Thank you! (Patreon)

I want to take a minute to say thank you to everyone who is supporting this channel. I also want to tell you a bit about what I've been using the proceeds for. 

So first, thank you. I really love making these videos and the fact that people like them enough to part with some of their hard earned dollars to support them still amazes me. This isn't something that I take lightly. Really thank you! I put off making a Patreon for some time because I was nervous to have that responsibility - all I could think is what if I disappoint? I hope that I can continue to deliver joy, education, entertainment, humor and spread the love of engineering. 

I've been investing everything I've earned and a good bit of my own money into improving the audio and video. You can see an example of the impact of these changes in the top image. Here's what I've done: 

1. Upgrade my lights. I had really terrible bulb based lights that were extremely harsh and not brightness or color temperature adjustable.

2. Upgrade my camera. My previous camera was limited in many ways from resolution to recording time and had a serious problem with focus and white balance. It was not 4K so I had to be very careful to frame my shots since I can't crop without losing resolution. This extra work would lead to me shooting less.

3. Upgrade my microphone. My microphone was dying and I was having to do all kinds of post processing work to suppress whine and other things. It still sometimes sounded terrible.

4. Inexpensive HDMI switcher. This is for live streaming. My AMA taught me that I really need to be able to cut to other cameras for detailed views. I hope this enhances the viewing experience.

It is clear that the next thing to address is getting high speed video footage. Without a doubt there were incredible things happening with the explosive bat that I simply couldn't capture. I'm looking at krontech and others. I've also recently met someone extremely nice who has offered use of their high speed camera so that may also solve this problem. Thanks again - also thanks for all the great discussion in the discord.  I look forward to making more awesome stuff together!