Good starter Cam for Video

[Phil Stanley]

I shoot still Photography weddings with my wife as an assistant.

I have started to do some video work on a few family events (21st birthday, christening etc) and generally make a fusion piece from the stills and video. I see this progressing in future. My wife tends to shoot the video with myself on the stills.

For stills I use 5D MK111's and XE2, but want to find something easy to use for my wife for the video footage we capture.

So our requirements while she learns is something easy to use, good stabilisation, good AF with options to go manual as she progresses her skills for video (and mine)

I have tripods and monopods when required but we would like something suitable for run and gun type footage. Having been reading many threads on here I am wondering if a camcorder might be worth considering which tend to have good AF and stabilisation with good auto options and manual control options as her skill set increases.

I would appreciate any advice on what you guys feel may be is suitable, as for budget, up to £1200 ish.

[Michael Silverman]

If you're not looking for a large sensor camera (as in larger than 1") then you may want to look at the Sony X70 and the Canon XA20. Both of these cameras will have very good AF and built in stabilization which will be great for run and gun. They also include XLR inputs which is very important for recording clean audio into the camera. These both have manual controls so you can go to strictly manual when you need to.

I will mention that the image from pretty much any camcorder is going to have more of a "video look" than a DSLR or Cinema Camera. By this I mean that the highlights, bokeh, and overall look will not have as much of the "film look" as a large sensor DSLR. However, shooting video on a DSLR has a steeper learning curve when starting out, so it may be worth sacrificing some of the "film look" in order to ensure she does not get frustrated during the first few months of shooting.

Just as a side note, the Sony X70 will be getting a 4K upgrade in the coming months so if you have any desire to shoot in 4K then that would be a better option.

[Noa Put]

The x70 is almost twice the price Phil wants to spend on a camera if he would get the 4K upgrade as well, the xa20 looks like a nice one that is within budget and a very good starter cam that has a few pro features like xlr input, a good review about the camera I found below.

Review: Canon XA20 (XA25 / HF-G30) - YouTube

[Phil Stanley]

Originally Posted by Michael Silverman

If you're not looking for a large sensor camera (as in larger than 1") then you may want to look at the Sony X70 and the Canon XA20. Both of these cameras will have very good AF and built in stabilization which will be great for run and gun. They also include XLR inputs which is very important for recording clean audio into the camera. These both have manual controls so you can go to strictly manual when you need to.

I will mention that the image from pretty much any camcorder is going to have more of a "video look" than a DSLR or Cinema Camera. By this I mean that the highlights, bokeh, and overall look will not have as much of the "film look" as a large sensor DSLR. However, shooting video on a DSLR has a steeper learning curve when starting out, so it may be worth sacrificing some of the "film look" in order to ensure she does not get frustrated during the first few months of shooting.

Just as a side note, the Sony X70 will be getting a 4K upgrade in the coming months so if you have any desire to shoot in 4K then that would be a better option.

Thank you Micheal for your input

We did try the 5D 111's but they were not user friendly enough, so I appreciate the feedback on video look. My first concern is to give here something to use that is not to technical and builds confidence without having to worry about missed focus, exposure slightly out ect. and can concentrate on getting good footage to put together in editing.

We can practise the more arty stuff on the 5D's etc in time

Phil

[Phil Stanley]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

The x70 is almost twice the price Phil wants to spend on a camera if he would get the 4K upgrade as well, the xa20 looks like a nice one that is within budget and a very good starter cam that has a few pro features like xlr input, a good review about the camera I found below.

Review: Canon XA20 (XA25 / HF-G30) - YouTube

Noa

Many thanks for that, I have been considering options and looking about all night.

There appears to be a couple of consumer models.
Panasonic X920 and Canon G30 are these to limiting in the features. I noticed also the new Panasonic 970 in 4K is due out.

One other model comes to mind
The Panasonic AC90 came up as I was wading through You Tube reviews, I have little knowledge of camcorders

I have also used some mirror less previously but used them for stills hardly touching the video functions, GH3,
and EM1, however I am not sure these would be that much easier to use for video

What about some of the later mirror less options, how user friendly are they:
RX10, FZ1000, LX100, any others? or again to fiddly?

I think initially top of the list for me is good AF with very good stabilisation, easy to pick up and use.

Phil

[Noa Put]

Yes, the ac90 is also a very good camera considering it's price and the videofeatures you get in return, I"d consider this one a even better start cam as the xa20 as it does have better functionality like 3 rings on the lens and more function buttons on the body.

A GH3 or EM1 is a dslr but like any dslr it will be much more difficult to shoot video with it, if you have the time to set up your shots you can get some very nice looking footage out of it but it's not a easy camera to work with like the panna ac90, you have a 5DIII so you should know it's a handfull to shoot video with, the results can be stunning in capable hands but it's not exactly a easy camera to learn to shoot video with.

The RX10, FZ1000, LX100 all produce nice images but again, they are not like a ac90 which I would consider a real videocamera. As soon as you start shooting with a dslr or pocket camera you will run into limitations, often in functionality, there is no substitute for having a nice motorized variable speed zoom, decent autofocus if you would need it, continuous long recording times without fear of the camera overheating, good control over all the camera functions from outside the camera, xlr input, 3 ring control over zoom, iris and focus on the lens etc and a dslr doesn't give you that, a dslr will force you to buy many accessories to make it a production ready camera.

The AC90 is not a perfect camera because it doesn't have a build in nd filters but to learn to operate a proper video camera I think it's about the cheapest you can get.

[Peter Riding]

I use my AC90 frequently.

It would be an excellent choice because it can do everything well on auto and you can gradually dip your toe in the water to learn the various manual functions.

Also, crucially for weddings, it makes the right impression on prospective clients. It looks the part without being huge. If you only have small cams - which I also use a lot - there will be a proportion of people who don't take you seriously regardless of the cams performance.

Its not too big to go on a monopod or too big to be comfortable on a shoulder strap just like a stills body.

You could fit neutral density filters including variable ones but quite honestly why would you for weddings? Is it that important to get the shutter speed down to 1/50th from 1/500th at a bright sunny wedding reception?

I would not get involved in 4k at all. You're just making a rod for your own back with little in the way of upside. Chances are you would have to upgrade your main PC with extra RAM, SSD, graphics card, processor, storage, etc and still be left high and dry when trying to edit multicam footage in real time - which you inevitably would want to do as you add extra smaller cams for ceremony coverage etc.

It would be a good idea to get The AC90 Book by Barry Green:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

You can also contact him via the DVXuser.com forum.

Pete

[Chris Harding]

Hi Pete

The AC90 is excellent as a sub $2000 camera ...you get an awful lot of camera for your money and it behaves itself in auto if everything goes pear shaped. In fact I nearly bought two instead of my EA-50's but the fact that there is no auto audio function on the XLR's was the only downfall ... manually adjusting audio levels at a reception for me would be tough as the levels in the room change all the time

As for shutter speed I think that "keep your shutter at 1/50 or 1/100" is highly overrated ..I have yet to see any ill effects using a higher shutter at a wedding ...inside it will be 1/50th anyway and in the sunshine I have shot bridal arrival and forgotten to stop down and the shutter screamed up to 1/1000th and the footage wasn't affected at all ... sure a high shutter may freeze motion if it's high enough but as far as I know we don't have motor racing at weddings ...it's all slow and graceful so a higher than 1/100th shutter won't even be noticed!!! If it's REALLY bright like a white beach or snow then an ND might be worthwhile so the aperture doesn't start affecting the tiny 1/5" chips

Still a good buy and easy peasy to use as a point and shoot camera too in full auto ...it's a wedding so you are looking for content not technical perfection

Chris

[Noa Put]

Also, crucially for weddings, it makes the right impression on prospective clients. It looks the part without being huge. If you only have small cams - which I also use a lot - there will be a proportion of people who don't take you seriously regardless of the cams performance.

For weddings? I only have small camera's, little handicams, a gopro on a stick, small m4/3 camera's with even smaller tiny lenses, weddingsclients only care about the result and you being unobtrusive, they don't care what camera you use. I used to have a nex-ea50, in size that's like holding a bazooka and the only thing I noticed was that guests where intimidated by it and noticed me coming from a mile away. Since I switched to small camera's the only thing I hear they didn't even knew I was there. Weddingclients will take you seriously if you are able to deliver, no matter what camera and equipment you use.

Is it that important to get the shutter speed down to 1/50th from 1/500th at a bright sunny wedding reception?

For people to have natural motion you should use a appropriate shutter, video is not like photography where you use higher shutters so you don't have any motionblur, also, at very bright locations even resorting to very high shutterspeeds to compensate can still not be enough meaning you have close down your iris as well but maybe you don't want that and you want to have a shallow dof and open up the iris, in such cases you can't do without a ND filter.

But I do have to say that the nature of weddings often force me, and I"m sure others, to not use a ND filter because it's just to difficult if you have to work fast in changing lightconditions, it works faster just using the shutter to compensate and to get the shot and the client will not notice that you didn't use a filter.

I would not get involved in 4k at all. You're just making a rod for your own back with little in the way of upside. Chances are you would have to upgrade your main PC with extra RAM, SSD, graphics card, processor, storage, etc and still be left high and dry when trying to edit multicam footage in real time - which you inevitably would want to do as you add extra smaller cams for ceremony coverage etc.

I have said this many times here, in my case I did not have to upgrade anything at all to work with 4K, I can work with one stream of 4K in realtime, even with colorcorecting and can do multicam with 2 other 1080p streams. The problem only starts when I use 2 streams of 4K in a multi-cam but even then I can just convert to a intermediate codec.
Getting a 4K camera (the ax100) has been my best investment yet because of it's ability to crop into the image without quality-loss, it has given me possibilities that where not possible before and has certainly improved the quality of my work when shooting ceremonies solo. Second advantage is when extracting framegrabs which look much better then 1080p frames.
I think people should start embracing the advantage 4K has instead of always finding reasons why it is not good, 4K may not be for everyone depending on what you use it for but for weddings and especially as a solo shooter or for running unmanned camera's 4K is awesome. :) If next year a 8K camera would come out and if it would be priced right, I"d be the first to get it, as long as I can deliver in 1080p to my clients I consider 4K a advantage and just incase someone would request a 4K master, I"m at least ready for it as well though I don't see that happening that soon.

[Peter Riding]

no auto audio function on the XLR's was the only downfall ... manually adjusting audio levels at a reception for me would be tough as the levels in the room change all the time

There is of course the onboard mic for auto; or the possibility of recording to two different channels at different Levels via XLR – thereby bypassing any danger of the auto levels function misjudging. Or a separate recorder of course, easily placed in the hotshoe on a small ball and socket head, then quickly and easily synced in post with Pluraleyes.

As for shutter speed I think that "keep your shutter at 1/50 or 1/100" is highly overrated ..I have yet to see any ill effects using a higher shutter at a wedding

Yep. For me that is hobbyist territory, stuff people have read on all the dSLR wannabee filmaker forums that sprang up, banging on endlessly about a film look being most desirable.

I only have small camera's, little handicams, a gopro on a stick, small m4/3 camera's with even smaller tiny lenses, weddingsclients only care about the result and you being unobtrusive

You're kidding yourself if you think that it doesn't matter to a proportion of prospective clients whose first exposure to you is seeing you work at a wedding they are attending as guests. This is well documented by many photographers who have switched from housebrick pro dSLRs to smaller mirrorless cameras. Even many years ago it mattered – someone might be dismissive of you holding that tiny camera until they got closer and saw the telltale red Leica emblem on it :- ) It becomes a value judgement – do I use the latest (smallest) gear because it better suite the way I want to work or do I weight things more towards what peoples expectations of my appearance might be. In both cases you absolutely must be as unintrusive as possible.

guests where intimidated by it and noticed me coming from a mile away. Since I switched to small camera's the only thing I hear they didn't even knew I was there

The AC90 is small enough not to be intimidating and works great on a monopod balanced on your waist. The built in stabilisation is very well regarded and anything more extreme can be corrected in Mercalli 4 so equipment movement is seldom an issue. My shoulder rig gets no use what so ever. That with a dSLR on it plus audio recorder etc was a complete waste of time in terms of getting natural un-camera aware shots.

For people to have natural motion you should use a appropriate shutter, video is not like photography where you use higher shutters so you don't have any motionblur, also, at very bright locations even resorting to very high shutterspeeds to compensate can still not be enough meaning you have close down your iris as well but maybe you don't want that and you want to have a shallow dof and open up the iris, in such cases you can't do without a ND filter

There is no such thing as natural motion, only the type of motion people are used to seeing in films, and even then only when its pointed out to them; except at the extremes of course. Bruce Dorn, the Canon Explorer of Light and one-time Hollwood film crew, demonstrated this years ago with his tuts. filmed at a wild west rodeo using Canon 5D II's with various lenses and shutter speeds.

Cams like the AC90 are never going to give me anything like the narrow depth of field I can achieve with say my 5D's and 50mm f1.2L, trying to use filters to get anywhere near is just pointless. Inappropriately narrow DOF dressed up as art is a plague in both the stills and video world – but thats another subject :- )

The F8 Challenge (3 Pics) - FM Forums

f/8 and be there - interesting read !!! - FM Forums

The problem only starts (with 4k) when I use 2 streams of 4K in a multi-cam but even then I can just convert to a intermediate codec

But 2 streams is nothing!!! I'd be very surprised if most shooters use less than 3 during the main events like the ceremony and speeches. I routinely use 4 and sometimes 5. Not to mention the extra step and space with using an intermediate codec; I used Cineform, soon got frustrated with that! So it is a killer that negates any advantage from being able to crop etc.

Pete

[Steve Burkett]

Originally Posted by Peter Riding

As for shutter speed I think that "keep your shutter at 1/50 or 1/100" is highly overrated ..I have yet to see any ill effects using a higher shutter at a wedding

Yep. For me that is hobbyist territory, stuff people have read on all the dSLR wannabee filmaker forums that sprang up

So it is a killer that negates any advantage from being able to crop etc.

Pete

Its hardly hobbyist stuff using a 1/50 or 1/100 shutter. Like Photography, there are rules to good cinematography. They exist for a reason. Yes they can be ignored by seasoned professionals knowing when and where to break them. However anyone who dismisses the rules completely is hardly a professional in my book, more an amateur.

I've invested in a new 4k TV and I have to say what I could get away with on my old TV is not the same with the new one. Poor image sharpness not withstanding, poor motion capture by longer shutter speeds shows up more on the new TV. It Judders more than regular shutter speeds.

I've done work not just for Brides but Production Companies too, some of whom create material for broadcast. I would hardly getaway with a that'll do attitude to my work with some of my clients. Perhaps some of you here aren't dealing with such people. I'm not sure whether to be jealous or sorry for you. It never hurts to raise your game once in awhile and I can only advise to take a long hard look at Cinematography and understand why these rules exist first before going out and just dismissing this as hobbyist.

I'm currently filming 4k and use it now on every shoot. The advantages of cropping for an HD delivery are just too useful for me to accept an HD camera now. My last filming assignment was a definite case in point. Dark interior, stuck at the far back with even my 35 to 100 lens on a GH4 not quite reaching far enough. Cropping down allowed me to focus my image on individual speakers in the panel on stage, something HD just couldn't handle on its own. Plus I was asked for stills from the video. For me 4k isn't a luxery. Its how I work and I wouldn't change it for anything. Incidentally no one has commented on my gh4 not being suitable and that goes for corporate work too. But then I have a wide range of professional gear to back me up and the confidence in my delivery to not need a larger camera to compensate.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Pete

Very fair comments! I still don't get the shutter speed obsession that people seem to have..but then again I STILL shoot in 50i at weddings and drop the footage onto a 25P timeline and it works well ...Using 50P maybe shutter speed IS critical ...I'm not sure. What I do know is that when things are going crazy at weddings and the limo arrives 15 minutes earlier than it should I have to get the shot so the last thing I worry about is my settings ...if I have to get the shot at 1/1500th then so be it .. better than missing the shot cos you were fiddling with camera settings!!!

Yes there is a workaround for the AC90 with the XLR channel but I still amazed that Panny never kept the normal auto/manual switches like all my other cameras!! I still like my on camera shotgun to record in auto as again getting the shot is more important than fiddling with audio levels. I once met a bride who was complaining bitterly about her photog "All he did was fiddle with his frigging camera instead of taking photos which he was paid to do"

I shoot a minimum of 3 cameras at a ceremony and I know for a fact my computer with Vegas would choke with three lots of 4K footage ... Just for interest if one did have to deliver 4K on disk would a BD disk handle 4K video or is a huge USB drive the only option.

[Peter Riding]

Oh come on Steve, if you know as much about cinematography as you purport to do (and yes I am returning your snarky criticism in kind!) you'd know shutter speed defaults are grounded in history as much as anything.

I wonder also if you are aware of the concept of over-engineering. Years ago this was brought home to me by personal experience. My Jag Sovereign was in for maintenance and I ventured into a Mercedes dealership for a nose around. The salesman (thought he did not of course call himself that) sniffily announced that Merc had spent more money developing their rear axle than Jag (before Ford) had spent on their entire car. So what? Both cars performed great. His was boring, the Jag had personality. The concept that they had over-engineered their rear axles was lost on him.

There is an awful lot of over-engineering goes on in wedding video production. Viewed from a distance it often looks like an indulgence by closet hobbyists and has little to do with emotional content.

Its all relative anyway. How much of your kit of which you are so proud meets the current BBC minimum spec for broadcast? Are you moving into the 10k-30k cam bracket as the work piles up? Anyone can broadcast anything just as a photo in a newspaper doesn't make you a newspaper photographer.

Don't feel sorry for me. Should I feel sorry for you? Grabs for the video in a "professional" environment? Really?

If you can't accept that some clients judge you partly by the equipment you're using thats your problem not mine. Incidentally I use small stuff when I can. I recently removed the battery grips from my 5D's which originally I needed as the change from the 1D series bodies in which they are integrated was too much. They had been on the 5D's so long I had to remove one with a hacksaw :- )

Pete

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Peter Riding

As for shutter speed I think that "keep your shutter at 1/50 or 1/100" is highly overrated ..I have yet to see any ill effects using a higher shutter at a wedding

Yep. For me that is hobbyist territory, stuff people have read on all the dSLR wannabee filmaker forums that sprang up, banging on endlessly about a film look being most desirable.

Right... :D Sorry Peter, but this comment says a lot about your knowledge about the most basic rules in videography and you are saying they are only applied by wannabee filmmakers, really :)

You're kidding yourself if you think that it doesn't matter to a proportion of prospective clients whose first exposure to you is seeing you work at a wedding they are attending as guests. This is well documented by many photographers who have switched from housebrick pro dSLRs to smaller mirrorless cameras. Even many years ago it mattered – someone might be dismissive of you holding that tiny camera until they got closer and saw the telltale red Leica emblem on it :- ) It becomes a value judgement – do I use the latest (smallest) gear because it better suite the way I want to work or do I weight things more towards what peoples expectations of my appearance might be. In both cases you absolutely must be as unintrusive as possible.

If you work for corporate clients I agree with you, for weddingclients not, it only means you need a bigger camera to make it appear you must be good but it can also mean you are insecure about the quality of your work and you want the size of the camera to compensate for that, my clients only choose me for my work and they never ever question my camera's or the fact that I use a handicam. Maybe in the photography world bigger is better but in videography you are only judged by the work you deliver, not by the tools you use. I also don't tell my clients what camera's I use nor do I say so on my website, I just let my work speak for itself.

But 2 streams is nothing!!! I'd be very surprised if most shooters use less than 3 during the main events like the ceremony and speeches. I routinely use 4 and sometimes 5. Not to mention the extra step and space with using an intermediate codec; I used Cineform, soon got frustrated with that! So it is a killer that negates any advantage from being able to crop etc.

I can use two 1080p and one 4K native stream with no issue in a multicam sequence and can use several 4K streams in a multicam if I use Edius HQavi codec, the hqavi codec does introduce much larger files but I can reserve 1 harddrive for one project only and delete the hqfiles after the edit is done and replace them with the native files only in case I need to make a change later which very seldom happens so that's a 100 dollar investment in a harddrive. I don't see what the issue is here, just pick the right workflow, minimum extra cost, max benefit because the HQavi codec cuts like butter.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Peter Riding

There is an awful lot of over-engineering goes on in wedding video production. Viewed from a distance it often looks like an indulgence by closet hobbyists and has little to do with emotional content.

You are actually insulting about any weddingvideographer out there with this statement, not everyone makes cctv like recordings of a ceremony and speeches only like you do and I don't mean that in a bad way, but it's just about the most basic and simple form of recording a event with multiple unmanned camera's. There is nothing wrong in delivering those long recordings only if your client is happy with that but there is a big difference in only supplying a few hours continuous recording of longer events or delivering a 20 minute film where you piece together all parts of a day and try to capture the emotion and mix it into a compelling piece which a couple will watch over and over again with their family and friends over the next years to come, I just don't see them do the same with a one hour ceremony or one hour speeches, that's only a memory for the couple and a reason to use the remote control to fast forward with family and friends.
Just to give you another example, my last trailer which I posted in the wedding forum was viewed 1200 times on the bride's facebook in 24 hours, that's the power of a over-engineered video :) That will lead into new inquiries and I"m sure they don't care what camera's where used to make the video.