(Potato Jet yawning)
- Sorry, good morning.
It is way too early.
Sun has yet to come up.
Red Digital Cinema camera versus
the Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K.
I don't even know if I said that right.
It's such a long name.
So today's a pretty unique day.
So I'm actually gonna take one of these two cameras out,
get some footage with it and show it to you guys.
You guys try to figure out which camera it is.
But today is day one of the LAUSD teacher strike.
And as some of you may know,
my girlfriend Carrie is a teacher here in Los Angeles.
And it's a pretty massive deal
because there's gonna be, like, 35,000 teachers
and educators that aren't gonna show up to work today.
So, you know, it's a complicated situation.
And unlike Jake Paul
I do believe that teachers have a very important role
on this planet and our future.
But Jake does have a point though,
it would be pretty awesome
if all teachers taught us how to buy Lambo cash.
I don't think we could invest enough in education
and just making the general public smarter a little bit.
So I'm gonna take one of these mystery cameras with me.
And let's go.
(moody rock music)
And we're back.
Why don't we just start this off with a quick poll.
Tell me which camera you guys think that was.
Was it the Black Magic or was it the Red?
So I'm gonna set this camera up to record this camera
and let's start looking at some side by sides.
And the first thing I'm noticing
is the difference in color tones right off the bat
and they are both set to 5600 white balance with zero tint.
So with the same exact settings
they're already starting to look a little bit different
but let's get out of this studio
and see how they both compare in the real world.
Let's go.
You had enough fun playing in the mud?
You look filthy, you need a shower.
We were trying so hard to keep him away from the mud.
The one muddy spot.
They just ran straight towards it.
Look at them they're just laying in it now.
That's not even an appropriate way to lay down for a dog
they're just doin' that to just get as muddy as possible.
That butt has to come in the car with us.
Alright, so now that my Jeep is properly drenched in mud
let's take a look at some of these side by side shots.
Now let's state the obvious.
The green from the Red is super saturated
compared to the Black Magic.
The Black Magic looks a little bit more mellow
and a little more to the warmer yellowish side
when we're looking at the green.
But considering all the settings are matched
it's crazy how different the grass looks.
And I would actually say
the Red looks a little bit more accurate.
'Cause this is after like six days of non stop rain.
And it's is the greenest I've ever seen Los Angeles.
When we got there I was like,
holy crap this looks like the Windows 97 wallpaper.
Here's the shot of Carrie getting hit by direct sunlight.
But this is the default look out of both cameras right now.
We are gonna circle back
and try color grading these manually.
And here's one more shot
where I was trying to talk the camera
but I didn't make any sense
so I'm just gonna mute the audio and voice over it.
But you could see the sensor size difference here for sure.
They're both on the same f-stop
but the background's a little but blurrier on the Red.
But to be honest, the difference
between the sensor size here,
Super 35 and Micro Four Thirds,
it's not as drastic as I thought it would be
in terms of depth of field.
And now we got Pita in the studio.
And that's one of the beauties of studio lighting is that
pretty much all cameras look good in the studio
but we can kinda pick up some minute differences here.
The shadows definitely come across
a little bit more contrasty on the Red
which is something that Red's been known for.
It kind of gives it that moody look.
And yeah, there's Pita being a supermodel as usual.
She's a great model by the way.
All the other dogs,
I point a camera at them and they're like,
"Get that (beeping over speech)
"away from my face."
But Pita loves that attention
so that's why she's the superstar here.
Luckily she's a dog so I don't have to pay her.
When it comes to super slow mo,
the Red obviously has a lot more horsepower behind it.
And the Black Magic caps out at 120 frames per second in HD.
And the Black Magic's crop is pretty big.
So, it's not perfect but it's nice to have.
The Red can do 120 frames per second pretty easily
without much of a crop
but once you bump it up to like 240,
then you're dealing with a serious crop.
Alright, so here's a quick tour of our setup here.
We got our Red mounted on the tripod
and then we have the Black Magic here.
We got our main mount holding it here
and then two other extra arms
just to make sure it doesn't just fall off
'cause that would be kinda sad I guess.
They're both running on Xeen lenses.
But since that has a bigger sensor
we have a 35 millimeter on there
and we have a 24 millimeter on this side.
And with those focal lengths
they tend to match very closely.
So that's our monstrous setup
that I've been lugging around everywhere.
It's been a pain, I'm never gonna do this again.
Of course, that is until my views start dropping again
and then I'm like, okay I'll do another comparison video.
And with this side by side
the first thing I'm noticing is that the Red itself,
it has a few different color profiles and gammas
and they all generally look really good
just right out of the camera.
So a lot of times I feel like it's usable
but generally I just do slight, slight tweaks.
The Black Magic on the other hand
gives you three shooting modes to film on.
It gives you film which is it's flattest profile,
extended video and video.
I'm not a fan of the video and extended video looks
that you could bake on the camera.
I would always 100% of the time shoot on the film profile.
And then you could just drop in the light if you want.
So I'm gonna set both of these cameras
to kind of it's flattest looks
and let's shoot this scene real quick
where Carrie's working on a,
what is that a cabinet a dresser?
- I got this one for free too off the side of the road.
- Free furniture for the win.
- We can't afford nice furniture
because you spend all our money on camera gear.
- She's standing in a dark pocket
and we have curtains behind her
and then outside we have super bright windows.
So pretty, an intense dynamic range needed for this scene.
After playing with the footage
the Red definitely has more usable dynamic range,
it clocks in at 16.5 stops
opposed to the Black Magic which claims 13.
But dynamic range is one of those things
that could be measured in different ways.
And people's opinion
on what's usable dynamic range can vary.
But the BLack Magic holy crap for a $1,300 dollar camera
I can't think of any other camera in this price range that
you can grade this heavily and have it still look this nice.
So I'm impressed.
Now by default the Black Magic
does apply a magenta tint
when you put it in the daylight white balance
so I thought that might be countering the green
but I took off the tint
and still the green just looks
so much more vibrant on the Red.
But I do know that the green spectrum is
one of the more complicated colors
for a camera sensor to see.
I remember when Canon released the c300
the engineers were putting a lot of emphasis
on getting the green colors correctly
because our eyes see that green spectrum the most.
But as we get into low light territory at 6400 ISO,
the Black Magic is surprisingly cleaner
and has less noise than the Red.
And as we step into the super low light territory, 12,800
the Black Magic definitely out performs the Red.
But keep in mind the Red does have the Gemini
which is supposed to be a low light king.
Which I do not have.
Alright so you guys are familiar
with my traditional 80d setup.
And here's how it would look
if I were to switch to the Red and the Black Magic.
I don't know should I shoot
all my videos on one of these cameras?
I don't know.
That'd be a lot of data to manage but could be really cool.
Putting the Black Magic up to the Red
I definitely feel like the Red is easier to grade
just right off the bat.
It could be because
I'm so used to color grading Red footage.
With the proper settings and lighting
you can really just get the Red to look really amazing
just right out of the camera.
Black magic I felt like was a little bit more work to grade
but luckily the Black Magic
has a nice strong codec in there.
So you really can grade it pretty heavily.
So if you're shooting a project on the Black Magic
I would definitely intend there to be a little bit more time
in post production for color grade.
So keep that in mind.
Alright so let's circle back to that intro sequence
with the teacher strike.
And this was shot on the Black Magic.
I did attach a speed booster to it
to make it look a little bit more
like Super 35 opposed to Micro Four Thirds.
And I used a Canon 16 to 35 f2.8
and also the Canon 100 millimeter L series
with image stabilization.
I didn't spend a ton of time color grading this
probably about 15 to 20 minutes.
And within that time I wasn't able to get it to the spot
where I'm like, oh this is perfect.
But regardless I thought it was pretty decent.
And sometimes these rallies in Downtown L.A.
can turn more into like riots and people get crazy.
So I really did not want to bring my Red out
on this pouring rainy day.
With the Black Magic
I was able to keep it under my jacket for the most part.
And literally shoot on it
while holding the umbrella at the same time
which is not something I could say for the Red.
So yeah, even though I'm pretty confident that
the Red footage would have came out looking
a little bit better,
it's still great to have this Black Magic Pocket Camera
as another option.
Alright so let's sum this up by talking about
the pros and cons of these cameras.
Now the Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K but
(beeping over speech)
that name.
The most obvious pro for The Black Magic
is the price point at under $1,300 dollars.
Oh my god.
Any new cinema camera that comes out in this price range
really is gonna have this to compete with.
So that is really setting a new standard there.
The Red on the other hand is like 15 to $20,000 dollars
just for the body but once you start accessorizing it
just to get it to work,
you're easily in the 20s, 30s, $40,000 dollar range.
So really this is pretty amazing that we're comparing
something that's a fraction of the Red.
And another obvious factor is the size of this thing.
I mean, this is closer to the size of a DSLR
than it is to a standard cinema camera.
Putting a Red on a gimbal, it's pretty difficult.
You really need one of the higher end
Ronin or MoVI Pros.
With some adapters you could put this on a majority
of handheld gimbals like the Ronin-S
and many more out there.
I'm also a pretty big fan of the ergonomics
and the placement of the buttons.
It's very, very simple.
All the tools you need are very quickly accessible.
And it's like if you know how to use a DSLR
you can pick up one of these and start shooting right away.
Before you go and shoot on a Red
you definitely wanna get yourself familiarized.
Give yourself time to just
understand the menu, what everything means.
Beside the record and power on and off buttons
everything else is done touchscreen on the Red
so you may or may not like that.
But here it's very simple.
It's a mixture of touchscreen
as well as the easy access buttons here.
So when it comes to the menu and adjusting settings
I actually prefer doing it on this body.
Another benefit of this is it's
a Micro Four Thirds mount
meaning you could adapt a majority of lenses to it
and also use speed boosters like I did.
So if you already have Micro Four Thirds lenses
then that can just pop it on just like that.
You can attach cinema lenses to it.
You can attach Canon lenses to it, whatever.
And on the Red you generally have the option
between an EF or PL.
And of course as Black Magic
had better low light performance
than this Dragon sensor
I can't say how it'd perform against the Gemini sensor
but for this Dragon sensor
way more noise than the Black Magic.
Obviously designed for one person to hold.
You get all your controls.
It has phantom power
so you can send that over to a microphone.
And last but not least, let's turn them both on
and see how long it takes to start recording on each camera.
So boom.
Is it recording?
There we go, that was fast.
This camera can be turned on
and start recording in seconds.
Now we just gotta wait for this Red to turn on.
There boom, now it's ready to record.
Now if you're in a professional set
that's not much of an issue
because you usually turn it on at the beginning of the day
and only really power it down for long breaks, like lunch
or if you're gonna swap out that battery.
But if you were like me in downtown
and just walking around
and you're just waiting for something interesting to happen
you could start recording within seconds
which is pretty significant
because this thing, if you don't have the camera on
and something's happening in front of you,
by the time this thing turns on it's done.
Alright so let's talk about this Red now.
Now I think the biggest draw to a Red camera
is the image it produces.
It's very cinematic right out of the camera.
And this is more my own opinion on it
but I felt like the Red just looked very filmic
opposed to the Black Magic
which felt like a very good sharp video camera.
So they're both good, nice and sharp
but the feeling that you get out of the images from the Red,
it just, love it.
Another obvious factor is it's just designed more
for professional use and professional workflows,
has an SDI port which the Black Magic does not.
And then looking at the screen here
I have mine on an arm right here
just so I get like ultimate flexibility
but most people take this and mount it
straight on the camera and it still articulates up and down.
So even just having that up and down movement
makes a huge difference.
And it really is a big bummer
that this screen on the back a here does not move
even an inch in any direction.
It also has a nicer, bigger sensor
and more overall horsepower.
What I mean by that is, faster frame rates
you get 5K, you get RAW recording,
everything a professional workflow wants
the Red can provide so that's really nice.
And right now I know I have this cable on here
for this monitor
but it's generally designed so you could bolt everything
straight onto the camera body
and you can literally go completely cableless
and operate it which is awesome.
Technically this doesn't have any cables
hanging off it right now
but if you want this to have decent battery life,
you're gonna wanna patch in some power there.
And you're definitely gonna wanna run a HDMI cable
if you're gonna do any unique angles
so you can kinda look at it from above here or up here.
So generally speaking this is gonna get a little bit
more cumbersome once you start adding some accessories to it
which brings me to my next point which is that
these are really designed to work with crews and teams.
So generally you have your operator
and then you have someone pulling focus
and someone building the camera out
and setting up the lenses.
So you could really build these things out huge
with matte boxes, huge lenses, cine tape,
follow focus units, everything.
And yeah sure, you could technically rig out
any sort of camera once you put a cage on it
but anyone that's ever tried to take a DSLR
and put a dozen accessories on it
knows that is just not as solid.
Like I mean this cage has a 1/4 inch thread on the top
1/4 inch on the bottom
and two pins that kinda hold it in the side
but even with that there's still always a little bit of play
and I've experienced this with pretty much
any rig for like a DSLR.
I used to take my T2i and try to rig it out like crazy.
And at a point it just starts becoming a pain
because nothing's super sturdy.
You know smaller cameras
you pick it up at a weird angle
and the follow focus doesn't engage the teeth,
monitors start flipping all over the place,
it becomes hard to reach certain things.
Opposed to this camera
where look how many mounting points there are
all over the camera.
You can take this thing all rigged up
and shake it all around and it's gonna be fine.
This is fantastic for working with a crew
in a production environment.
So basically we own both these cameras
and they're both great cameras.
If we have a crew and we have the resources
I would always rather shoot on the Red
just because of that cinematic image that
it just produces very simply.
And the better dynamic range and REDCODE.
It's not a massive, crazy file to work with.
It's nice and easy,
assuming you have a pretty powerful computer.
But I edit 5K RAW off my laptop all the time.
So even though I have this Black Magic
I'm probably still gonna be shooting
with this Red more often.
But of course there's gonna be certain project
where this Black Magic is just nice and simple
and small and exactly what we need.
And of course this does take more time
at least in my experience to color grade.
So that is something to keep in mind
because time with the colors can be very expensive too.
So I do love both cameras
but I also have some complaints.
Neither of these have built in ND filters
so you know we're gonna have to
slap all those ND filters up front.
And finally they've both been known to have
reliability issues, which sucks.
I've had to send both of these cameras
back to the manufacturers for defective products.
That's my take on the cameras
but you guys saw the side by side.
So you guys make up your own mind.
Let's wrap this up by reading some comments
from my last video
which was all about what cameras were used to film
all the Oscar nominations for this year.
And I also asked you guys
what you guys think about having Alex on the show here.
So, hey Alex.
Andie the Lab said, "Alex if you don't come back
"Potato Jet is gonna dress up like the kid from UP
"and throw ladders at you."
So be careful.
- The kid from Up. (Potato Jet laughing)
Hold on.
Yeah, I can see a resemblance.
- No, don't say that!
"Alex if you don't comeback to the channel
"we are going to come over to your house
"and throw ladders at you."
- I'm sensing a pattern with the ladders here.
- I happen to be a ladder collector.
Fun fact for everybody.
- Some people it's stamps, others.
- Ladders.
"Alex, if you don't come and teach us about sound
"we'll fill your camera mic input jack with lint."
- Wow you weren't lying about the hurtful thing,
this is.
- They're, they're intimidating.
I'm tellin' ya.
You don't wanna mess with these guys.
- "Alex if you don't come on the show
"I will delete your Fortnite account."
- I already did that.
You can't touch me.
- "If you don't show up we all will watch the first man."
Muted. (Potato Jet gasping)
(mellow chillwave music)