Pro-Mist filter is gonna kind bloom those highlights,

it's gonna make everything look a lot more

soft and glowy and dream-like.

This is a Pro-Mist, it just looks like a UV filter,

but if you were to hold that in front

of the camera right now, you might even notice

around my ears or around my face,

it's just a little more soft and cinematic.

Now I'm not threading this on because I'm literally

just holding it to the lens, hey.

But if I move it away, I think you'll probably

see the difference, especially when you're outside.

So again, if you replay that footage,

you just skip back like ten seconds,

you'll notice when that Pro-Mist was on,

my skin looks a lot softer,

so does that neon sign in the background,

opposed to the harshness of those highlights

without a Pro-Mist.

Ooh! (snaps fingers) Just lovin' this! Lovin' this topic!

Okay lastly, you can throw a UV filter on your lens.

Now you've probably heard of that,

those are the most common, the most popular.

Usually when you buy a new lens, you throw a UV on it.

I can't say with like absolute certainty

that I even see much of a difference with a UV haze filter.

The reason I do like them though is because

if you're spending a lot of your hard earned money

on a lens, that's gonna protect the front element.

So if you drop it, if something hits it,

if water gets on it, anything like that, a knife.

Maybe you're shooting the thumbnail for

8 Camera Hacks in 90 Seconds.

You just have that filter on the front

to make sure it's protecting your investment.

So that's why I like them.

And the last pro tip is something called the step up ring

that looks like this, there's no glass on it.

That may have blown your mind right there,

it blew mine originally.

But what it is, is a filter that filters on-

(ring clinks on floor) Argh! We're good.

It's a fashion-

(ring clinks on floor) Seriously, Peter?

It's a fashion accessory you can, you could like,

Jennifer Lopez hoops right there, we're not gonna-

Let's get back on topic!

So what the step up ring or step down ring does

is you screw and your thread your filter on to it,

and then this is gonna allow you

to thread this on to your camera.

Not having to buy this same Pro-mist or polarizer

or ND size for every lens that you own, right?

'Cause some lenses are 82, some lenses are 77.

You've got so many different diameters of lenses

that like, you don't want to have to buy the same ND filter

for every single diameter lens that you have.

That's why you get something like a step up

or a step down ring and then you can

just screw your existing filters on to it

and fit your lenses without having to break the bank.

So I'm gonna list all of this stuff

in the description below.

If you want to check all of those links out,

ka-boom! below.

And I should say, I just replaced all of my filters.