The camera most people recommend for beginners is the Canon T3i, T6i, T(something)i.
But when I was first getting started, even that was way outside of my budget once you
add lenses, a tripod, microphones, lights.
So, I want to test out some really cheap cameras to see if they’re as bad as the price tag
suggests.
Let’s choose our cameras: (expensive, expensive, expensive, expensive)
This is the cheapest video camera in the shop, and it claims to shoot full HD video.
This point and shoot costs four times more, I wanna see if it’s four times better.
We'll compare those to this camcorder I bought five years ago, and a one and a half year
old smartphone, it’s not the latest model.
But hang on, isn’t that still pretty expensive?
Well ,yes but if you’re watching this video, then there’s a fairly good chance that you
already have a smartphone with a camera, in which case, it doesn't cost you anything to
use it.
So we’re gonna test out these cameras, and by the end of it, I'm gonna choose one of
them to use for my next short film.
#1 BRIGHT LIGHT
So for this first test, i've set up a really difficult scene for these cameras.
What we've got is a light on this side, pointing into this scene here, and you can see there
are lots of bright reflections, and that is what this cheap old camera is really struggling
with.
We’ve got a decent exposure on the violin here, but the camera just can’t handle these
bright reflections - they’re just solid white.
But we can fix that with the manual exposure settings, darkening the image until those
white spots are basically gone.
The cheap Vivitar camcorder is very similar, starts off looking really bad, but then once
you use the manual exposure, you can still get a decent image out of it.
Although I did notice there I kind of weird flicker happening, dunno what that’s about.
But let’s look at the Sony point and shoot, because the automatic settings have definitely
made it too bright, but these buttons don’t do anything in video mode, so I can’t make
it darker.
And finally we have the year old smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S6) which i've got on this
Gorillapod mount, and if I hit record, the nice thing about this one is that I can actually
tap to change the exposure, to make sure that we're holding on to all of that information.
So I'm gonna bring it down, and then keep going up until it's as bright as possible
without losing detail, there we go.
And by the way, this video is not sponsored, I haven't had any contact with any of these
camera manufacturers.
#2 DETAIL & COLOR
So I set up this image quality test, but the cheapest camera, this one, for some reason
just had this problem like it was corrupting the file or something.
I’ve seen enough, this one is out.
Looking at the old JVC footage, it’s on a wide shot like this where you can really
tell that it’s not HD, there really isn't very much detail.
The sony on the other hand does well, decent sharpness and the automatic exposure did get
it right this time.
The smartphone here definitely has the sharpest picture, but you can see that the camera couldn’t
quite handle how bright the sky was without darkening the trees quite a lot.
Here’s a side by side, I think I prefer the Sony.
But for me, the most important part of image quality is how it handles people.
So here we have the JVC, in a kind of vlogging shot, and you'll notice that the skintones
look pretty decent, it's got a nice level of contrast, i'm quite happy with this image,
even though there isn't the most detail.
The sony did fairly well in this situation, i'm not a huge fan of the skin tones, but
the autoexposure did work pretty well, the one thing that it did have trouble with was
when I was spinning around so much, it did lose that autofocus, and it was focusing behind
me, so that's definitely something you've got to watch out for with these cheap point
and shoot cameras.
And then we have the smart phone (Samsung Galaxy), and I think this performs really
well, both as far as color and general quality.
#3 SOUND QUALITY
So for this next test, I wanted to see how good the built in microphone is, and I definitely
noticed that this one, (the JVC) probably has the worst microphone, it's quite tinny
you might notice.
The more expensive Sony definitely sounds better with the built in microphones, but
do bear in mind that the camera is quite close, it's only an arms length away, so it's gonna
sound pretty good, we're also indoors and it's quite quiet so this is like the best
case scenario.
And finally, we have the smartphone, now phones usually have quite good microphones, but the
extra good feature of these is that they have a headphone jack.
These other cheap cameras have nowhere to plug in a microphone, so we would have to
use external sound, we would have to record the sound separately, but it is nice that
we can plug in a microphone, for example this one, from rode, which is fairly cheap, you
can just plug it straight into the headphone jack, and it'll now record with a much larger,
better microphone.
And of course there are plenty of other different kinds of microphone, you have the ones that
clip to your shirt, there are plenty of options when you have a mic input.
But the real question is, does it sound any better?
This is recording using the rode microphone, and right now I'll take it off, this is the
built-in microphone.
This is the extra microphone.
And this is back on the built-in microphone.
Can you hear the difference?
So as far as sound goes, the smartphone is definitely the best option, but it's all irrelevant
if you decide to record the audio separately, which of course is what you're supposed to
do to get the best results.
And if you do that, then if doesn't matter which camera you're using, you'll get good
sound from all of them.
#4 BATTERY LIFE
So over here, we have the cheapest camcorder out of the bunch, this is the JVC, and the
battery is five years old, and yet after two hours almost of using to record and basically
just not turning it off, it's currently got zero minutes remaining on the battery, but
it's still trucking on.
On the other hand, over here, the sony seems to be doing very well, still on three out
of four bars after two hours.
That is a brand new camera though.
And then over here we have the samsung, which is I believe, about a year and half old, and
it's sitting at 5%, and I know how quickly that last five percent disappears.
It has been two hours and two minutes, and the JVC has finally gone.
And there goes the samsung, it has been two hours and five minutes, and the sony... goes
on.
#5 LOW LIGHT
The old JVC surprised me actually, there’s a bit of noise, but I think it handled it
pretty well.
Next up it is the sony, which of course is much more expensive, but really you can hardly
see any noise, especially by the time it gets on YouTube, I don't think any will be showing
up.
And it's the same situation with the smartphone, as long as it's a fairly well lit room, these
cameras can handle it just fine.
But if we go in a room that is much more dimly lit, then we can really start to see the problems.
The JVC tends to get quite mushy, definitely losing detail in the shadows, and it kind
of tends to just all become this weird orange color.
The sony definitely has some noise problems here, if you look at the yellow walls, there's
lots of grain, it's that kind of colourful blocky grain that really doesn't look too
good.
The smartphone on the other hand, has a finer grain, I think I prefer it.
Then I turned off even more lights, and you can see that the JVC gets very mushy.
And the sony was very grainy, plus I had to really mess with the colors to try and fix
the skintones.
And then also I noticed that the autofocus was really having a lot of trouble even though
this was just a static scene, it kept readjusting, so it's not ideal
for low light.
And finally the samsung smartphone really falls apart when it's this dark, just lots
of noise and really weird color artefacts:the shadows went all blue, and I tried to correct
it but really, the image was just too far gone.
CONCLUSION
So which camera am I going to use for my next short film?
Well, we’ve seen that none of the cameras work that well in low light, the samsung seems
to be the best for sound, and the sony seems to have the best battery, but the camera's
always stuck in automatic exposure mode.
If I wanted something simple & compact, I’d probably go for the sony.
But if I really cared about quality, then a smartphone is probably gonna be better than
all of the cheapest cameras.
So with that in mind, the camera that I’m gonna be using for my next short film, is
the JVC.
And here’s why:
When I was doing these tests, I was so focused on dynamic range and resolution, you know,
technical stuff, that to be honest, I wasn't even really thinking about what I was actually
filming - one of them was literally just the sky and some trees, right.
It’s like, I know that what’s happening in the film is more important than how well
the camera shoots in low light, but when I start watching tech videos you know, like
this one, it puts me in this mindset, I get distracted from storytelling, and I starting
thinking scientifically.
So I wanna turn that on its head, and just film with a really bad camera.
I’ll have no choice but to put all my effort into telling the best story that I can, because
I won’t be able to rely making it look pretty.
So stay tuned for that, and I’ll see you next week.