- A couple months ago, I saw MKBHD do this
smart phone blind test, kind of comparing
two different smart phones.
And he had some really interesting results
from that blind test.
And I though that would be a really interesting to do
with cameras and video, not just iPhones.
So I literally grabbed every single I could find
around the office, and ones that I had on loan.
And it happened to be eight different cameras
and I decided to do a camera showdown
with those eight different cameras.
We have DSLRs, mirrorless cameras,
a couple of cinema cameras, an iPhone,
and the purpose of this test isn't meant to be scientific.
It definitely was not scientific.
There's different crops, different lenses were used.
There's just a whole bunch of differences
between the cameras, and it's almost impossible
to make them scientifically the same
when you're comparing them.
But I tried to keep the same sort of attributes,
shooting in 4K,
shooting in log if the camera could do log.
I used an F2.8 lens on all the cameras.
So I tried to keep certain things the same.
And then also, in the post processing,
I didn't color grade these cameras.
I literally just added contrast and saturation.
Made sure with scopes that they're as exact
as I could get them in contrast and saturation.
But I didn't even color correct them.
I wanted to keep it pretty raw,
and to see what does the footage look like
straight out of camera, nice and raw.
And the point of this camera showdown is not to find out
what's the best camera.
That is definitely not the point.
I was more curious to see can people
visually see the difference between
a really expensive image, an expensive camera image,
and a cheaper camera image.
Is there a really glaring differences
that people in general can right away see,
okay this is an expensive camera.
This is a cheap camera.
Or that this is a really great image,
and this is not so good of an image.
Can people, on average, always see the better camera.
And my theory going into this was that
people would not be able to see the difference
between like a sub $1000 camera,
and the mid range DSLR mirrorless cameras.
But I did think that there would be a big enough difference
between a sub $1000 camera, and an expensive cinema camera,
and that would be really obvious to people.
So that was kind of my theory going into this challenge.
And these were just assumptions on my part.
But I wanted to test out, is there any truth to them.
Alright so let's start out with a quarter finals,
round number one.
And here are our two cameras.
We have camera A and camera B.
And this was actually a battle between the Sony A7III
and the Sony A6400.
A lot of people were like, is this the same camera?
Is this a trick, 'cause it looks so similar,
and that's because they're both Sony.
And I was actually surprised at how similar
the images looked.
And in some ways, I actually liked the A6400 image
a little bit better.
I found that the A7III kind of had a purple, bluish tint
to the shadows, which I don't really like.
And in the voting it was really really close.
The Sony A7III did win with 58% of the vote.
So that was kind of interesting.
I thought, yeah that makes sense.
They're very similar but maybe people can see the difference
that the Sony A7III is a little bit better.
Then we have round two,
we have the camera A and camera B here.
And this was actually a battle between
the Canon C300 Mark II,
which is a cinema camera, expensive camera,
and the EOS R by Canon.
And here, in my mind, there's quite a big difference
between the colors,
the sharpness, the dynamic range.
Just the overall image looks very different.
And it might be because I'm very used to the C300.
I'm filming on it right now.
I think the C300 is a lot better image.
But also, the EOS R is a very nice image.
And I think it's pretty underrated overall.
And it was interesting in the voting,
the C300 only won by a hair.
It was 52 to 48%.
So just by a couple votes, the C300 Mark II won.
And now we're comparing like a couple thousand dollar camera
to like an expensive, over $10,000 camera.
So very even results in the voting.
But the C300 did win.
Then we have round three,
and this was the Fujifilm X-T30 versus the iPhone XS.
No surprise here, the Fujifilm X-T30 comes out on top
at 69% to 31%.
But that still means that 31% of people
couldn't see the difference between an iPhone
and a mirrorless camera.
And now granted the Fujifilm
isn't a crazy expensive mirrorless camera.
But it's still a mirrorless camera
that has a much better image in my opinion.
To me, the iPhone image here is really bad.
It almost looks like it's out of focus on my face,
and there's little to no detail at all in my face.
So to me this was like the most obvious,
like yeah, you should definitely choose
the Fujifilm camera A.
But still 31% shows camera B.
So that was kind of interesting to me.
And then we get to round four,
we have the two cameras here.
And this was the head to head between the Red Scarlet-W
and the Canon 1DX Mark II.
And the voting was very very close,
which is kind of to be expected, I think.
Although I think that the Red would kind of clean up
a little bit easier.
The red did win with 58% of the votes,
which yeah, I think that's pretty understandable.
You can see the difference in the colors.
The Canon is a lot more saturated in the reds.
And you can tell that there isn't as much dynamic range,
especially in the skin tones.
But to a lot of people, I guess you can't really
tell the difference 'cause still, 42% of the people
voted for the 1DX Mark II.
I also wanna mention the difference between
kinda detail and sharpness.
Some of these cameras are really sharp.
But they don't necessarily have a lot of detail,
which the cinema cameras definitely have the detail.
But they aren't necessarily super sharp.
It's kind of confusing what's the difference
between detail and sharpness, but for example,
the DJI Drones, they're very sharp.
So they're adding a lost of post sharpening,
or in camera sharpening.
But there's not much detail.
When you zoom in, there isn't all this detail
in let's say the grass, or the trees.
It's kind of just all mushy.
But it's sharpened mushy.
So there's a big difference between detail and sharpness.
And in this case, I think the Red has a lot more detail,
whereas the Canon might even be a little more sharp.
Then we get to the semi-finals and this is where things
get very very interesting really quickly.
First of we have round one,
Camera A here was the Fujifilm X-T30
and camera B was the Red Scarlet-W.
And guess what, the Fujifilm X-T30 won by 63% of the vote.
That's a pretty big margin.
I was very surprised that the Fujifilm X-T30 won,
because we're comparing a just under a $1000 camera
to a like a 12,000 just for the brains, 12,500 I think.
So with the lens mount, and the monitor and all that,
it's like a $20,000 camera,
and it lost to the Fujifilm X-T30.
Hm, this is where things got a little bit interesting.
I did not think it was gonna go this far.
Yeah, this got me a little bit puzzled,
and I'll explain a little bit more of what I did
after this because this was a big surprise to me.
Can people really not tell the difference
between a $1000 camera image,
and a $20,000 camera image?
Like to me, the red is so much better here.
if you put them side by side, the Red is just like
way better in my opinion.
But a lot of people could not see the difference
and thought the Fujifilm was actually better than the red.
To me, the Fujifilm was actually the second worst
right after the iPhone which was by far the worst.
Just the colors, and the overall look,
the Fujifilm, it's not bad.
But it was definitely way worse
than all of the other cameras, in my opinion.
Then we had round two of the semi-finals,
and camera A was the Sony A7III
and camera B was the Canon C300 Mark II.
And we had another upset.
The Sony A7III won by 58%.
So yeah, again, people couldn't see the difference
between a couple thousand dollar camera
and a $10,000 cinema camera.
And in this case, I think it's not as apparent.
If you look at them side by side,
I can understand why people would choose the Sony,
or people would choose the C300 Mark II.
But in my opinion, the C300 Mark II is still a lot more
just a nicer, organic, just a nicer image overall.
It's kind of hard to explain, I guess why I think
this one's better but the look of it,
I just enjoy much more.
But again, a lot of people
had a difference of opinion with me.
So then we get to the finals.
The Fujifilm X-T30 versus the Sony A7III,
and can you guess which one won?
The winner was 61% to 39%,
the Fujifilm X-T30.
The third cheapest camera through these blind test
came out on top.
It beat out cinema cameras.
It beat out the mid range DSLR cameras,
the Fujifilm X-T30.
This was really really interesting to me.
Tons of upsets and it went even further than my theory.
My theory was that the sub 1000 cameras
wouldn't be any different from the mid range.
But then the cinema cameras, you would see the difference.
No, most people can't even see the difference
between the sub $1000 cameras and the cinema cameras.
At least when they're posted online.
People just can't tell the difference.
And I don't think this is a case of
people are just idiots, and they can't see the difference
between really expensive cameras and cheaper cameras.
I just think this is the state of the cinematography world,
state of film making that every single camera
is that good that you can't really see
major glaring difference between the expensive cameras
and the cheaper cameras.
They're all really really great.
Whereas you know, 10 years ago
there was a massive difference
between the consumer cameras
and the pro cinema grade cameras.
Like, it was night and day.
Whereas now, they're very very similar in image.
You would literally have to spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars, to get that really beautiful cinema quality,
and now you can just buy a camera for a $100,000.
But there is at least one kind of caveat
or interesting thing that happened here,
and that was that no matter what cameras
were placed together, in every single instance,
the first camera that was shown, so camera A,
always beat camera B.
And that was kind of interesting to me,
and I was trying to figure out why is this.
And I even did kind of a control test.
I switched one of the comparisons around
so it was the Red versus the Fujifilm X-T30.
And in that case, when I showed the Red first,
and then the Fujifilm X-T30, the Red won.
But not by a massive margin.
So I don't really know what was happening.
I don't know if it was just a coincidence,
or is it something like, when you see an image,
and your eyes get adjusted to that image really quickly,
and then you see another image,
and the colors are a little bit different,
the contrast is maybe a little bit different,
the dynamic range.
You're just like, ew I don't like that.
I like what I got used to right away from the beginning.
I also thought maybe it could just be a voting questions
on Twitter that people always just hit camera A
because it's first on the list.
But then I swapped them around and did some other tests
and it's still was always the first camera
that was shown in the video that won
even if the voting was flipped around.
So yeah I can't say for sure.
Again, this isn't scientific.
But the first camera that was shown always won.
And then also I think there's a theory of
people are just really used to the look of DSLR mirrorless
that's kind of mid to low range look
because you see it all over YouTube.
That's the cameras that you're seeing most often.
Maybe that's why people ended up selecting those ones
instead of the cinema cameras
that are sometimes a little bit more soft,
and organic looking but not as glaringly obvious, sharp
and not as contrasty.
So maybe those differences accounted for the fact
that the low end cameras
actually beat out the cinema cameras.
But no matter the case, I think the lesson here
is that people really cannot tell the difference
nowadays between the cheaper cameras
and the expensive cameras.
They're all so good.
They're at a level
where they're just like minor differences.
There's no massive glaring difference
that you can for sure say, oh that's a Canon 100%
that's a Fujifilm.
That's a cinema camera, a million percent.
You can definitely tell it's a cinema camera.
There aren't these glaring obvious differences
between the cameras.
For example, look at the Sony A6400,
to me that was a really nice image.
It was actually one of my more favorite images
from all these cameras.
And it's sub $1000.
It's insane that a camera that's that cheap
can produce a really nice looking image.
So this was really interesting to me,
and kind of relieving for those of us
who are always thinking about getting the next camera
and trying to get a better image,
and a better camera, and spending more money on gear.
You don't really need to.
Most people cannot tell the difference.
And so you're better off just trying to learn
how to use the camera that you do have
in the best way possible.
Again it reinforces the idea that it doesn't matter
what gear you're using.
It matters more how you use it,
or the person behind the camera.
You just gotta get out there,
learn how to use your camera to the best of your capability.
And yeah, worry less about buying new gear,
and spending all this money on new gear,
because it actually apparently doesn't matter as much.
It's just a really great era to be a filmmaker.
The fact that you can buy a camera for under a $1000.
And get a really nice image with slow motion,
and all these different features.
It's absurd if you would have compared it
to the industry, even like seven, eight years ago.
Right before kind of the DSLR revolution.
You had to go through a lot of hoops to get even
even an okay image, if you didn't have a whole bunch
of money to spend on a camera.
So be encouraged.
Take whatever camera you have right now,
get out there, go and film, learn how to use it better.
Learn, make, repeat.
Ah yeah, I kind of actually take this
as an encouragement.
It's relieving.
It takes away some of that burden
of having to buy a really expensive camera.
Because yeah, a lot of people cannot tell the difference
especially when it comes to putting content online,
which is where most content goes nowadays.
I'm super curious to hear your guys' thoughts
so leave a comment down below.
Let me know if you were surprised.
If you kind of understood why these were the results.
Let me know what you guys thought,
'cause this was really really interesting to me.
And maybe we'll do another camera showdown,
maybe like a year from now,
and see if there's any differences.
Is the margin even smaller,
and we'll see all kinds of upsets.
Or maybe there'll be a bigger difference.
Maybe the cinema cameras will get
some sort of new technology, and they'll just take off
and be completely different.
From the rest of the mirrorless and DSLR cameras.
I don't know, let's see.
Yeah thanks guys for watching.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Hit that like button, subscribe to the channel
and share this video with your friends.
I wanna hear as many different perspectives
on this because I think
the findings were pretty interesting,
just like with MKBHD's findings.
I think the Poco phone, poca...
I don't even know what that phone is, won.
I've never even heard of it before.
So yeah, I'd love to hear what you guys think.
I will see you guys later.
Bye.
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