Dslr or video camera

Hi myotis,

I do believe all DSLR's are restricted to 29mins expect for the GH5.
As for over heating it is like most electronic kit. Leave in the sun on a hot day processing 4k video which the CPU is working hard to process, and I am sure it will heat up quickly !
The only times my Samsung Galaxy S4 has over heated has been when I had it mounted on the windscreen in Australia and the sun just baked the phone,..ha
It just shut down so the AC was put on full and the phone was held over one of the air vents till it was cold.
I have had the same issue this year with phone mounted on windscreen of car when we had the very hot weather last month.
 
Tysonator said:
As for over heating it is like most electronic kit. .
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It does seem to vary a fair bit from camera to camera, and it seems to have been a particular problem with the Sony a6xxx cameras, that I assume has now been solved. But not a good thing to happen in the middle of a wedding!
 
myotis said:
It does seem to vary a fair bit from camera to camera, and it seems to have been a particular problem with the Sony a6xxx cameras, that I assume has now been solved. But not a good thing to happen in the middle of a wedding!
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Oh yeas, I have looked into this as I was tempted to get either a used A6000 or new A6500.
The A6000 & A6300 the CPU was too small for the processing required so it struggled all the time.
The A6500 has a bigger, newer CPU which more efficient as I believe Sony had a firmware up date for A6300 and A6500 to help with over heating.
I think I will wait till the A6700 comes out as I am hoping for touch screen which flips out !
 
Tysonator said:
Oh yeas, I have looked into this as I was tempted to get either a used A6000 or new A6500.
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I think they varied a bit from individual camera to individual camera, but I hope you enjoy your A6700, when it come out.
 
If you can afford it go for a GH5 otherwise a GH4 is plenty good enough, camcorders may have great zooms but the last thing you want to be doing during recording, is zooming, it looks naff.

Also learn to edit, editing makes or breaks a video, you may have great footage but learn to edit and make it look better.
 
Swissy said:
If you can afford it go for a GH5 otherwise a GH4 is plenty good enough, camcorders may have great zooms but the last thing you want to be doing during recording, is zooming, it looks naff.

Also learn to edit, editing makes or breaks a video, you may have great footage but learn to edit and make it look better.
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Fully agree with your last sentence, and the second half of your first sentence, and I appreciate that what I am saying seems to be boring everyone, but even though this thread started with discussing video for "professional" use, the comparisons with camcorders seems to have focussed on consumer grade camcorders.

If you look at a professional dealer like CVP , in their camcorder section, their most popular camcorder (ignoring the Black Magic Pocket Cinema, which is a special case) costs £6000 plus VAT, excluding a lens. So you can avoid zooming entirely, and just use primes :)

The big attraction of cameras like the GH5 (or even lower cost options), is for when you want professional quality video and "can't" afford a (professional level) camcorder. But, there are also other reasons for using a GH5, even if you have a camcorder, such as needing a smaller camera for a specific shot.

Why you might prefer a camcorder, if you can afford one, has been discussed in earlier posts.
 
It might help if the O.P. gave us some idea of the budget he had in mind.

Id be suprised if someone who was just considering "trying his hand" at filming weddings, was ready to chuck £10,000 at a pro camera and tripod. Batteries numerous memory cards, microphones, and lights etc.
(Remember pro cameras rarely use sdxc cards)
Not to mention the inevitable inverstment in a computer system to cope with pro level data rates.
 
paul.w said:
It might help if the O.P. gave us some idea of the budget he had in mind.

Id be suprised if someone who was just considering "trying his hand" at filming weddings, was ready to chuck £10,000 at a pro camera and tripod. Batteries numerous memory cards, microphones, and lights etc.
(Remember pro cameras rarely use sdxc cards)
Not to mention the inevitable inverstment in a computer system to cope with pro level data rates.
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Very true, but he does say "... but have been told that I'd be better off with a purpose made video camera" so while I agree with you, I also think that part of making the decision should include an awareness of what "professional" camcorders offer, and why people might say you are better off with a purpose made video camera.
 
Ok myotis, while we're giving the O.P. the benefit of our experience to aid his decision making .......

You also need to factor in the cost of recording media. Pro cameras use xqd and cfast 2 cards. These can cost between £200 and £350 each for a 128gb card. And at the cameras highest quality settings, a 128gb card will give you approximately 20 minutes of footage !!! That's a lot of expensive cards to cover a wedding.

You can of course select a number of lower quality settings, with vastly reduced bit rates, to extend the recording times, but when you do that, your rather negating the biggest advantage of your expensive camera. (In photographers terms, it's like buying a Nikon d810 for weddings and then using it in crop mode to take jpegs)
And for weddings, where your final delivery format is a DVD or a Bluray there really is no point whatsoever in shelling out any more than the cost of a gh5 or equivalent.
 
paul.w said:
Ok myotis, while we're giving the O.P. the benefit of our experience to aid his decision making .......
You also need to factor in the cost of recording media. Pro cameras use xqd and cfast 2 cards. These can cost between £200 and £350 each for a 128gb card. And at the cameras highest quality settings, a 128gb card will give you approximately 20 minutes of footage !!! That's a lot of expensive cards to cover a wedding.
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Yes, this is indeed an important consideration, and a very good point to raise. But, you "could" use lower quality options and get more than 20 minutes recording, which would still give high quality results, and yes recording media can be costly. But right from my first post, I tempered my views, with an "if you can afford it" caveat. However, I'm not sure that image quality is the "biggest" advantage, in terms of a GH5 vs camcorder for weddings, its more about the differences in usability.

I'm perfectly happy that "once everything is considered" a GH5, or equivalent will often end up as the better choice than a camcorder.
 
Hefferzzzz said:
This seems to be a marvel though? I am very limited in video but for less than £1k this seems ideal with its range of lenses?
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Yes, but I would make sure you read some reviews, as I seem to remember it had some issues, but I can't remember what now.
 
I worked alongside a wedding videographer last week who uses a single £500 consumer spec Panasonic camcorder and a £600 drone. I was seriously dubious on the day, particularly when he told me he ditched the DSLR he started with and moved to a camcorder as he 'didn't understand ISO and all the stuff'. He charged nearly double what I did to photograph the wedding :)

I checked his work out when I got home, it's very, very good! Made me think about a change of career, I think he did about an hour of shooting during the whole day and in-between he was editing, said he could deliver the finished product the next morning!

So yep, not the kit but the guy or girl behind it that matters.
 
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Like the OP I've seen a market in video for weddings and for me I was at the point of changing cameras anyway. Having test shot some footage with my Nikon D750's I didn't find them particularily easy. I've since then moved to Sony and shoot weddings with two A9's for photography. These after having read reviews and having numerous test shoots will work equally as good 'for me' for wedding video. Size, low light performace, IBIS, 4k shooting will all the winning aspects for me for the switch. Although the cost was horrendous!
 
Tysonator said:
I do believe all DSLR's are restricted to 29mins expect for the GH5.
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Haven't read the whole thread but it is worth noting that the Panasonic GH4R also has unlimited recording time and should be more affordable than the GH5. The GH4R is not to be confused with the Panasonic GH4, where the recording is limited to 30 minutes.
 
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