thank you for joining me
that didn't quite go as smoothly as i thought but yep
that's me 10 years ago videos like this were filmed on a sony handycam that
actually belonged to my boss at ncix's sun
so we're using the camera's on-board audio and entry-level photography light
that we borrowed and instead of taking screen capture we just
we zoomed in on the screen and yes that is that is actually electrical tape
stuck to the front of the screen nowadays we put a lot more technology
talent and time into our videos and i like to think that it really shows so
thanks to b h photo for sponsoring this video where we'll be doing a 10 year
challenge not with facebook profile pics but
rather with the production quality in our videos that continues to change as
our channel ages and i have got to admit i actually got
really nostalgic going through all this stuff and i'm not the only one
brandon can i get a challah super nostalgic
that's not a holla
b h photo is the largest non-chain electronics retailer in the us serving
amateur and professional photographers and videographers since 1973.
with fair pricing and a fantastic shopping experience both online and in
store b h has been our go-to gear store for over six years now check them out at
the link in the video description or learn more about our experiences with b
h at the end of the video the early days were pretty rough like this one where we
accidentally filmed an entire video without audio
and then instead of reshooting it because i didn't have time i just dubbed
a voice over at my desk wow what is that that's the transmitter the infrared
transmitter um then there's this video that has audio but with unbearable
background noise because the camera and its onboard microphone was so close to
the computer hardware we were trying to film so there's a few buttons down at
the bottom of the board you've got your oc genie it's so funny for me to hear
people hearken back to the good old days when Linus tech tips was better back
when he was at ncix i mean can you guys even imagine if i uploaded
this video today why does Yvonne get abruptly cut off at the end of the clip
i feel bad for the that's the actual end of the video like
we didn't edit that just now and sadly the quality of Linus tech tips basically
didn't change for a solid year LTT's
first real hardware purchase was a canon powershot sx1is which was decidedly
consumer grade but definitely an upgrade over the original sony camera because
that one recorded to tape so to ingest
our footage we actually had to connect the camera to a pc over firewire or
actually a mac to be more specific and then capture the footage off of it so
yes my friends that thing was from the era when faster than real-time footage
capture was a feature what a pain in the butt the sx1is
actually recorded 1080p 30fps video fully digitally to sd cards and had a
pretty wicked optical zoom but there were actually some ways that it was
worse it didn't support any form of external
audio so we couldn't even use that stupid gray twinkie microphone mind you
at that point the goal was not great production values online as tech tips
which was supposed to be our vlog channel anyway because remember when i
worked at ncix we were actually working on two video series concurrently
ncix tech tips was believe it or not the
higher production value one with editing some graphics and
a little bit of preparation on my part the problem was that we couldn't make
those videos fast enough to meet the demand from all of our partners so as a
compromise and it was actually my boss's idea even though it ended up biting him
in the butt when i ended up splitting later we created Linus tech tips which was
still owned by ncix at that time and the videos still went on the ncix
website but the company name was no longer in the title of the channel so
the idea was to give me a bit more leeway to be edgier and not worry as
much about quality which quickly turned into what i called
the one take policy where we would just keep recording through stumbles with the
goal of shooting as many as six to eight videos in a single session that would
last just one to two hours today we'll be unboxing the sans digital
tower raid you know what i like i like things that
are called special edition you can see there's some more black stickers these
are to prevent people from taking it apart never take apart a hard drive thank you for checking out my blog on
the wd black and that was really how things were for a long while that is
until we upgraded to a well okay looking
back it's kind of cute to me that i was so excited about this but to a canon
xa10 that i pre-ordered thanks to our increased ncix tech tips budget back in
2011. actually you know what no in fairness this was a big upgrade because
even though it was a fixed lens camera so barely even above a consumer camcorder
unlike the old sony one which used a proprietary interface for external audio
sources really limiting our upgrade options the xa10 had xlr which meant
that we could finally use professional external mics like the sennheiser
ew110g3 later that year we would make our first hire luke who by the way
grossly misrepresented his experience in both camera operation and video editing
yeah you heard me luke and let's start with
a warm welcome for our guest camera operator who's also interviewing for the
tech tips assistant job and we also reached a hundred thousand subscribers
this was after three years of videos that quite honestly like i can't even
bear to go back and watch now like those of you who have been with us since then
you guys are hardcore like just amazing that stuff sucked a year after that in
october 2012 we finally got our first piece of real professional caliber gear
at eight thousand dollars the sony fs 700 would be our companies which hadn't
officially started yet most expensive equipment purchase for years to come by
the end of 2012 we had moved into the era of Linus media group being a thing
and Linus using his garage as a studio
which actually worked great because we could open the garage door to give us
some natural light because we still didn't have enough lights and we reno'd
the whole thing into a state that i mean we thought looked kind of cool and techy
including the original tech wiki set which believe it or not was not an
actual green screen but rather real white walls that were supposed to look
kind of like i was inside one of those infinite white apple commercials
but actually looked more like i was standing in front of an ugly piece of
drywall overall though even in spite of some stumbles this was
when our videos began to look like not
complete scorched garbage for the first time we had two kino-flo diva lights
plus whatever cheapies we could borrow from ncix when we weren't back there
doing contract work we had a lav mic of our own and we had our fs700 still
shooting at 1080p equipped with a new shoulder stock and a counterweight that
seemed like a great idea for balancing the rig but in reality was just brutally
heavy to carry around anytime we'd actually need it like our first year at
ces where we made over 50 videos with
just three full-time employees speaking of employees this is actually the first
video that our fourth employee brandon ever shot
look at that it's like the guy was destined for greatness isn't it you got
some nice bokeh in the background there and everything i mean not that we paid
for the privilege even though we had a decent camera by this point it would be
over a year before we bought any extra lenses for it i actually never told ed
or brandon to bring their personal lenses to work but like
they refused to use the kit one and i refused to buy any more so everyone's a
winner right anyway when we finally bought a couple of sigma lenses we didn't really get a
quality boost because they were the same ones that we had already been borrowing
for some time now around the time that brandon showed
up coincidence we also released our first video with
dedicated b-roll footage and it's
actually frankly kind of amazing that we continued with the concept considering
how bad these shots are in hindsight i mean
i thought at that time that it was just a waste of time i was like well
come on you already have the host there you've already got the camera there
you've already got the product if you want to see it closer just move your
butt over closer to the thing and then just like step back when i'm ready to
address the camera like what do you need to come back later for
but we did and it was around this time that we also made our first pc build
guide ever on Linus tech tips this was
actually supposed to be a statement piece for us it was the first time that
we were going to try to meet or even exceed the production values of the ncix
tech tips that we had left behind with my old employer and we spent a lot of
time on the intro the graphics the
lighting setup and we even tried to get like as much depth to the shot as
possible by pulling the table out from the shelves behind me and then
positioning brandon literally cheeks to the wall at the other end of
the garage one of the most amazing things about this video to me which ended up doing 50
000 views in the first day which was like a huge deal for us at that time is
that i was still doing all of these videos unscripted with at most bullet
point notes open on a nearby laptop or scrawled on a nearby piece of paper
that changed when we switched sets yet again to the infamous langley house and
brandon won another battle with me this is where the teleprompter makes its
first appearance allowing me to read my notes while looking directly into the
lens that is at least once we started shooting our a-roll on a tripod because
brandon refused to try to hold the camera with the teleprompter hanging off
the front of it what a lightweight oddly enough the kitchen set that we moved
over to shortly after that became so beloved by our fans that even though we
were only actually in the langley house for just over a year here we are today
years into our current studio and we still have people kind of hearkening
back to the good old days in the kitchen anyway by this point our budget started
to increase so we invested more in lighting we bought a cheap piece of
green screen cloth that was so thin we had to fold it three times over to
prevent light leakage from the window behind even with the blinds closed and
we got our first slider that we used to get shots like this one
this is also around the time that we made our first purpose-made thumbnail
image instead of just using a still from the video and also when we made a pretty
significant shift into actually writing full scripts word for word or nearly
instead of just doing vlogs so you guys see that eye contact i'm making with the
camera there that's because the video is scripted
ultimately we made this move as part of
a change in direction towards reviews
rather than unboxings and as a way to
both improve the information density of our videos and to leverage our larger
production team without causing inefficiencies
so it was more work for me up front to create the scripts but it made the
shoots much easier and less time consuming because retakes were simple
and editing was also faster because there was just less garbage footage for
at that time taryn to sift through in september of 2014 we celebrated one
million subscribers with our 7 member production team and over the following
year we built out our kit with fancier things like diffusers which are
especially important when you're using a jib which was another new toy that we
use for top down shots like these in 2015 we moved finally to the studio that
we're in now in retrospect that seems like so few people to occupy this big of
a space we continued to build out our kit with all sorts of random stuff
closing out the year with our purchase of two sony a7s2s which became our
b-roll and run-n-gun show coverage cameras pushing our poor canon xa
cameras to purely Channel Super Fun duty rip in
2016 we bought our first big kid lights
our two re sky panels which are super bright not to mention RGB something our
channel was definitely severely lacking and then we kicked off 2017 by getting a
bunch of new gear to make our lives easier at shows like ces including our
much more reliable electrosonics wireless mic packs a variety of
pods of various sorts and a couple of knock-off easy rigs
which we only just replaced like last week with the real deal because they're
like 5 000 each honestly though worth
every penny because these things have changed our lives and they allowed us to
finally achieve my goal of hand-held filming with a teleprompter anyway
shortly after we got back from ces our new cameras arrived from red which
while painful for the bank account and actually for our workflows at the time
because like 8k footage there was definitely a workstation upgrade in
there somewhere they also gave us kind of a sense of relief because at that
point we had reached the top there was nowhere else to go with our gear i mean
people shoot hollywood movies on these things and yeah
who did i think i was kidding brandon always wants more stuff so last year
after we changed over our set from something more seti to something that i
think feels quite a bit more natural we picked up a dji ronin 2 gimbal which allows us
to take smooth walking shots like this one and then right before ces 2019 we
bought a handful of canon c200s to replace our
poor a7s2s that are both in various
states of disrepair and all of these things aside from the fact that we're
just geeks and we love new toys to play with are essentially being purchased for
the sole purpose of you guys being able to see and hear me in greater and
greater definition something that over the past 10 years
has surely become less appealing which i guess brings us
perfectly into how b h figures into all of this
the vast majority of those purchases have actually been through b h going all
the way back to our original fs700 and
even though i've only been to their new york store once on a day that happened
to be closed doy they've been very good to us over the
years with fair pricing great customer service we've actually had to return a
fair few things for an assortment of reasons excellent delivery times especially
after their canadian shipping got more competitive a few years back and
generally great selection so it is no bs
for me to say that it was pretty cool to have them reach out to sponsor this
video because to me that's yet another indication of just how far we've come
going from just even six years ago not being able
to get an appointment at a trade show to be shown around someone's booth to being
taken seriously by the real players in the production space so
thanks to b h for sponsoring this video and thanks to you guys for watching
if you disliked it well you know what to do but if you liked it hit like get
subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured
at the link in the video description probably the newer stuff not the older
stuff so much also link down there is our merch tour which has cool shirts
like this one and our community forum which you should totally join