Which DSLR is the best to use for videography

[Lucas Bewick]

Hi, i'm looking into getting a new camera mainly for photography but i would also like it to have the ability to shoot video at a good level. At the moment i have a Canon EOS 2000D which isnt the best for video and has limited settings. It'll be for day to day photography and to make short films. I'm looking for what's best for these things under £2000.

I'd love to see other peoples suggestions at what to get.

 

[Jon O'Brien]

Mirrorless cameras with a DSLR-type body design such as the Sony A7SIII and the Canon C70 have a good reputation amongst filmmakers. I've heard the DSLR/mirrorless design is more prone to overheating though. All the best with your video making.

[Karim D. Ghantous]

IMHO only - forget DSLRs and look at mirrorless systems. The cameras that I personally would look at: GH5, GH5 II, GH5s, GH6, X-H2, E-M1 III. Those are not cheap cameras, but they are very, very good. They might come in at under £2000, but maybe not. I don't like the A7SIII - the image quality just doesn't cut it IMHO. And it's over your budget anyway.

Some people still use the BlackMagic Pocket Camera. It's 1080 HD, but it has a very good reputation. The BM Pocket (so-called!) 4K is also a terrific choice. 

YMMV!

[Jon O'Brien]

I've not used an A7SIII but I have filmed with an A7III and I must admit the look of the image didn't do much for me at all. Much preferred the image from the Sony FS7 which I've also filmed with. After all it's a much bigger and more expensive camera.

[Aapo Lettinen]

most of the modern mirrorless cameras are pretty OK for video shooting as long as the built in compression is good enough quality for your uses. ( I would NOT bother with Nikon mirrorless products though, they are useful for stills but really bad for video shooting and have bad price-quality ratio for video production and some like the Z6 models have bad sensor issues and much lower dynamic range than advertised, the real dynamic range is only like half of what they claim it would be which makes it just sad to use these cameras)

If you shoot lots of stills and relatively small amounts of video, then a photo oriented camera with great autofocus capabilities and resolution etc. would likely be the best choice. Panasonic cameras are great for videos and pretty good for stills too but the autofocus is more limited. I only shoot video and very rarely any stills so for example the panasonic GH line and the S5 have been great choices for me for shooting 99.9% video and only some two or three stills a year. The S5 could maybe be got at the OP's budget and is pretty optimal for shooting documentary stuff I think (built in sensor stabilizer, good enough video codecs for documentary shooting, can shoot very usable 50fps and 60fps in uhd, has real c4k resolutions available for normal framerates, can output really high quality 10bit 4k video or 4.1k / 5.9k raw video from hdmi even when the 1st gen only has microhdmi which is very fragile).

but really, most of the around 2k priced stuff is fine (except the Nikon mirrorless models which I would avoid at all costs for video shooting).

Likely you would want to use something which allows you to use the existing lenses with it which narrows the camera choice quite much

[Aapo Lettinen]

If the idea is to get a dedicated video camera for only video stuff, then some used prosume large-ish sensor video camera could be possible. People used to hunt down used ursa mini 4.6k 's and some other dedicated video cameras like used Sonys can be got at relatively reasonable prices as well. Used Pocket6k 's and such are available too. The downside of the Blackmagic cameras is that all of them consume tons of power and the battery supply may get expensive really fast if you plan to shoot full days with them.

Personally I like the concept of the Z-Cam cameras quite much and they are the number1 choice for remote controlling and rigging for me as well as for some fellow documentary DOPs. most of them use the same sensors than the Panasonic mirrorless cameras (e2c uses the GH5 sensor, the M4 uses the GH5s sensor, the F6 uses the S1H sensor as far as I know, etc) but the image processing is different and they are "real video cameras" with proper menus and very useful h265 and prores codecs which are pretty good as a low end A camera / lower mid range B or C camera for video production and short films as long as you have good monitoring and usable lenses. They are passively cooled and limited amount of processing power compared to higher end video cameras (which means not so sophisticated pixel mapping and LUT processing etc) so they have larger risk of generating visible bad pixels in couple of years of use, often not hot pixels but slightly darkened ones. But their practical value in the right use scenarios is so great that you likely don't care about the pixel risk because their benefits outweight the small drawbacks easily, especially because you can use pretty much the cheapest available batteries there is and no need to invest from 1k to 2k to v-lock batteries or to any other highly expensive accessories. I think the z-cams consume two or three times less power than Blackmagics which is pretty signifiant and the absolutely cheapest 20$ np-f960 battery can run the z-cam for hours

[Patrick Baldwin]

On 4/13/2023 at 10:03 AM, aapo lettinen said:

most of the modern mirrorless cameras are pretty OK for video shooting as long as the built in compression is good enough quality for your uses. ( I would NOT bother with Nikon mirrorless products though, they are useful for stills but really bad for video shooting and have bad price-quality ratio for video production and some like the Z6 models have bad sensor issues and much lower dynamic range than advertised, the real dynamic range is only like half of what they claim it would be which makes it just sad to use these cameras)

If you shoot lots of stills and relatively small amounts of video, then a photo oriented camera with great autofocus capabilities and resolution etc. would likely be the best choice. Panasonic cameras are great for videos and pretty good for stills too but the autofocus is more limited. I only shoot video and very rarely any stills so for example the panasonic GH line and the S5 have been great choices for me for shooting 99.9% video and only some two or three stills a year. The S5 could maybe be got at the OP's budget and is pretty optimal for shooting documentary stuff I think (built in sensor stabilizer, good enough video codecs for documentary shooting, can shoot very usable 50fps and 60fps in uhd, has real c4k resolutions available for normal framerates, can output really high quality 10bit 4k video or 4.1k / 5.9k raw video from hdmi even when the 1st gen only has microhdmi which is very fragile).

but really, most of the around 2k priced stuff is fine (except the Nikon mirrorless models which I would avoid at all costs for video shooting).

Likely you would want to use something which allows you to use the existing lenses with it which narrows the camera choice quite much

Please explain to this Z6 user why they are so useless for video because personally I really enjoy my 10bit log and it looks great. What sensor issues?

[Aapo Lettinen]

1 hour ago, Patrick Baldwin said:

Please explain to this Z6 user why they are so useless for video because personally I really enjoy my 10bit log and it looks great. What sensor issues?

There is a design fault in the z6 sensors which causes random flashing to the green colour channel and can't be repaired because it is in the physical structure of the sensor circuits. It does not matter in stills that much but on video one needs lots of post work to try to make the footage watchable. All z6 models including the new models do this.

Additional issue is bad manufacturing quality on the sensor, lots of bad pixels out of box and they pop up every now and then when the image processing fails to mask them out of sight. This is just lazy manufacturing, most 2k priced cameras have much better quality sensors with no need to redo the hot pixel masking every 3 days or so.

The third issue is the bad dynamic range which differs from the marketing claims so much that it can be said to be a scam. They claim a dynamic range of about 14 stops but the z6 can output about 9 or 9.5 stops at absolute maximum. Any serious video camera manufacturer does not falsify the numbers more than about 1.5 stops so the z6 is really a big marketing scam...

I was so glad when I was able to sell my z6 for 50% of what I paid for it so that I was able to get a Panasonic camera which is a great camera which does what advertised and not just trying to take my money and give sub par product like Nikon does.

Btw the panasonic S5 has a REAL dynamic range of about 12.5 stops, has better kit lens, has much better internal codecs, has built in sensor stabilizer, can do higher framerates, can do real 4k, uses cheaper memory cards and can output hdmi raw out of the box.... Still costs the same than the z6 scam camera