Capturing the magic on a Scottish island: stepping up to professional-quality content creation

Vlogger and influencer Niamh Mackinnon grew up on the idyllic Isle of Skye but, by the time she left school, she thought it was "boring and old-fashioned." After studying abroad, however, she came to value what it offered. She moved back home and is passionate about celebrating the landscapes, culture and traditions of Skye, especially the Gaelic language, winning more than half a million followers across her social channels. Recently she had the opportunity to take her video content to the next level using the Canon EOS R50 V. Here she talks about her experience with the camera and how it transformed her storytelling.

"I've always been into creating content," Niamh reveals. "Even as a kid, I would always be making little home movies of our family holidays." She didn't see content creation as a career, though, and left Skye to study law. Social media remained just a hobby until she returned home for the summer in her third year and made some videos showcasing what life on the island is like.

"My first 'day in the life on a Scottish island' got over a million views pretty quickly," she recalls. "I thought okay, maybe I can make a go of this, so I made another one, and that gained eight million views. That gave me some confidence to go for it and pursue what I was really passionate about. In my final year of university I was more focused on creating content than on studying but somehow managed to get my degree, moved back home, and now create content full-time."

Niamh currently has 307,000 followers on TikTok and 215,000 on Instagram, and her YouTube videos have gained more than 19 million views.

Skye is the largest of the Inner Hebrides, off the north-west coast of Scotland, but is very sparsely populated. Niamh's vlogs and videos focus on the slower pace of life on the island and living closer to nature – exploring the countryside, enjoying simple everyday activities such as baking, hiking and wild swimming. In this way, she says she aims to "bring even a little bit of positivity to platforms that are quite intense and sometimes toxic." Beyond just sharing the lifestyle, however, Niamh is motivated by her passion for the culture and traditions of Scotland, which she feels don't have enough presence on social media.

Her dream project about the folklore of Skye simply wasn't feasible on a smartphone, which she usually uses to record her videos. "With a smartphone," she explains, "you don't get that dramatic, cinematic impact, so the story's lost and it doesn't seem as mystical and magical."

So how did the Canon EOS R50 V help Niamh tell her story? Above all, she says, "the difference in quality is just insane. You can't compare it. I recorded in 4K using Canon Log to get a more professional look and capture the detail in the landscape. Folklore is ingrained in the landscape, in the details of the rocks and little things, not big landmarks, so I need the camera to pick those up to be able to tell the stories."

Using Canon Log made it possible to capture the maximum dynamic range and colour detail, and Niamh could then colour grade her footage to bring out the depth of the landscape that she says she's been missing in smartphone footage. "You just can't get that same cinematic storytelling feel on a smartphone. It's a completely different ball game."

Niamh used the EOS R50 V with the Canon RF-S 14-30mm F4-6.3 IS STM PZ lens, a breakthrough lens with internal power zoom specially designed for content creators using an EOS R System camera with an APS-C sensor, and she loved the power zoom. "I avoid zoom on a smartphone because it's 'sticky' – it just jumps from one thing to the next. The zoom on this lens was so smooth and precise, it's completely different. And it was so easy to control with the zoom ring on the lens or the zoom lever on the top of the camera."

From a practical point of view, Niamh was impressed with how lightweight the camera and lens combination proved to be, even when she was walking with it for hours, and how easy the kit was to handle. When shooting on the move, for example when capturing herself travelling to a location on a bumpy Skye road, she found the image stabilisation incomparably better than anything on a smartphone.

She loved the autofocus too. In the past, if she was out filming by herself, she'd often just prop her phone up and hope she was in focus, but sometimes she'd find that the phone camera decided to focus on something else in the frame and the footage was unusable. In contrast, with its intelligent autofocus with subject tracking, the EOS R50 V locked on to her without fail, delivering perfectly-focused footage and freeing her to concentrate on her content rather than worrying about the technical aspects.

Niamh was mainly shooting vertically for her primary social platforms, and really appreciated having a camera that delivered correctly-formatted footage. Other cameras, she says, even if they offer framing guides, require the extra step of cropping, which she doesn't want to be spending time on when she has something to share with her followers.

She found the workflow very straightforward, thanks to the Canon Camera Connect app, which made it quick and seamless to transfer her footage to her smartphone for editing and sharing. "In the past, with other cameras, I've had issues with that, but this was absolutely great, and a big time-saver when it comes to editing."

The camera also proved to be easy to use in the field. "On Skye, with the weather and lighting conditions changing so fast, from a downpour to suddenly sunshine, you have to adjust your settings quickly. With the EOS R50 V, it was so easy to do that on the spot – I didn't have to spend hours out in the rain trying to change the settings or anything. It's fun and super-easy to play around with settings until you get the results you're looking for."

Niamh normally films on her own, but her sister helped by shooting some behind-the-scenes footage of Niamh in action. They used the camera's Colour Filters to add a sepia tone and reduced saturation, which they found ideal for capturing the mood of how they were feeling. "It's perfect for storytelling and expressing the emotion."

"I usually don't like experimenting," Niamh continues, "but on the EOS R50 V it's so easy to switch video modes and try different settings, I was less nervous about it.

"In fact, it makes me want to be more creative. On a smartphone you're just pressing record and there's no creative input, but with this camera you can play around and be more creative, which I think is the biggest difference. It makes me feel more like I'm filmmaking rather than just recording something."

Niamh's immediate focus has been on raising the standard of her content. "As I grow as a creator I want the quality of my work to grow as well," she says. "This camera has enabled me to capture that high quality I've been missing, taking my content up a level so it looks more dramatic and scenic."

However, the potential it offers makes her aspire to tell more creative stories too, featuring local voices on Skye, especially the older generation. "When I talk about more cinematic content, it's not just the look of it but the stories I can tell, the deeper meaning behind it. With a smartphone, you can't tell those stories in the same way. The people here are passionate about the culture – there's so much heart to it and passion in it that I'd love to share, and I hope inspire people to reconnect with their own heritage and tradition."



Written by Alex Summersby