My wife and I are wanting to do more recordings of ourselves and we wanted to see what kind of A/V gear is mostly used. Do y’all just use cell phones and lights or do you use a good digital camera and/or digital video camera and lights?
Cell phones are easy and great for pics, but not always the best for lower light/videos. I am just wanting to see suggestions on what y’all recommend and use to up our quality.
I’m recording my kids more now that they participate in sports and such. If I need to capture something really quickly I just use my phone. If I’m going to be in the stands or on the field, I use a camera. I’m not a professional by any stretch of the word, I just want the videos of my kids to look better than my parents’ videos of me (VHS in SLP mode).
Camera is a Sony Alpha A6400 with the 16-50mm kit lens. I also have an 18-200mm lens, which is useful if I have to be far from the action. I mount the camera on a DJI Ronin SC gimbal with the Focus Wheel attachment, though I have that set up to zoom instead. I sit a RØDE VideoMic GO II on a small sock mount on the camera’s hot shoe and plug it into the 3.5mm jack on the side. All of my recordings are done at 4k 30fps, as that’s the best the A6400 can do. Also, I always turn off automatic white balance and record in S-Log3 color, since I put everything through DaVinci Resolve. For that purpose I carry a Datacolor SpyderCHECKR 24 color chart, which I hold out in front of the camera (or have someone else do it) so I can adjust the white balance and exposure correctly for each scene change. That chart of supported by Resolve out of the box so I didn’t need the Datacolor software.
I also have a BeastCage frame and a couple of lenses for my iPhone 12, but the A6400 is shorter/narrower and fits on the gimbal better. I hand that to my wife or the child I’m not recording if I want another camera angle. I can’t do log color with that because it’s not the Pro so I do the best I can in post with Resolve and the Datacolor chart.
Went off a bit there, but I hope that helps!