Camera for daily shoots under 2500$

[Karlis Korbens]

Hey!
I'll be short. I understand that you all use RED cameras for professional work but if you have to choose a camera under 2500$ for small jobs, trips, partys which would it be? Blackmagic Pocket, a7s, GH4, NX1? Or other?
As you can tell I'm interested in this kind of purchase and would like to know thoughts from professionals.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Blackmagic cinema 2.5K with Canon EF mount. $1995 and includes a full copy of Resolve.
Uses ubiquitous canon lenses with full electronic control - and also many other good, inexpensive still camera lenses from Nikon, Contax Zeiss, (see the Contax Zeiss thread here), etc

Off the shelf SSD drives.

Record in Raw or ProRes with 13 stops Dynamic Range.

Best bang for the buck if you are doing motion pictures.

 

[Hal Long]

Lumix GH4. It's a great all-arounder. Not perfect, but it does so many things very well. Internal 4K (great for shoots on blue/green screen to downres to HD), handles motion well and good latitude. In fact, the forthcoming VLOG firmware (expected this year) should make it much better. I've been using several GH4's as E & F cameras on a show I'm shooting with Epics and F55s and it works great. Just came from color correcting one of our episodes and it's really amazing how well it intercuts with a bit of work in Resolve. After the first episode, our colorist had it pretty dialed so it really didn't add anything significant to the grading time.

I've done several shoots with the BMCC and the A7s. Not too fond of the prores codec of the BMCC and while the cDNG has a robust raw image, it doesn't play too well with premiere or AE. The files are F'ing huge, so get ready for serious media management on anything above a small-sized project. Beyond that, the audio pipeline is pretty noisy, so you'll want to record external audio. So, for me at least, the camera sounded great on paper but the reality was that it complicated my post workflow and had enough glitches that I moved on.

The A7s is another one that sounds great on paper. The SLOG is great and leaves a lot to color, but the camera simply doesn't handle motion well at all. No internal 4K so you're stuck recording external 4K prores @ something like 380GB / HR. Ouch.

If it's a matter of comparing internal HD recording for simple, stand up projects, the A7s would shine. Its internal HD looks pretty solid. But be careful outside of that comfort zone.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

You'll get the most DR and sensitivity from A7S, most 4K detail from NX1 and most all around practicality from GH4. A7S has fiddly menus and poor battery life, NX1 requires additional transcoding, GH4 has thin 4K on board.

Rolling shutter is not great with all of them but A7S in APS-C cropped mode rules those two in that department. BM pocket is not practical for what you want to shoot and has least detail all other issues aside.

 

[Burke Doeren]

Agreed with Hrvoje.

I ended up choosing an A7s to replace my 7D as my personal travel camera and after a bit of a learning curve (3 days or so of customizing it), it feels second nature and I've captured some really great stuff with it.

APS-C mode is strong for video, and you can set all the custom buttons to things you'll actually use (screen brightness, peaking, wireless transfer, etc). Plus you can use virtually any lens you want on it with the right adapter (EF, Nikon, PL), and it's wickedly clean up to 51,200 ISO. After that it gets noisy, but still useable (in some scenarios) up to 204,000 ISO.

Stills are also very nice and filmic with the A7s.

Also, SLog2 is super flat. Almost too flat for some scenarios. I dialed in a custom CineGamma4 PP6 picture profile that looks great, holds a lot of detail, has more contrast than SLog2, and requires less grading.

Honestly you'll get great images out of any of these cameras, and if you use a color chart and create a correction LUT, your colors will always look pretty great no matter which one you choose.

Rent or borrow them and pick the one that feels most natural.

 

[Michael Hastings]

First of all, it kind of depends on whether the OP was interested primarily in a motion picture camera that has more of a cinematic intent (since he is on reduser) or a camera more geared toward family stuff.

If it is family oriented then I would also choose the Panasonic GH4. If more cinematically oriented the BMD is still best bang for the buck.

Global shutter is important. (A7S has really bad rolling shutter artifacts and all of the others have them to an extent)

The BMD codecs - ProRes and cDNG are the two of most open and widely supported codecs. (The codecs in the Sony and Panasonics are more proprietary and more heavily compressed) Capability for Raw recording gives the most quality/flexibility. and the fact that BMD uses Off the shelf SSDs - which are the lowest cost per gigabyte available - makes Raw recording more feasible. For storage, 4TB drives are $129 these days so storing the data from 16 full 256 SSDs (assuming you don't ever weed out any bad/unneeded footage) gives an average cost of $8 each - about the cost of a consumer miniDV tape a few years ago.


The included full version of Resolve (normally $999) does everything in terms of editing and color correction he is ever likely to need - including serious professional work. Or it can be sold for $500-$600 and use the free version or Final Cut X

 

[Daniel Pearson]

I use the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera for jobs that don't have the budget or requirement for my Red. I use it bare bones no rig with M43 lenses and have only ever lost a few shots due to rolling shutter. If you don't need 4K and want something small and cheap, I don't think you can go past it.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Nothing in this price range is going to be very good. My suggestion is to rent what you need for that particular project and don't try to buy anything until you're really ready to commit to a better system. The lenses alone are a huge, huge expense.

 

[Daniel Pearson]

Nothing in this price range is going to be very good. My suggestion is to rent what you need for that particular project and don't try to buy anything until you're really ready to commit to a better system. The lenses alone are a huge, huge expense.

But he said it will be:

for small jobs, trips, partys

For trips and parties I'm sure any of the cameras he mentioned will do a great job.

 

[jake blackstone]

Check out Digital Bolex. For 3K you get a camera with global shutter.

 

[Les Dittert]

Nothing in this price range is going to be very good. My suggestion is to rent what you need for that particular project and don't try to buy anything until you're really ready to commit to a better system. The lenses alone are a huge, huge expense.

I used to shoot Epic, but switched most shooting to a gh4 because of portability reasons.
All I miss is the slow motion.

I did A-B testing , and was surprised.
Here is one quick one I found on YouTube, watch in UHD. Can you tell the Scarlet from the GH4 ?
I like the 2 second boot up time, and crazy battery life as well.

https://youtu.be/SdxoJ7LUqVI?list=PLyQ9qeSdN0oYujy9MOsXVAEQmyXcCiXSm

 

[Olivier Madar]

I often use GH4 and Epic/scarlett. The GH4 is great where the Red can't go, but i always prefer the Red. Please don't think the GH4 = scarlett !!!! I love both but don't compare them, even if, on some pictures, you can't says wich one is what.

 

[David Peterson]

For casual daily family shooting a Panasonic LX100 could be ideal. Or a Panasonic FZ100, or even Sony RX10.
Sony AX1000 / CX900 / X70 are others to consider if you want a camcorder instead.

At a higher level of production (i.e. no budget / indie short films or wedding videos etc) consider:
Sony A7s / Samsung NX1 / Panasonic GH4 / BMPCC

 

[Marc Wielage]

Here is one quick one I found on YouTube, watch in UHD. Can you tell the Scarlet from the GH4 ?

I can always tell 8-bit in color correction -- even the scope looks blocky and crappy. It's fine as a cheap DSLR, but I'd always rather have a camera that can do real 10-bit 4:4:4, if not at least 4:2:2. You will tell the difference the moment the picture is underexposed and has to be brightened, or when it's overexposed and clipped. The range just isn't there compared to a camera like the Red.

Sadly, you get what you pay for.

 

[Les Dittert]

I can always tell 8-bit in color correction -- even the scope looks blocky and crappy. It's fine as a cheap DSLR, but I'd always rather have a camera that can do real 10-bit 4:4:4, if not at least 4:2:2. You will tell the difference the moment the picture is underexposed and has to be brightened, or when it's overexposed and clipped. The range just isn't there compared to a camera like the Red.

Sadly, you get what you pay for.

I have found that I can color correct the 8 bit files from gh4 more than I would have guessed. The noise acts like diffusion dithering, and does a fair job concealing obvious issues.
I don't shoot for colorists. I shoot for Joe Public. The GH4 resolves more than a MX sensor at 4K by the way.
The LX100 which has a similar bit rate is not as good, it chops the highlights in a less natural way.
At UHD, 422 etc does not matter much. The sheer number of pixels with some noise erases visible differences, especially after conversion to a distribution stream.
So , back to the threads question: GH4 or even LX100 , on a 800 gram 3 axis Nebula gimbal , makes great UHD footage.
But blabbing this on this forum is like preaching Christianity to Hajj Muslims while walking around the Kaaba in Meca.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Samsung NX1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0DigAgYD-QY

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I have found that I can color correct the 8 bit files from gh4 more than I would have guessed. The noise acts like diffusion dithering, and does a fair job concealing obvious issues.
I don't shoot for colorists. I shoot for Joe Public. The GH4 resolves more than a MX sensor at 4K by the way.
The LX100 which has a similar bit rate is not as good, it chops the highlights in a less natural way.
At UHD, 422 etc does not matter much. The sheer number of pixels with some noise erases visible differences, especially after conversion to a distribution stream.
So , back to the threads question: GH4 or even LX100 , on a 800 gram 3 axis Nebula gimbal , makes great UHD footage.

If resolving power is what you are looking for, NX1 downscales to 4K from 6K sensor readout. Also NX1 gives least compression-messed size-manageable on-board recorded 4K for a compact camera currently, until XC10 comes out.
Haven't compared the jello though and h.265 is currently a chore. Though new UHD TVs support it.

 

[Hal Long]

I used to shoot Epic, but switched most shooting to a gh4 because of portability reasons.
All I miss is the slow motion.

I did A-B testing , and was surprised.
Here is one quick one I found on YouTube, watch in UHD. Can you tell the Scarlet from the GH4 ?
I like the 2 second boot up time, and crazy battery life as well.

https://youtu.be/SdxoJ7LUqVI?list=PLyQ9qeSdN0oYujy9MOsXVAEQmyXcCiXSm

This is interesting and certainly proves that point that any of these cameras can take both good and bad images. I think the GH4 complements the Epic nicely, and use it often in that capacity and as A cam on smaller shoots, but wouldn't trade my epic for it just yet. Light them right, don't ask too much in terms of motion performance and almost all of the new higher end DSLRs will do a good job. The GH4, despite the crop factor, just happens to standout in terms of versatility IMO. Doesn't hurt that I already owned a battery of great M43 glass from the AF100 days.

 

[Karlis Korbens]

I'm surprised that majority choose 4K over dynamic range. Yes, I'm primary searching camera for low budget paid works.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

If DR is your priority that would be D750. The price: thin codec, and not the best 1080p due to the way it reads the sensor.

If 4K out of the box is not the priority A7S is a good choice with very good DR and sensitivity, and workable on-board codec for the purposes you need. Accentuated post looks excluded.Test it first and see how it feels, because it's tiny and fiddly.