YouTube as a research aid...

[rpcrowe]

In the interest of traveling light - I will often take a minimum amount of equipment on a shoot which is fine for my almost eighty year-old body but, will sometimes result in me having the wrong equipment for a shoot.

I was planning to join my camera club on a shoot at a local exotic bird free-flight aviary and immediately thought that a telephoto lens would be the ticket for the shoot.

However, I researched the site on YouTube and decided that a long telephoto lens just was not what I needed for this project.

Due to he relative tameness of the birds and their close proximity; I have decided hat a combination of my A7iii with my 28-75mm f/2.8 Tamron lens plus the Sony 85mm f/1.8 might be a better choice...

I use YouTube to research venues as often as possible and will get a better handle on the gear that I need as well as ideas of what to shoot n the venue tat I am visiting...

[DanK]

I rely on it to some degree too, but it nothing more than a search of random postings that happen to have videos attached them. It's important to keep in mind that the entries are uncurated and can be incomplete or simply wrong, just like any text link you dig up with Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.

[rpcrowe]

I don't usually need intensive information to make my equipment decisions. This is a YouTube video showing the Exotic Bird Free Flight Aviary and it completely changed my ideas of what I will be shooting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLkLkhRNW5E&t=17s

i will be visiting the Chinese New Year Parade in Los Angeles. California on the First of February...

These videos will give me an idea of what I will be seeing there...

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...e.+Los+Angeles

And this one gives me an idea of the Tet celebration this coming weekend in San iego

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...e.+Los+Angeles

[Shadowman]

Years ago while visiting Vancouver I went on a similar excursion, the birds of prey were with the falconer about fifteen feet away from us and they were going to display the hunting skills of the birds. Unfortunately for us the area was bathed in fog so they wouldn't let the birds loose, spent the remainder of the day photographing zip liners and wouldn't have gotten any good shots if I had elected to leave the supertelephoto behind that day. I always say better to be prepared for what life throws at you.

[bobohex]

I don't usually need intensive information to make my equipment decisions. This is a YouTube video showing the Exotic Bird Free Flight Aviary and it completely changed my ideas of what I will be shooting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLkLkhRNW5E&t=17s

i will be visiting the Chinese New Year Parade in Los Angeles. California on the First of February...

These studies can be obtained if you pay for the papers here.

https://papersowl.com/pay-for-papers

And this one gives me an idea of the Tet celebration this coming weekend in San Diego

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...e.+Los+Angeles

I am doing some academic research on a particular YouTube feature. To do this research, I will need to have YouTube randomly display videos from the entire YouTube universe. Does anyone know how to randomly cycle through videos? I need to view between 400-500 videos, and I think I have an idea of how to do this random viewing, but just want to get insight from other people as well.