What a Magical Morning! - A6700 in Action + DIY Reflection Pool Build).f614

So in this video I'm taking the Sony a6700 out for a wildlife photography session. Paired with the 70-350mm lens this might be one of the most compact setups for capturing wildlife. So we're gonna do some remote shooting and we're gonna build a bird photography reflection pool. And yeah there's a lot of stuff happening in this video so as usual grab some snacks, your favorite drink, put your feet up and let's dive into this video. So Sony reached out to me and challenged me to put aside my usual full frame camera setup to try and capture birds and wildlife with the a6700 and the 70-350mm lens. And of course I said yes. But there is one problem and that is that the last week has been nothing but like flat boring gray and very very uninspiring. So I've decided to do something that I've like always wanted to try but never done before. So we're building a reflection pool. So if you're wondering what a reflection pool is, so it's basically a birdbath but designed specifically for photography. So when you place yourself with the right angle you get this very nice like mirror reflection to the birds and animals that come by to this little pond for either taking a quick bath or drinking and so on. And my plan is to somehow recreate like a natural water source so it kind of looks like something you would find in the wild. And for this project I went to the city to do some shopping. So I ended up only needing to buy one single thing. So I bought this. It's some sort of tray for planting. Yeah, planting things. Pallkragar as we say in Sweden. Planting tray. It says planting tray, that's true. Figured I have a an old table that we don't really use an outside table that I could use to put it on because then we have we're making sure that the it's flat and it's supported because this thing is pretty wobbly which is not ideal when we need to level it 100% leveled. So we just need to find a place where we have a good light and good background. That shouldn't be too hard. No, no, perfect. That ended up being way harder than we thought and this is my friend Darek by the way. So after a lot of back and forth trying to find a place we came to the conclusion that sometimes it's just easier to, I don't know, set up and try. See if you get a feeling for it. So I was out on a forest walk the other day and I was so lucky finding two roots that looks just so good and I brought one of them home and I'm gonna show you. Look at this. Isn't that just beautiful? So after going back and forth we decided to place the hide probably here sitting down boom and then you have the table right there. We get some nice background if they decide to perch on that stick and we have some nice like branches in the area and they also are close to the forest so they can hide if they need to but we need to figure out a way to balance it up correctly because using round stones like this is not gonna hold because this thing is gonna be heavy. Let's get to work I guess. It's a pretty nice one. Yeah. So this is what it's looking so far. Looks pretty good. That's a nice one. Okay look at that. Okay Darek for the boys. So to be able to get really close to the wildlife I need to blend in into nature and using one of these tent hides is a really effective way to disappear. So huge thanks to Darek for helping me build this. So now we're gonna let this stand here and marinate for a bit to let the birds and wildlife get used to it and here you can see this beautiful reflection we got in the water. But we might have a little bit of a problem. So look at the squirrels so cute. Yeah good to know that they have been here. So now now this has marinated here. It has been activity here but something that I didn't plan for really was that it is frozen solid so we will not get any like reflections or anything like that unfortunately. But I'm thinking of maybe tomorrow morning put some warm water to kind of have some water at the surface that is not frozen yet. But tomorrow I'm placing myself in the hide but I want to kind of up my chances a bit so I'll move my feeding station closer to the table here. So hopefully the activity is as high as possible tomorrow morning. So the weather for tomorrow is looking very very good. So it's supposed to be sun and minus like 9 or 10 or something like that and yeah it will probably look tasty. So I do have high hopes for the light tomorrow morning. It's definitely worth moving this. So it's time to prep the dinner or breakfast. So it's such a cold and quiet morning. This feeling is something special that you went into the hide you're setting up the gear and everything's all set up and you have a warm cup of coffee and now you just wait. It's a fantastic feeling. You kind of hear the forest come alive slowly slowly. So I'm really excited to put this camera to the test again with the 70 to 350 millimeter lens. I really like the form factor like walking around with this setup. You barely feel that you're having it with you. You can just pack it down like it really fits in my side pocket of the jacket which is pretty incredible considering the reach is like equivalent to 525 millimeters or something at the the longest end. I'm starting to hear the wildlife coming alive. I saw on the trail cam that the deer have been here all night. I hope they come here during the day now and visit while I'm in here. That would be so cool to get like really close-up shots of the deer. Because usually when I try to photograph the deer I'm like inside with the kids I see the deer in my yard and I just grab my camera and kind of sneak out. I've gotten some shots but I haven't really sit down up in the forest here with the hide. I've been thinking of doing that for such a long time. Okay, I think the activity. Yes, we just had our first bird. Cheers. I just love the soft light that is this time of the day. Now I'm just waiting for one of the birds to use my stick that I put up. Because the light is just stunning. He perched where I wanted to. Good shots of the tree. On that mossy tree as well. Wow. Okay, now the light is starting to be. The sun is peeking through and we have police squirrels coming. Police squirrels. Just look. The odds. He just appeared. Something I really enjoy on the a6700 is how quickly you can change the modes. Like just with your thumb like you can change to video and then my preset settings I have right here. So I have it set up like one is for 4k 25p. Two is for 4k 50. And this is for 4k 120. And when I quickly want to change to photo mode, I just go to M and boom, I'm ready to go. So something that I also really enjoy with the a6700 is that it comes packed with all these features that normally just the more expensive full-frame cameras has. Like 4k 120 fps. My a7 IV doesn't have that. Like the better autofocus systems and the like the dedicated AI ship. And yeah, it comes packed in this like a very nice form factor that I really like. And I can pack it down when I'm traveling or when I want to photograph like wildlife somewhere. But like when I'm going on a trip with the family and we're not like there to shoot wildlife. But maybe I get a day off. This camera is perfect to bring in with this lens as well. Like it's really packable. And yeah, the quality I get out of it is actually very impressive I think. This one where he was peeking under the log. I haven't had a single bird on the table. That doesn't feel great. I think one perched a little while ago, but I missed it. So I'm actually surprised by this lens. I think the rendering of it is really nice. It looks, yeah, look at the look at the background quality here. It's just pretty creamy. And honestly, something I did not expect on a 350mm f6.3 lens. It looks very good. I'm quite surprised actually. I've had so many of you in the comments saying that I should try this lens. That many of you have it. And I can see why. That's a nice one. Oh, look at that. Beautiful. So good morning. So new day, new possibilities. And now I've learned my mistakes to not place seeds too far from the table. I'm just gonna focus on the table because today I'm planning to use this 16-50mm lens. Can you see how compact that is? Almost feels like I don't have a lens on. So this is a wider angle lens. And since this is an APS-C camera, this is equivalent to approximately a 24-70mm. So my plan is to place this on the table, remotely shoot from the hide, and trigger the camera with a phone. So I'll be sitting nicely drinking coffee in the hide and hopefully be able to get some wide-angle shots of the birds and the squirrels on the table. So as you can probably see, the sun is going up here, so I better get going. So we're first gonna just pair these two and then have a coffee in the hide and sit and wait. Okay, so the setup process is pretty simple. You just go into menu and here on the green tab, you can see smartphone connection. Click here and then on the phone, we open the creator app. And here on the little camera symbol, we can click next. We're gonna choose our camera in the little list here and we're using the a6700. And here you can see we found the camera and start pairing. Now they're trying to connect to each other and here's the text saying allow connection with your smartphone. Oh yes, that's exactly what we want. Pair and connect and we're all paired up. And here we want to choose remote shooting, Wi-Fi connection. Now we can see. Works fantastic. Better get going. In this case, a very important setting we must use is on the green tab here. We can go down to connect wild power off. We want to turn this on because otherwise when the camera is going to sleep, we can't connect to it because we'll probably have to wait maybe an hour. And if the camera is like sleeping, we can't wake it up with the phone. But now we can, so that won't be an issue. So now we just need to find a composition that's pretty cool. Maybe here. So I put seeds here and there and also there. So let's go. I think what's really cool is that you can control basically anything from the phone. And this works on any phone. It doesn't have to be in a Sony Xperia. Now we just need to wait in squirrels. But I kind of like this, the look of it. Since we're using a motorized zoom lens now, I can even zoom from. This is not digital zoom. The actual lens is moving, so that's pretty cool. And I can control ISO, shutter speed. And if I want to start filming, I can control that as well. I think I'm going to firstly focus on photos, but I want some wide angle video as well. Would look very cool. Something that is pretty cool as well is that I can use the shutter button on the phone to actually take a photo. Well, now we wait. Place. Good for it. Here. Oh, I see it. I can hear the squirrel. I just hope that he comes onto the table. It would be awesome to get a wide angle shot. I think this is a very cool shot. Look at the city beautifully. And yeah, I like this. Okay, I'm gonna go and grab the camera and switch to the 70 to 350. And sit in here shooting like regularly. Because if the deer comes, I really want a shot of it. I'm so happy I got the deer. So after a very successful morning in the hide, it's time to get on with the day. But I'm very happy. We got the squirrel on the wide angle. We got the deer on camera. But unfortunately, we didn't get that reflection shot. That was the whole purpose of actually building the table. But luckily, a couple of days later, the feeling of spring arrived. And we now have a beautiful reflection by the pool. So I decided to put the camera on a tripod. Plug in a power bank. Let it stand there for a whole day recording in 4k 25p. So we're ending the video with what it captured. So thanks again to Sony for sponsoring this video. And if you want to try out the Creators app for yourself. I have a link down in the description where you can read more about it. And thank you so much for watching this far into the video. It's a long one. So I truly appreciate that. From me to you, here are some animals from the forest of Sweden. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.