Micael Widell Newsletter #27
Captain's log
June has been a pretty nice month for me. I did not produce as many youtube videos as I normally do though, due to the whole family having a long and pretty severe cold. At least it was not COVID - we tested and it was negative. And now both me and my wife have gotten our first vaccine shot, which feels awesome.
During June I tried a new concept - POV photo walks. It means that I put an action camera on my forehead and record a video where you get to see everything from my perspective. It was fun, and everyone who commented on the videos seemed to love them, so that will definitely be something I am going to do more of.
Tomorrow we are going to leave our local area for the first time since February 2020, to go to Boden to visit my wife's mom. Looking forward to changing environment for a bit!
/Micael
The Beauty of Kyrgyzstan
I stumbled upon a set of landscape photos from Kyrgyzstan, and I was blown away. Very beautiful and definitely worth having a look at.
Patreon
I am playing with the thought of starting a Patreon. Actually, I already have. And I have started to post some things there, just to feel it out. But I am still unsure if I should really go this route or not. I need extra income streams, especially if I am to survive on Youtube without having brand deals. But on the other hand I don't want to put too much time making Patreon content, as just a tiny portion of my viewers will ever see that content.
Would you pay five dollars per month to support me in my work and to get access to full size photo collections from all my videos, behind the scenes-content, extra photo collections and lens reviews that never make it to youtube, as well as occasional bonus videos and Q&A sessions?
What are some other things I could do on Patreon that would make you want to pay a small monthly fee?
Enter Canon
I am still mainly a Sony shooter. But I am always looking for the perfect camera. That is why I constantly buy cameras of other brands and systems to explore them. I simply love the process of staying on top of every camera system and lens that is out there, and to try the ones I find intriguing. It is also important for me to have at least one camera of every system, so that I can do lens reviews of any new lens that gets released.
One system that I have loved using a lot is Canon DSLRs. I have owned two of them so far, and I fancy the simplicity and the intuitive menu system, as well as the excellent ergonomics and smoothly shaped camera bodies with no sharp corners or edges. But my heart has always been with more compact non-DSLR cameras. And I haven't been that interested in the new Canon RF system yet, because it has had so few lenses available, and most of these lenses have been incredibly expensive.
But now that the Canon RP, the cheapest and most compact/lightweight camera of the RF system has dropped in price a bit, and that Canon has introduced a super compact, beautiful, nifty fifty lens, and you can get both of these for just 1100 EUR together, that is simply a very good deal. Also we are starting to see some other very very interesting and budget friendly lenses for Canon RF, such as the 800mm f/11 lens - check this example photo, and this one! I want to try the 800mm as soon as I feel I can afford it - that extremely long telephoto reach in such a lightweight and cheap lens is truly revolutionary.
So I just ordered the RP + 50mm kit as a way to test out the Canon RF system without breaking the bank. I like doing like this - testing a low end camera from a system for a few months, before buying anything more expensive. I am looking to upgrade my Sony A7III to something with a better EVF within a year, and I am going to wait for the A7IV, the A9 III and the A7RV first to see what kind of specs they have, as well as compare all these to the Canon R5, which seems like a very good camera. I like my Sony cameras but I hate the bad ergonomics and user interface, two things that I think Canon are excelling at, so that might just make me switch to Canon. On the other hand I have so many Sony lenses now, so a switch would mean a very big step. We'll see!
My Published Videos since the last newsletter
- POV Macro Photography Episode 1 | Swedish Summer Meadow at 5.30 AM
- POV Macro Photography Episode 2 | Swarmed by Forest Mosquitoes!
- POV Macro Photography Episode 3 | Tiny Macro Rig
Goodbye for now
Thank you for reading this far, and see you in a month! Feel free to follow me on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter in the meantime. And also feel free to tell your friends about this newsletter, and to reply to it if you have feedback or comments :)
/Micael