I'm looking for a setup that will enable me to make video material for YouTube, Instagram and so forth. Initially it'll just be me talking to camera, with cutways to B-roll footage including some close-ups. This will all be shot indoors in a room with little or no natural light. Later on I might want to add a second camera. Sound recording will be handled separately and I'm happy to sync by eye using handclaps or whatever.
Can anyone recommend suitable equipment? I'm thinking I'll need one camera body, possibly a couple of lenses, and a couple of LED panels, plus stands etc. I don't want to spunk thousands on it and I'm happy to go second-hand, but I do want it to look professional as this will be a fairly serious endeavour. I'm hoping that once set up it can mostly be left in place.
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Camera wise i like Canon colours but they're so far behind in spec now. Sony colours are weird so I'd go for a Panasonic. The GH5/5S is the perfect YouTube camera imo if you don't need pro video camera features/form factor. Still about a grand without lenses though. There's also the Black Magic PCC4K for that sort of money which can give you amazing results with raw video but it had too many drawbacks with batteries, reliability etc for me shooting on location a lot. Needs a lot of external kit to get it up to scratch. On the cheap the GX80/85 is a great little camera, or a bit more for the G80.
Budget for a decent shotgun mic and boom stand. I don't really like lav mics, they can be too boomy and unnatural sounding. Treat the room a bit to kill reverb. Nothing worse than bad audio and it's often overlooked.
For a camera, look into an older micro 4/3 model that has good 1080p. No one gives a shit about 4k on YouTube tbh. And it's a pain to work on. Fuji and Sony have good video features, but more expensive than micro 4/3 and still not as good tbh.
I don't get the colour argument - I've shot Sony, fuji nikon and Canon and never thought Canon colours were anything particularly great or bad - they're all fine and can be graded. If they look off to you, just watch for a bit longer and you'll adjust...
80% of your output success is composition and lighting. With video, a nice vocal tone is important too.
4K gives you a lot of possibilities during the edit, because you can actually zoom into the footage without it looking crap. 1080p is limited in this respect. My mate who films for things like Portrait Artist of the Year keeps telling me that 4K is pointless, but I completely disagree tbh.
Sony autofocus is really great. I don't *think* my skin tones are too bad straight from the camera, and I don't tweak that much. I just expose for the skin. You can see them here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwN-OUjzG4
And here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc4GIrmjq8Y
I usually film in S-Log3 or if it's super low-light I use a tweaked version of the stock PP2 colour profile.
Light is super important, but being able to expose without blowing out your highlights completely is something I've had to learn over time! Strangely enough I didn't find it that easy to predict what sort of image I was going to get. An external monitor can help loads with this.
Last Canon I had was too cheap to even really talk about tbh. But it was the D650, and I didn't like any of the images I got from it to be honest. But this is way more likely to be down to inexperience on my part.
Sony menu systems are a ballache to get used to. A7III gives you custom menus to alleviate the pain.
Anyway... if you've got the cash.. Sony A7III... A6500 for a bit cheaper... then learn the basics of filming, shutter speed, ISO, etc... that's my recommendation.
used final cut to edit etc
videos at dragon heart studio (YouTube) to show the results
4k does let you reframe stuff in post but also.. just do it right first time. Imo that's not worth the massive increase in file size, processing power, storage, render times etc. Experience has taught me that life is much easier getting everything right in camera.
On the cheap you could do a lot worse than a Canon 70D. Whilst autofocus is usually crap and switched straight off, the face tracking on that would probably be quite useful for solo pieces to camera.
Work use a Sony 6000 and those little Tascam rechargeable lapel mikes and they sound fine to me.
If you light modern iPhones they do pretty well in my estimation, you lose stuff you get with DSLR but sometimes you are better using what you have and getting the delivery and performance right. A good style will take you a lot further than a Dick with a heavy Pro camera and studio.
Even if I use my OMD for video I use the iphone for a different angle shot to break up the monotony of someone talking to the camera. You can balance out the colour easily in modern post.