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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Sony 85mm f1.4 G Master lens
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Now, the GM or G Master series was developed specifically because there was some complaints from Sony users that had begun to adapt the Sony FE platform
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and noted that there wasn't a lineup of truly premium options that would compete with, say, Canon's L-Series or the equivalent series on Nikon
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And so the GM series was developed specifically with the mind of creating these premium options, often very expensive, but often is at the same time optically superior as well
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Now, of course, there's a certain amount of marketing hype that's a part of that
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Part of that marketing was that they're designed to, you know, resolve 100 megapixels
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You know, frankly, I think that a lot of that does boil down to marketing. You know, either a lens is sharp or it is not
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And, you know, as you increase resolution, you know, things do change
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But I've found that lenses that are less sharp on lower resolution bodies are actually, in some cases, sharper
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And, you know, have more apparent resolution on, you know, higher resolution bodies
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So I think that's mostly marketing. But at the same time, certainly one thing is true, and that is on my 42 megapixel Sony A7R Mark III, this lens resolves a whole lot
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And of course, I'm looking forward to looking at how some of these lenses hold up on the soon coming A7R Mark IV, which moves up to the 61 megapixel range
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And so, as many of you know, I've spent an extensive time comparing the G Master lens with five other 85mm competitors
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and beyond that I've also reviewed multiple 85mm manual focus lenses for the Sony FE platform
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So at this point in total I've spent time with 8 different 85mm options
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along with several adapted lenses on the Sony FE platform. So I have a pretty good benchmark to work against
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And so first of all let's take a look at the build and the design of this lens
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This lens as I noted in an episode where I compared it with others This is a lens that in many ways has the most premium build of any of the current 85mm options
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It's solid, it's heavy, it's a mix of engineered plastics and metals
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but it has a fairly dense feel to it that often denotes a lot going on underneath the hood
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And certainly when it comes to the feature set, it has got by far the most robust set of features
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What I mean by that is that it gives you an option, and it's the only one of the autofocusing lenses to do so
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of either choosing your aperture via automatic control from within the camera
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You just slide it over to A. And then you also have the option of using a manual aperture ring
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with one-third click detents, one-third stop detents. I personally enjoy having a manual aperture ring
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and when I have one, a lens like this, I tend to use it. I have, for example, the Sony 50mm f1.4 Sony Zeiss Planar
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and it is similarly equipped, and I tend to use the manual aperture ring over auto aperture
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for the simple reason that it's right there and I'm more intentional about it. Of course, your mileage may vary
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but one other trick that's up the sleeve here of the G-Master lens is it also has a one-click ability to de-click that aperture
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and it becomes then completely smooth, which if you're a video shooter allows you to do things
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obviously, like aperture racking, or if you're just someone who prefers to not have fixed stops
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and just to be able to essentially create the aperture shape that you want
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then you can do so by using that aperture ring. Now I will note that while this will move smoothly or when you have it clicked you can feel the clicks The Aputure iris as I holding it right now doesn actually change It requires the camera
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to be engaged and on and it's still electronically controlled. It just gives you a physical control
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to do so. So you know a little bit different than say the Loxia 85mm f2.4 which of course you have
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a true manual control, fully manual control over the Aputure iris. Now when it comes to the Aputure
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iris here. One thing that stood out to me about the GM as I compared it to all these other lenses
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is the fact that it has the highest aperture blade count, 11, I believe, and it retains a more circular
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aperture shape when stopped down than any of the other competing lenses. It also exhibits the best
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geometry, and what I mean by that is that, you know, one thing that people complain about often
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with a lot of lenses is that near the edges of the frame when you have, you know, bokeh circles
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in the background, they'll become lemon-shaped or cat-eye-shaped along the edges. The G Master is
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actually the best of the six lenses that I reviewed in this comparison series to retain good geometry
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towards the edge of the frame, and so that certainly is an advantage, and when you stop the lens down
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it retains a really nicely circular shape. So if that's kind of a big deal to you, then the G Master
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is certainly the way to go. Now, it also has, only a few of them have this, but it's one that does
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and that is a manual switch for autofocus and manual focus. It is a focus by wire
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It employs dual linear motors to drive the elements. And so, but right here you can see that I can freely turn this
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although it's damp, I can freely turn it without any kind of limits in either direction. And that is because right now it's not doing anything
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When the lens is mounted on the camera and the camera is powered on and it's in the appropriate mode, you know, manual focus here or DMF selected in the body
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when I turn the focus ring it will route input through the focus motor and it will turn the
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elements. Now many of you have heard me complain that you know focus by wire is not my favorite
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manual focus experience and that remains true. I will note that on some of these lenses like the
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GM they've done a pretty good job of emulating manual focus and so while it's not you know a
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true like Zeiss manual focus experience or Voightlander you know some of the really really
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well-made manual focus lenses. It certainly is better than what most say Canon L-Series USM
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motors are when they're clicked into MF mode. Sometimes there's a little bit of a slightly
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gritty feel or it's just not completely damped and smooth. The G Master does a pretty good job
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when it comes to that. However, when you're making major focus changes, you're going to make
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a lot of rotations, usually about three or four full rotations to go from each one limit to the
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other. And so don't plan on making really big, fast manual focus changes. Of course, most of the time
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you're not going to be utilizing manual focus. This is an autofocus lens and it autofocuses very well
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In my comparison test, it came in in third place when it came to tracking action. But while it came
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in third place because of some notable misses by the metric that I use, what I did is I took the
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burst, you know, 40-something images per burst, and then I broke down at a pixel level, I looked
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at each one of them, and I rated it 1 to 5. And so an image that received a 5 was one that was
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perfectly focused. One that received a 1 was one that was completely defocused or misfocused
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And so the G Master actually had the highest number of perfectly focused images out of all
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the six lenses. But unfortunately, what brought its score down somewhat is that it had some really
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bad it misses as well. What that tended to be is either getting well before the plane of focus with my subject
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which was a sprinter sprinting towards the camera and so it would either get well out in front of the subject to where the subject was completely out of focus or it would be well behind It was just kind of this pulse that would happen It only happened it happened for about four images And so it wasn like a routine thing but it happened
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and that brought the score down. However, in general purpose use, my autofocus actually was
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really, really high. I shot event settings really, really high. Outside of that, my only complaint
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about, you know, just regular autofocus was there was a few situations where I wanted to focus on
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a foreground object and it would lock onto a background object and just refused of its own
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devices to come back. I would try to reinitiate focus by just holding the shutter button down
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halfway. Wouldn't do it. And so I either had to do a manual focus to pull it back to where I wanted
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or to point maybe at the ground or something at about the right distance to get the focus pulled
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back. And then a lot of times it would pick up. The only other thing that's worthy of note here
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is that when we evaluate the autofocus smoothness for video work, as you're going to see here, it leaves a little bit to be desired
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Sony 85mm G Master. Okay. What you can see there is there's certainly some noise
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In fact, it was out of the six lenses that I reviewed, it was arguably the noisiest competing with the Sigma 85mm f1.4 art
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as the R1.4 art as the noisiest, it also had, you know, some very obvious stepping that took place
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So if you were making a more significant focus change, you would have kind of a focus about
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halfway, split second pause, and then the remainder of the focus. And so there were other lenses that
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did a better job of just doing one, you know, clean focus pull. And so, you know, the focus
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motor gets the job done. However, compared to, for example, the 85mm f1.8, it just feels a little
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bit less refined than that, a little less snappy, a little less responsive, and that's the nature of
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those linear motors needing a lot more torque to move the much larger, heavier elements that make
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up an f1.4 lens. Now, when it comes to the image quality, the G-Master lags a little bit behind
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the Sigma Art Series in the corners, and it's very, very strong in the center, very, very high
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contrast, and we'll get back to that in just a second. But the Art lens actually has the strongest
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corners, and it's very, very consistent across the frame. Stopped down a little bit, however
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to, say, f2.8, the GM makes far more significant improvements than what the Sigma does. The Sigma
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is very good wide open, but it only makes really incremental improvements, very tiny improvements
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when stopped down. That's not true. The G Master and by f2.8, it actually is sharper in the corners
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and has more contrast. And so at, you know, smaller apertures, probably the beginning
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somewhere around f2.8, it is the highest resolving of the lenses that I evaluated. And it has the
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highest levels of micro contrast of any of the lenses. And so where I saw that, like for example
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I really love the Samyang 85mm f1.4 AF lens for Sony. It has, to me, a really, really nice
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mix of sharpness, but also having a nice, soft, creamy, defocused area or bokeh
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The GM is arguably a little less soft in the defocused area, but what it does pack is definitely
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more micro contrast and global contrast. And so at wider aperture, say when shooting a portrait
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you're gonna see more nuance in the variations of skin tone light and shadow on the face So brighter areas will be a little bit brighter darker areas a little bit darker You know it a taste thing as to what you prefer But certainly if your priority is shooting really high resolution very high contrast images the GM is the best of the bunch
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And it's probably more akin to like a Zeiss Milvis 85mm kind of look in terms of its impact
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And so, you know, certainly a lot of strengths when it comes to that. And so, you know, it really breaks down to what your priorities are
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It really doesn't have any kind of fatal flaws. It does show a little bit of chromatic aberration in terms of longitudinal variety
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mostly exhibited as a little bit of a blue-green fringing in bokeh circles
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or slightly beyond the plane of focus. Not strong enough to be a major issue
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However, you know, it does have some vignette wide open, but the vignette is not particularly strong, particularly when compared to competitors
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Although the Sigma Art, which has a huge 86mm front element, it has a little bit, maybe a little bit less vignette in the corners. The one area where I did
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note that, say, the Samyang beat the GM is that at equivalent distances and equivalent apertures
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bokeh circles were larger and softer out of the Samyang. And so I think that there is one of the
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factors here is I think that the GM is probably a little bit shy of 85 millimeters. And, you know
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that kind of stood out in comparison even to the Sigma as well. And I've always noted the Sigma
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to maybe be a hair shy of 85 millimeters as well. And so I'm gonna guess that this is actually
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somewhere closer to 83 millimeters. And so that can be a factor in certain situations
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But even when stopped down somewhat and at medium distances, the Samyang just had a little bit softer
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brighter backgrounds. And maybe light transmission, which has been pretty common for these premium Sony lenses that I've seen
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Sony branded, that maybe light transmission is always not top notch. and so I don't think that's the case here
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and I think that's part of where they get maybe the more intense contrast
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out. That's maybe the trade-off that comes a part of it. But overall, I mean
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the image quality is probably the most consistently great of all of
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them, but don't expect it to be by a huge margin. The one thing that
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jumped out to me in my comparison series is that all of those lenses are very, very
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competent and while there are strengths and weaknesses, none of them are
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hugely head and shoulders over the other. in terms of the complete package the g master is it it has the best combination of build features
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and image quality autofocus it along with the other sony 85 millimeter the only ones to have
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the af hold button which you know you can program to a variety of different functions and so it's a
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little bit more feature rich it's a little bit better built it's you know more thoroughly weather
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sealed probably than any of the competitors but it's also by far the most premium priced and so
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it's going to run you at around 1800 bucks where the nearest competitors are 1200 and you can get
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the, uh, you know, the, the Samyang for under 700. And so that makes, you know, a little bit more of
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a hard sell for those that you, that are looking for value. If you're more just concerned on having
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the best, it's going to be the most durable in the longterm and you're willing to spend the money
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Maybe you're a professional or commercial photographer, probably the G master is the lens
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for you. But if you are more of a bargain hunter, note that there are several options that are going
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to give you nearly as much lens and certainly nearly as much performance for a whole lot less
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money. I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my
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full text review, along with a lot of supporting photos as a part of that. You can also find buying
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links if you'd like to purchase one of these bad boys for yourself. There's also linkage there to
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follow me on social media and to become a patron, and you can sign up for my newsletter. And of
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