(upbeat music)
- All right, we have another new camera to review.
This time it is the Sony A6400
and this camera, it really seems like
they're marketing it towards vlogging,
YouTube filmmaking, which I love.
And so I thought I'd give it a review and see if it
is any good for vlogging slash YouTube filmmaking.
But that requires us to go outside.
There's been a snowstorm for, like,
the last two days, so should be fun.
First test, autofocus, can it keep up?
So far it seems like it's doing a good job.
Anybody else ever struggle with jacket zippers?
All right.
Matt!
- Yes?
- [Matti] You wanna go for a skate?
- Absolutely.
- He's always so excited. (laughs)
So the reason why I think that this camera's kinda
geared towards vloggers, YouTubers as well
'cause it's got a flip LCD.
Hey, film this, Matt, the flip LCD screen
that kind of like, tilts so you can see it.
It's not as good as having like a flip LCD screen
from the side, but it's something.
Man, it's cold out here already! (groans)
But there's a few things that I feel like
would probably-- (horn honks)
Why are we honking?
There's a few things that would limit this camera
from being a vlogging camera.
One is the lack of image stabilization in-body
and then the other I would say is that it's not full frame,
so kinda feels like it's zoomed in on my face all the time
even on a wide 16 mil lens right now.
But I'm always up for trying new cameras
so let's see how the A6400 does for vlogging.
(upbeat music)
Just gonna warm up by the fire quick.
They even have sound effects.
All right, so one of my big concerns
with this camera is the battery life.
We are already down to 67%
and we haven't been filming for very long at all.
That makes it a little bit difficult for vloggers
because, whoa, because vlogging takes awhile,
you're filming long days and if battery life
isn't super good, then that makes it difficult.
And if you're wondering, I'm kinda using
an L-bracket thing to mount my mic
because otherwise the microphone
would be right in front of the flip LCD screen,
which is no good, useless.
I don't think this one's the best one,
I think there could be better ones
to make it a little bit smaller profile.
Also, it kind of just spins on my GorillaPod right now.
In general, I'm just having a lot of issues
with the whole GorillaPod set up in this cold weather.
Doesn't that just warm you right up?
I've been trying to teach Matt,
every once in awhile we go out for a little break,
I've been trying to teach him
how to do a good ol' fashion hockey stop,
I guess that's what it's called, is that it?
Is that hockey stop?
Yeah, one of these.
I guess we could show some of his progress.
(skate blades scraping)
So as you can see, Matt's making some progress.
I think, I'm not quite sure.
Well, let's just say he's making progress.
So far I think the A6400
has been actually pretty nice to use.
I haven't really had too many issues with it,
although we are at 34% battery now.
So if you're gonna use this camera,
you're gonna need a lot of batteries.
Like a lot, a lot.
I am kinda bothered by the crop, though.
I would rather it be a little bit wider
so I don't have to hold my hand out like crazy far,
I could hold it more comfortably.
That just really makes it so you can vlog
a little bit longer without having crazy tired arms.
Okay, it's crazy cold out here,
think we're gonna get inside, maybe do a few more tests
but, oh, Canadian winter just wrecking me
these last coupla days.
How's that, Matt?
- Cold, let's go back.
- I agree, think we're done here.
All right, so you've probably heard of this camera already.
Sony did a really good job of getting this into the hands
of a lot of YouTubers to review.
And I think that's because they're trying to market it
towards YouTubers, vloggers,
because it's a small, fairly affordable camera,
4K, pretty good autofocus,
and then it has this sort of flip LCD screen.
And this is the first APS-C size sensor camera
that I've tried vlogging with.
Usually I like full frame because it gives you
a little bit wider perspective as I'm vlogging
and I don't have to have the hand so far away
to get kind of more than just a close up of my face.
But here's what I found as I was shooting with this camera.
And if you've tried this camera before,
I'd love to hear your thoughts, comment down below.
It's always really nice to have different perspectives
on cameras because there's certain things
that I look for that you might not be looking for
and then there's certain things
that you're looking for that I might miss.
All right, so first off, let's talk about
this flip LCD screen, sort of flip LCD screen.
I was super skeptical before I used this
because I've seen different companies
try to do it, well, Canon has.
They've kind of done both the flip up and flip down,
so this one flips down.
And I've always thought that both of those options
are kind of dumb because if it flips down,
then your tripod or your GorillaPod or whatever,
it's gonna be in the way of the LCD screen
so you can't see anything.
And then if it flips up like this one,
once you put your microphone on here,
you can't see the screen anymore.
So I've always thought it's kind of stupid.
And why do they
put these little? (strap clip clicking)
They're such a pain, I always clip those off right away.
So I was really skeptical, but to be honest,
I didn't mind the flip up screen
as much as I thought.
Now, I was using this sort of L-mount bracket.
I'll show you guys.
So I was using this kinda cheap L-mount bracket from Amazon,
I don't necessarily recommend getting this one,
but it allowed me to vlog, to see myself as I'm filming,
and to also still have a microphone
without it being right in the way of the LCD screen.
Now, it's not ideal and I almost wish
that they would just ship it
with some sort of really small, nice, metal L-bracket
'cause this one kinda just wobbles around.
It's too big, it doesn't need to be this big,
and then, also, in order to change batteries
or memory cards, you gotta take off this whole thing,
so that's a really big pain.
But I didn't hate this flip up LCD screen
as much as I thought.
It's definitely not perfect,
I still prefer the vari-angle flip LCD screen a lot more,
but it's not bad.
One thing I feel like Sony could have also done
is just instead of having the hot shoe on the top,
why not just put it on the side?
I feel like sometimes camera companies just do
the same thing over and over again
without really thinking about,
oh, could there be a better way of doing it?
And when I was thinking about it,
there aren't that many drawbacks to having the hot shoe
on the side instead of on the top.
In this case, I would much rather prefer that,
actually, for this camera.
But overall, I would give this flip LCD screen a thumbs up.
It's not perfect, but it's decent.
The camera's a nice, small size.
Now again, with this L-bracket and microphone,
it gets a little bit bigger,
and that's just the nature of things.
But I also found that the button layouts
are pretty nice on here,
even though it is a really small camera.
I didn't feel like I was pressing buttons all the time,
with the maybe exception of this record button
being so small on the side.
That's a bit of a pain, but overall,
I like how small this camera is.
And image wise, which is always the most important thing
for me, not too much to complain about here.
The 4K was looking really great on this camera,
120 frames per second, looked really nice,
not too many issues there.
A little bit of moire and aliasing,
but not that big of a deal.
It is only a hundred megabits per second, I believe,
even in 120 frames per second, whereas something like
the Fujifilm X-T3 could do 200 megabits per second.
So that's a lot more data,
which means you're gonna get a better image
but overall I would say the 120p
is really nice out of this camera.
If you really need or want 120 frames per second,
here's another great option to think about.
Also, the skin tones I found to be pretty nice.
There are times where they're
a little bit too green or magenta,
but just using HSL and changing the orange hue
and the red hue a little bit, the image looked great.
Also, loved that they included S-Log2 and even S-Log3,
I believe, but I only use S-Log2,
I feel like S-Log3 is a little bit too much
for an 8-bit codec like this.
But having that extra dynamic range
on these Sony cameras is really nice.
I'd say Sony has probably one of the best log profiles,
no big macroblocking issues like I've seen on the GH5
with the V-Log and even on the X-T30
that I just reviewed in F-Log.
This one works really nicely.
Again, I do prefer full frame more,
but you can actually make this full frame with
a Speed Booster.
This one's the Metabones one
that I just talked about in the last video.
So with this, it was pretty close to full frame,
not quite the same and when I was comparing it
with the Sony A73,
the image looked pretty similar, very similar.
Now there was a little bit more detail
in the Sony A73, so it's not quite the same.
And then also I was testing out the autofocus
and I found it to be hunting a lot.
So if you need autofocus, vlogger,
I probably wouldn't use one of these.
But if you're filming other people,
this is a great tool to have,
especially if you have a ton of Canon glass,
just get one of these Metabones Speed Boosters.
Speaking of autofocus, it was pretty decent on the A6400.
I didn't have any issues, and I find that Sony's autofocus
is great when the conditions are really ideal.
And in this case, the conditions were pretty idea,
there weren't any really tough conditions to test it on.
So I didn't have any issues, no issues vlogging with it.
It kept focus perfectly fine.
Then we have the gripes,
and this one is probably one of the biggest,
if I can just get this L-bracket off.
These batteries are just not very good.
Just filming for an hour, the battery was only at 30%,
so these run out really quickly.
Even when I was just tryna figure out settings
and just set the camera up, just in like a couple minutes,
I had gone from 90% to 82%.
So these batteries just aren't great.
You're gonna need a ton of them,
especially if you're vlogging.
So that's a really big downside.
I really wish they would've just put in
the new Sony batteries, but maybe it's
a size issue or whatever.
And then the second and probably the biggest gripe
is the no IBIS, especially if you're trying to vlog
and you're walking around a lot,
I found it to be really kind of wonky at times.
The lack of IBIS mixed with rolling shutter,
it was just going all over the place.
So that's probably the biggest downside,
I would say, of the Sony A6400, is not having IBIS.
And again, I assume that it's something to do
with either the camera overheating
or it just uses too much battery power
and that's why they didn't put IBIS.
But I think for a vlogging camera, you really do need IBIS.
So this is probably the biggest downside of the Sony A6400,
especially if you're wanting to vlog with it.
Okay, so everybody knows this camera
does not have built-in image stabilization in the body.
But is it enough to just use a stabilized lens?
So right now, I have the image stabilizer on this lens,
it's the 18-135, 3.5 to f.56
and it's got optical stabilizer SteadyShot,
I think they're calling it in here.
Right now it is off, so is it really shaky?
This is no image stabilizer at all,
and then let's test with it on.
Okay, now it's on, is it smoother now?
Are you getting a lot of those micro jitters
if I'm moving around?
Do you still need in-body stabilizer?
I don't know, let's check it out.
So is this camera, let me get this set up again,
is this Sony A6400 the vlogging camera
they're claiming it to be?
Yes and no.
It works, it's not bad,
it's definitely a great starter camera.
For the price, it's fairy affordable,
so you really can't be complaining too much.
But the lack of IBIS and the crappy batteries
are the big drawbacks,
especially if you're planning on vlogging.
Now is this camera good for other types of filmmaking?
Yeah, I could definitely see this being a great camera
if you're starting out in weddings,
or little corporate or commercial videos, or a B camera.
Even if you have something like the Sony A73,
this would be a great B camera
if you can't afford another Sony A73,
get something like this and it's gonna be
a really nice B camera for weddings or corporate
or little commercial videos.
It's gonna match really well with the color science
and all of that stuff.
Yeah, it's a great camera.
Any type of filmmaking where you're usually
using something like a monopod or a gimbal
or a stabilizer, that's where this camera
would be great because of the lack of IBIS.
Again, great camera if you're starting out
or you need a cheap, small B camera,
I would probably recommend this camera.
If you are looking in this price range,
I would definitely also recommend checking out
the Fujifilm X-T3, but if you already have Sonys,
I would probably just go with this one.
All right, so that's my two cents on the Sony A6400.
I'd love to know what you guys think about it,
especially if you tested it out.
So yeah, comment down below.
I'd love to hear what you guys think
and I'm excited to see what other cameras
come out this year, see ya guys.
(inspirational music)