Ahoj! This is Zdenka. Well, I've been on
Youtube for over three years now and I
went through a number of cameras. I
started with the camcorder then I added
Canon M50, then I moved on to Canon M6
Mark ii which I also use
and I added also Sony A7S iii. And I also
been through a few
Android phones and I also added iPhone.
Well, the question is. Lot of people keep
asking me,
should I vlog with a smartphone or should
I get an actual camera?
When it comes to Youtube studio,
filmmaking,
can I start with a smartphone or should I
get an actual camera?
And someone recently asked me yesterday.
I want to study photography,
can I do this with iPhone 12 pro max or
should I get an
actual camera? What are the advantages,
what are the disadvantages, what do I
think from my own experience of being
here for over three years? What would I
do?
Let's solve this.
Let's start with the cost. Well, there are
so many choices when it comes to
smartphones. You can get a cheaper one,
you can get a mid-range,
you can get very expensive one, add to
it gimbal, microphone and tripod and you
would be all set.
Or you can get for the same price range
gently used Canon M50 with a kit lens,
tripod, joby gorilla pod, microphone and
maybe some small gimbal like Moza
mini P
and you would be all set as well. There
are so many choices on a market. You can
choose from
very cheap ones to mid-range to
expensive ones.
It's pretty much the same between
smartphones
and cameras, so it's not about the cost.
What really makes the difference is the
actual visual, how the video will
actually
look like and also how easy or how
difficult it is to work with it.
Smartphone cameras are getting
very good. When I film some cinematic
sequences I'm actually quite
impressed how it looks. It is very bright,
colorful, contrasty. In some
settings and certain light conditions
I really like the results but you can
still
tell that it is done with a smartphone.
There is that certain
look to it. When it comes to professional
look, you're going to get that with a
normal camera because
you can work with the aperture settings.
Get the right depth of field
with optics and settings depending on
what you're filming. You get that sweet
blurry background and you know
right away it is optical. It's still very
different from smartphones. Smartphones
can get a certain degree
of the blurry background as well, it can
get that as well, but it is not the same.
So if you're someone who is more after
the professional look,
than camera it is but if you're someone
who actually likes
the smartphone look, then smartphone
it is. Another big difference is when it
comes to actual filming.
I really really enjoy making all these
tutorials how to film
with the smartphones, it's a lot of fun.
It's really fascinating to me
how far these cameras came along with
smartphones
and how quickly it's getting along, you
know how quickly it's developing.
I just don't know what's going to happen
tomorrow with them and
I like to push it to the limits and I
like to see what it can actually do, what
I can
create with it. That's why it's a game to
me, it's very fun.
But what do you don't know that most of
these tutorials
are one of the most frustrating ones, one
of the most
challenging ones when it comes to
editing and rendering.
There are simply so many technical
aspects to it
which makes it so much easier to work
with a regular camera.
First of all I just turn it on, set up my
settings,
white balance and I'm pretty much set. I
can precisely set everything and it's
going to stay that way.
I only have to worry about pressing the
record button and then
it is all about the content I make. When
I'm editing the video, everything looks
good.
Clips are looking very similarly, there
are no issues with white balance and all
that.
There are rarely any issues. And if I run
out of the battery, I just pop in the new
one and I
keep filming. Plus I can change lenses to
get different looks
and play with aperture settings which is
the key.
With smartphones it is very much a
different
story. If you're going to be using
different apps, your footage
will end up with slightly different
colors. That's what I'm finding.
If you film in manual mode to get the
best look, settings change on you
here and there. It's not consistent. You
can easily make a mistake. You forget to
check and suddenly the whole video
is filmed in 720p or one clip is
slightly lighter
than the other and that's one of my
biggest fears when it comes to
using smartphone gimbals. That I will end
up with a clip which is instead of in 4k
in 720p.
That happens sometimes in DJI Mimo. I
admit that I'm sometimes wondering how
the video will look like when I get home
and upload it on a computer. It is not
simply so straight forward.
When you edit smartphone video, it always
requires a little bit more work
when it comes to color correction to get
the clips look
consistent, to make them look polished. I
use Adobe Premiere pro and it's always
challenging with smartphone video. But
again, I'm someone who is very picky,
wants the clip to look the same when it
comes to color
and exposure. You don't see behind the
scenes how I'm actually editing those
tutorials
how to film with a smartphone. You
didn't see me
how I had to render the last video
How to vlog with DJI OM4
five
times. Each render time was an
hour and a half, the computer was running
the whole day because
there were so many technical problems.
What happened? They sent me some sort of
update on iphone overnight. The iphone
updated
and first thing I was filming the day
before the update.
All the footage was fine but the next
day when I continued filming
after the update, all the framing was
off and unfortunately it looked very
different in Adobe Premiere pro
and very different when I rendered the
video so I had to correct it together.
As I was correcting it, I had to
render it again and then I
realized there's even more problems. Then
I had to fix it and so on.
So yeah, it can be quite challenging with
smartphone video
for filming. Something quick on a go for
all the family stuff, for
social media, for reels, for stories and
all that,
I would use a smartphone there is no
doubt there.
Even for photography for social media I
like to use my smartphone and a lot.
It is always with me. If I need to get
something extra on video
when I don't have my camera and cannot
bring one, I use smartphone.
If I did vlogging for Youtube where
quality doesn't really matter,
I would use a smartphone in automatic
mode, it's just convenient,
light and small. But if I was thinking
about
long term producing quality videos
and later on monetizing the content, I
mean like
maybe selling the clips on stock or
getting extra work from
clients, then there would be no doubt I
would choose a regular camera.
That is why when I film those tutorials
how to film with a smartphone I don't
film with another smartphone, I film it
with a regular camera.
With smartphone, you can absolutely
create beautiful B roll or product video
if you have controlled lighting and
really take
in control of everything. You shoot
manually.
It will be slightly challenging, the
result will be
very nice, it will look very good but you
will still be able to tell it was done
with a smartphone.
It just looks different. Is something
like Canon M50 for start
good enough in 2021? Yes absolutely.
If you get lucky, you can get your hands
on a used one, then you've got a great
starting budget
setup. I would also look at some other
lines of the cameras but
look at the entry level range.
Once you grow and outgrow the camera, you
will eventually most likely upgrade
but the lenses will stay. I was very
happy with that little camera and then
once I got
Canon M6 mark ii, it is still staying
here
because I really like to use this camera
for photography
and I also like this camera for vlogging.
It is very light
and very compact. It's very convenient
for me as a female.
I really love Sony A7S iii but that's
mainly my studio camera. If I'm filming
on a location, I am using a tripod.
It's simply for me, it's simply way too
heavy
for vlogging. And it's something to
consider if you are vlogging. Choose a
light weight
camera. If you are gonna be filming with
a tripod
then you don't have to look at the size
but definitely
bigger camera gives you more weight. When
it comes to photography,
smartphone photography is awesome for
hobby.
You can also do it for stock, you can do
it for social media
but for serious photography you need an
actual camera with lenses
where you can control aperture settings
and enjoy the benefits of
optics. Again, I like to mix it for some
stuff. I use smartphone
but there is a certainly place for an
actual camera.
That is my current feeling in early 2021.
I have no idea where the smartphone is
gonna go. I have no idea what's gonna be
in two, three years from now.
Maybe I might change my opinion
completely, maybe I'm gonna be saying
completely different things.
Who knows? Well hit the thumbs up if you
want to and subscribe to future videos
if you feel like it. If you have any
questions, comments,
simply leave it below and I'll see you
my friends
in the next video. Cau... Ahoj...