Your Favorite Creators' Favorite Cameras!
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I cannot believe I can't remember the name of this camera. - What, the... - You have to look this up. - The small plane shoot? - No, okay, I'm gonna describe it to you. I have two, I have two of them in my office, the most beautiful camera.

What is going on, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm David. And if you're watching the video version, you've already noticed that David is next to me, which means on the other side, we've got two new hosts for this bonus episode. That's right. You're not seeing things. It's not Friday. You can still do dishes, but we have some extra fun stuff to talk about in the world of YouTube creators and their camera choices. So without any further ado, Eric and Rich.

take it away. Hello. Hello.

Oh, that was pretty great. Yes, so I'm Eric. I'm one half of the studio channel. Rich and I are regularly confused in the studio. Pretty much everyone thinks that we are the same person. That is a good thing. So, hello, I'm Eric. Many people refer to me as Rich. That is okay. Hello, I'm Rich, and no one refers to me as Eric. That is not true. That happened 10 minutes ago. Adam called you Eric.

That's true, yeah. Rich, what do we do for a living? Yeah, me and Eric, we're the studio producers and we make our behind the scenes videos here at MKBHD. So,

our last big behind the scenes video. We got a lot of feedback that it just didn't feel super attainable, that there's only so much about behind the scenes at MKBHD that can be actionable for people. So we had an idea to do pretty much the biggest behind the scenes video in history. Yeah, so we decided to talk to some of our favorite creators, ranging from 20,000 subscribers all the way up to 20 million.

And, well, you know, almost 20 million. Any day now, subscribe to the MKBHD channel. Marques needs more subs. And our goal is to not just understand what cameras these creators really like, but really to answer the question, does gear even really matter in YouTube in 2025?

The answer is a lot more nuanced than I think we were expecting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I feel like in the world of what camera do you use on YouTube? There are some trends. There are some historical trends. There are some current modern day popular options, but there isn't really like any one standout number one that I can think of as far as a single model. Don't know if I agree with that. But I do think there are standout brands that are dominating. Yeah.

Okay, well there's evidence for and against that. Okay. Okay, so the first camera brand that we wanted to start with is a camera brand we're very familiar with here and a lot of people aren't very familiar with. Mr. Red Marquez Brownlee. Red. A lot of creators see red as this sort of aspirational brand. Oh, maybe one day I could shoot on a red camera. So we wanted to bring in one creator who actually shoots all their videos on red and another who bought a couple red cameras but isn't really using them anymore.

Why do you shoot your videos unread? Let's start there. We talked to other creators who- Wait, you mean Nikon? They got bought by Nikon.

But I do shoot red. I do shoot red. That was a deep cut. I can really give you, I can break it down to basically two main reasons why I shoot red. I was shooting Canon for a very long time up until around 2015, I think. Wow, it's been a decade. Old. Yeah, I know. But the two reasons that I switched to my first ever red camera, which was an Epic W, I believe, at the time. Really? That's what it was called? Oh, yeah. It was called the Red Epic W. Oh, man. Or maybe it was a Scarlet W before the Epic W. But...

One, resolution. Two, color science. Yeah.

So one resolution was I was shooting 1080i on a C100. And I was looking for my first 4K camera. And I skipped right to the red raw 4K camera. And it was plenty sharp. And that was like one of my criteria for a new camera. The other was it had this amazing color science. And I could change the white balance after I shot, which was this neat little thing called raw video.

And the colors looked amazing. I could really make videos look the way I wanted them to. So for people that don't know, when your camera, when you take video, generally your camera is compressing that video. It's applying basically a LUT or lookup table effectively to it by compressing it into an MP4 or something like that. And it's making a bunch of decisions about color. Raw video is just a lot of the information. Most of the information is taking in. It's not completely real raw, raw, you know, video.

That sounds like a compressed raw. Google Gaga. Lady Gaga. Sorry. Lady Gaga lyric. But yeah, it's compressed raw because it takes it in. But because of that, it's not applying or it's allowing you to still adjust those values like white balance. I feel like working here, working with red is relatively easy.

in large part because Rich does most of the shooting, but also we have like great computers for like a good, healthy post workflow. But we called with Austin Evans who actually accidentally bought two

Red cameras? Accidentally. Yeah, you want to... Sure. I believe Austin had Scarlet W on pre-order, and then Epic W came out, so he bought that, and then they sent to him. I can't believe they called it that. You didn't like the W for weapon? Epic W. The W sent for weapon, right? Really hard to fly with these cameras. Yeah. So before working here, I was a cinematographer, and I got to work with our good friend Austin Evans, and he had a much different experience shooting Red. Very different. But the problem was...

It was a bad camera. Like, yes, if you have a whole film crew and a technical department and a whole lot of patients, it was lovely. But the problem was, you know, like there was one shoot where we were in Austin. So we were doing a shoot with Audi. We were on Circuit of the Americas, you know, an actual proper F1 track. And it is Texas in summer. And it was like 100 degrees outside. The red completely gave out on us 15 minutes in the shoot, like just wouldn't power on. It wasn't like overheated necessarily. It just just gave up. Right.

Um, so luckily we had like an a 6,500 as a B cam, which we had to shoot the rest of the video on. That was one of those moments where I'm like, this is not it. Red had moments, but even when we shot red, we shot it in progress. Like we didn't have, we never, ever, ever use the AK. Cause who needs AK? Right. Especially back, you know, six, seven years ago. So, uh,

We still technically have our red and it is a lovely Paperweight I mean we got we got to make something clear like red cameras are studio cameras. They are shot They're used for movies. Yeah, right in very controlled environment Yeah, it was a it was a weird thing when Marquez and Austin and Jonathan Morrison and Lou went and decide to decided to buy red cameras for YouTube videos like that was very

extremely novel yes it's still it's still novel because the new the newest models are still extremely expensive you can get uh scarlet w for like three thousand dollars now but back then that was like nobody was doing that but even if you bought the scarlet w for three thousand dollars that's the thing about red cameras is like people will think that a red camera is something that's

Like, maybe something to consider as a creator. Like, oh, I'm going to work my way up and build out a RED ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably not a good idea. It's a locked off kind of situation. That's probably not a good idea. I would say a RED camera is the equivalent of, it's a sensor in a little box, and that box is a computer. Yeah. With fans and, you know, memory and all this other compute. And...

you can attach as much or as little to this box as you want to build it out for whatever you're shooting. So if you've ever seen like a Hollywood movie set, it's built out to the size of a box.

Dog Like a size reference. Yeah, multiple monitors and a ton of cables coming out of it And it's got obviously the memories and plugged into the side But it's got all accessories for shooting external memory and all this other stuff. It's a brain It's not ergonomic at all might have two or three handles on it for maybe that one time They're gonna do that one handheld shot for that thing They planned for that thing that next day, but it is very much not like the c100 I can from which is built for one person to shoot everything

So the single shooter camera experience is very different. That said, I've been able to build out my version of a single camera shooter RED.

right uh i found just the right set of handles top handle record button monitor accessories that for me it's just just light enough and just ergonomic enough that i can make it work and it's worth it because the footage that comes out of that box is second to none i have not seen anything come close to touching the quality of a red image off that sensor we're going to notice a pattern where

If you're a tech YouTuber or like a knowledge YouTuber, you end up seeing like pretty weird camera choices because the environments that you're shooting in are relatively controlled. And the more that creators move into niches or spaces where the environments are less controlled, I think the more they all congregated around like two brands. But let's wait until we hit those brands because Red was recently bought.

by nikon and we were not really thinking about bringing nikon in to this video nikon hasn't really had a rep especially in like video for creators but when we hopped on the phone with becca versace who's like como se dice the goat um she said like um i think this will come as a surprise to most that i actually use predominantly nikon systems now we asked like what do you like about it and she described the image as like

Describing color is weird, but there's something about it that feels like homier and cozier, whereas Sony I feel like is very sharp, a little bit punchy.

And yeah, Nikon just naturally right out of camera, I can have something that I'm really pleased with. Yeah, Nikon has had a bit of a renaissance in the last like two or so years, primarily because they were pretty late to move to mirrorless. So a mirrorless camera is a camera where it takes in the image, it goes straight to the sensor, and then you see what the sensor sees. Whereas a normal camera, a DSLR, has a mirror that you see what the mirror sees, whereas

which is not the actual image or exposure. While everybody else, well, not everybody else, but most of the other brands were on these like second, third generation mirrorless cameras, Nikon was just releasing their first camera, their first mirrorless camera. - Yeah, no, we were all, all the kids in like the YouTube cook groups I was in back in the day, that's what we called them instead of group chats. Pretty much everyone switched to the Sony ecosystem.

around this time and like never looked back because Sony was really the first manufacturer cheap mirrorless like I guess Panasonic kind of beat them but micro four thirds yeah we'll get into it do you have context David on why Nikon was so slow to switch

I think that it's not too dissimilar to why Kodak was so, even though they invented the digital camera, they just were like, no. They were just having so much success. And like Canon and Nikon are the two biggest camera brands, right? They were making all of the money and they're making all the money on SLRs and DSLRs.

And so they were like, I don't really think there's a huge benefit to this technology. Our photographers are super used to using DSLR. Yeah, I don't know. I think people had just gotten really in their way about it. Also, the Nikon crowd tended to be either

older people who are shooting like bird photography or like wildlife photography Nikon is famous for bird photography you will very rarely meet any other brand that on the box they're the one with the cheetah on the box right yeah and then they also are very popular for concert photography so because their low light used to be well it still is very good but for that reason as well so I was talking to Becca about like

like where Nikon goes in the future? Like, are we going to see a Nikon come back, especially with like the red kind of... Acquisition. Yeah, I guess acquisition. I have no knowledge of what's going to happen, but I think reds are very expensive systems. Not only is the camera expensive, but the amount of footage that you're going to shoot is going to take up a lot of hard drive space. Hard drives are expensive. And I wonder if...

Nikon, who is, you know, really affordable cameras. They price their cameras very competitively. Coming together with RED means that we're going to get something that's more affordable with the RED logo on it or in a RED camera. I wonder. I don't know.

I can only hope. Do you guys think that the future of this acquisition is like more and more people could buy RED cameras? Like maybe, because it sounds like Nikon is relatively accessible now, but no one's just thinking about it. Maybe people are going to start thinking about RED cameras. I think there is some level of cachet attached to the RED name from the RED Epic and the RED Mysterium Dragon. And back in the day, they were very big in the cinema world and the directors that shot with RED, like they have that cachet. So yeah,

I feel like it could be Nikon or as they actually said it to me when I talked to them recently, Nikon. It could be their way of going up into that cinema world. Yeah, Nikon.

I believe that's the correct pronunciation. Yeah. Really? Yeah. No. I know none of us have said it like that. That's apparently how it's said. But yeah, it could be the other way around as well. It could be some of RED and bringing their technologies down in price and more accessible into Nikon cameras if they get there.

So just about two weeks ago, so Red makes a camera called the Komodo, which is, by the way, their most affordable camera. They actually made that camera in response to all of these mirrorless cameras being more and more affordable for creators. They wanted to offer like this in-between spot where it's more expensive than a

Mirrorless camera, but it's like still a cinema camera. Yeah, so just about two weeks ago They started selling one with a Nikon Z mount Which is the lens mount that the Z series Nikon mirrorless cameras have so now they sell both on the Komodo as well as I believe on the newest one That what is the one that you have here V Raptor? Yeah, I think they also have a mount for the V Raptor now that Nikon Z lenses can go on to so

It is very early, by the way, in the acquisition. It only officially went through like quite recently. And it's quite surprising that they're doing this. They did that. The other thing that they have done in the last month or so is Nikon can shoot Z-RAW internally. And there's all of this or N-RAW. Sorry, N-RAW, not Z-RAW.

There's all of this lore as to Nikon and Red suing each other over internal RAW video. Compressed RAW. Compressed RAW video. Eventually, Nikon just bought Red and they dropped the lawsuit. But... Convenient. Convenient. I wonder if these two unrelated factors are connected. But the NRAW that the Nikon Z6 series and Z9 and whatever can shoot, Red...

They just announced a bunch of LUTs with red that try to give it the red sensor look on these Nikon cameras. Yeah. Interesting.

So it's clearly not going to be exactly the same. It is a lookup table. It's not the same as the sensor technology, but they are working together in ways to bring the red cachet to Nikon and to bring the Nikon accessibility to red. Okay, so speaking of accessibility, we dove into Blackmagic with two creators who are cinematographers by day, Michael Tobin and Brittany Jeunet, and also have their own YouTube channels about cinematography. Rich, could you give us like

context on Blackmagic. How do people think about Blackmagic? I feel like people think about Blackmagic as the accessible Alexa in the sense that the color science is beautiful, easy to work with. Great menu system. Yeah. The only thing they're lacking? Autofocus, which is a big thing. It is.

Well, but like it's it's deeper than that. OK, so when we talked to Michael Tobin, he gave this great analogy. He said, I think the easiest way to put it is they're very similar to Apple, that they have their own kind of walled garden. Right. They make the camera, they make the codec, they make the software. They have the best color grading software on the planet.

And so you just have this beautiful like workflow throughout the whole way. You can actually get DaVinci Resolve Studio when you buy a Blackmagic camera. This is the only camera brand you buy where you also get like a full stack professional grade video editing software thrown in there. Yeah. Unless you count Red Cine X.

most people don't are like no one no one yeah yeah that's crazy but so his whole thing is like you can build like a full workflow with black magic when we talked to brittany she was just like wow the image quality is so beautiful it's such a beautiful sensor that comes out the black magic and i think you know a lot of times like with social media it's really hard to explain characteristics of a camera and the differences of why you would go for different cameras

But for me, when I had the Blackmagic 6K, it was when I wanted to get into actual filmmaking. So shooting short films and I think that really, the image quality really set it apart because you were getting this beautiful cinematic image for like such a low price. And it's one of those things where like, I know we all talk about like what cinematic is, but to me, owning both cameras, the FX3 and the Blackmagic,

I don't have to put diffusion on a Blackmagic glass. It's automatically a softer look coming out of the camera itself. It pairs really nicely with a lot of lenses because of like the image quality that it has. It has false color, so it has certain aspects that you would use in filmmaking that makes it easier for you on set. And if you want to grow from just, you know, like doing like the everyday content to being a filmmaker, it's just a good transitional camera.

She was using her Blackmagic for YouTube and then she stopped using it for another camera brand. There are like some pretty clear downsides to shooting Blackmagic that we were able to get into with them. Have either of you guys shot Blackmagic? Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten very close multiple times, but always got scared away at the last second. Whether it was because of the workflow, I don't want to have to use DaVinci Resolve, or if it was because of...

You know, I've seen a lot of, so you say the sensor is beautiful and the color science is great. I've watched, maybe this is from the beginning, early days, I've watched a lot of test footage that I didn't like from the Blackmagic cameras. Really? And so if I were ever to switch cameras, I would want it to at least match what I thought I was getting out of my current camera. And I never thought that Blackmagic was doing that. Maybe it's much closer now. And I know there's an URSA 8K and all sorts of other stuff, but I haven't seen test footage that tempted me.

So well, ironically, so black magic is like the generally like the cheaper version of a red in that it allows you to shoot raw video. This was like it was one of the alternatives that gave you that raw capability. And generally when you're shooting raw, we are different because we have extremely controlled lighting. We just want the highest quality image at a normal look. But

But most of the time when you're shooting raw, you're actually shooting raw because you want to stylize your image. Yeah. Or correct for it. We just shot. Or correct for it. We just shot the Pixel 9a hands-on in New York City. The worst lighting. And Rich and I were, yeah, weird lighting, like spotlights with these orange lights and then go outside for a few minutes and shoot out there and then shoot in the hallway and then come back inside. It's like, I don't want to have to do some sort of manual white balancing every time in post because.

We can nail every single shot with perfect white. Which, by the way, when I worked at Andrew Authority was the most annoying freaking thing. There would be like 50 of us reporters in one room and all of our videos look horrible because the lighting was terrible, super yellow. And we'd all watch Marquez's video and it would be perfect.

- Perfect. - Yeah. You're like, ah! - That's the advantage of red, right? - That's the red. - That's why she red. - Dude, it's so funny talking to you guys about this because I think like when we talk to creators, their take on why they didn't like black magic had like nothing to do with color or- - Yeah.

Like the big the big reason is like up until the Pixis, the body style on the pocket series is a reason a lot of people hated it because it was like this DSLR vibe, but also cinema camera components that just didn't make a lot of sense. Battery life is rough. That's definitely you need a lot of those. I'd say the biggest downfall is people like autofocus.

and there's no Blackmagic cameras that have any auto focus to it. - It's just more to the workflow than just being able to put a card in, shoot it, take it out and put it in your computer. So it's just the fact that I still have to use V mounts,

get all my cords out, all of those things. She's like, all right, chill. And because it's not autofocus, I have to use a monitor on it so I can see myself and make sure that I can try to manually focus to make sure I'm in focus. There's no autofocus. Yeah. On the more affordable ones. Especially if you're a single person shooting, like you just want to have autofocus to know that you're in focus. I get it. Yeah, it makes sense.

If you're like a prosumer, I think. And if you're like making a lot of YouTube videos. I think if you're a DP. Or you're saying like. The solo shooter. If you're like a young DP. Right. Yeah. I think a Pocket 6K could be in your universe. Especially if you have a crew.

In controlled environments for lighting. Yeah, like a relatively small camera crew. There are certainly better cinema cameras. Well, maybe not certainly. I guess it depends on how much you really like Resolve. Yeah. Because so much of this is like, can you dial in the right post workflow with Resolve to feel really confident that, you know, everything you shoot with Blackmagic, you can get a unique image. Yeah. The thing about Blackmagic, especially...

a number of years ago was that they were like the cheaper red in that the bodies were made of like a light plastic. So they were also sort of just a camera brain computer, but in a much cheaper body, they didn't have any sort of like flip out screen or anything that you could, where you could see yourself. They were very much like, we took the parts that you need and we put some stuff around it. And here, just like,

shoot the raw video, do it all in post. And because of that, they didn't include the things like autofocus and like these other capabilities. They were also adapting to like everyone else's lenses. So they didn't really have the control that like a native camera brand that has their own lenses can do either.

So one last, I guess, kind of quote on Blackmagic. We talked to Brandon Lee, who was the head of cinematography for Linus Tech Tips, and they briefly shot every video on Short Circuit, which our boy Jono was responsible for at one point. Thank you, Jono, for providing the money for my employment. Anyways, so Short Circuit on LTT was all...

Blackmagic for a little while. And Brandon said they ran into some pretty frustrating technical issues just in terms of like how they manage. I think it was like mostly like codec management. And there were a lot of things that because Blackmagic is proprietary, you have to build out these workflows that in theory could be better. But you almost need to be like a Blackmagic domain expert in order to get

these cameras to be like excellent, excellent cameras. I think it takes time for mastery over these. You can say that about a lot of cameras, but Blackmagic especially because of its relationship with software and the hardware. So yeah, Blackmagic has this software called DaVinci Resolve that they acquired quite a long time ago in 2009 or so. And

It used to mostly be a color a color editor You would just you would bring your footage into that software just to do the color But over the last like four or five years they've updated it over and over again And now it's like a quite strong nonlinear editor. So a lot of people have left both Premiere and Final Cut over to here, especially if they have a blackmagic camera because it is a lot different It's a lot better for that footage

And it also uses these things like nodes and whatever. But yeah, I think if you invest in the Blackmagic system and you commit to it, but it's probably a little bit tough to do that in like a studio like Linus Tech Tips where you got to teach everyone a bunch of new things and like teach everyone a specific workflow. Especially if you have an old workflow. If you build from the ground up with Blackmagic in mind, it could actually probably be a very efficient stack. But you need to like...

take the time to understand the tech. - Sure. - All right, David, I would take a quick sip of Red Bull if I were you because we're about to talk Fuji cameras. And Mr. Amell, you in many ways, to much of the internet, to much of the world, you're an introduction to a lot of the science and sort of an understanding for how Fuji cameras work and what makes them special. - Oh, yeah.

That's perfect. Bring the Fuji. Sure. I bring the Fuji. So I guess to start here, in terms of a Fuji image, why are so many people gravitating to it? Why are Fuji cameras becoming this sort of like viral phenomena? What is it about these cameras has enabled them to kind of like leak into the social fabric? TikTok. No.

No, not just TikTok. That's why I bought mine. No, and you. Oh, it was trendy. I think I know. It's true. It was kind of trendy. Yeah, it was popping off on TikTok. Okay, but it was trending not necessarily because... Okay, there's a lot of things. A lot of the answers to a lot of the questions you were asking me

The answer is the democratization of something, you know, when we're like, we're creators are picking up this brand because this brand has finally brought this feature that used to be on these inaccessible thing to an accessible. Okay. Right. So Fujifilm,

democratized color Because it is it takes a very long time to get really good at doing good color. Yeah. Yeah in 2016 or 2017 or so I Bought my first Fuji camera. It was the Fujifilm XT 2 and

It was my first camera at all. I didn't knew nothing about what I was doing at all. I started making videos and everyone on YouTube was like, Oh, what's your color workflow? And there's all these videos talking about like, Oh, how I grade, how I grade. And I was just like,

By the way, Astia is a film stock. Fujifilm, if you do not know, they have all these film stocks that you can choose to shoot with. They are color profiles on the camera. You do not only have to shoot with them in JPEG, you can also apply them to video. And so I literally was not color grading at all. I was just choosing the one that fit what I was shooting the best. Yeah.

So we talked with this creator named Colt Kirwin, who is like, I don't know if you guys have seen his stuff. His videos are just like so charming and fun. And we asked him about Fuji and he said like,

But yeah, instead of competing with the big camera brands, Fuji has had a different experience where your JPEGs magically look really good and you can kind of customize within camera versus throwing it into Lightroom and having to do that already. So I feel like

Fuji has really gotten a cult following in the past couple years because of their specific film emulations in that, oh, you don't have to shoot RAW anymore. I just shoot JPEG, blah, blah, blah. And it's nice. I think it's...

a breath of fresh air when everything is like competing on the technicalities. It's like, okay, we don't have to be perfect. Let's just make something fun to use. Yeah. And that keyword fun came up over and over and over again when we talked to people. So Fuji is the nothing phone of camera brands. I think nothing is more utilitarian. Really? Because I would buy my...

It's like the Moto Razr. I think so. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I guess the fun aspect of like, we're not going to have the craziest specs, but when you use it, you will feel things. Yeah. So Brandon, who is like the chief cinematographer at LTT, I keep his resume. He said like, Fuji is probably the most fun in terms of all the brands. Because if you've never owned a camera before and you're just starting out, I think that they allow it to,

that the tactile feeling of the lens is the way that the cameras are built, the button placement, the shutter angle, the way that dials are used on the cameras. It's all very well thought out. And especially if I think back to myself as a beginner, like that used to be kind of the appeal of Canon is Canon was very approachable and it wasn't super like difficult. You don't have to think about a lot of stuff. You can just start learning. And that's the thing too, is I find that what Fuji picked up

that idea from Canon is that they pushed it further by saying, well, let's not just make it easy and accessible. Let's make it like an experience that feels good. - So fun and colors popped up over and over again in our interviews. But if you wanna buy a Fuji camera specifically to make videos,

We talked to a creator named Joshua De La Victoria, who does, he's a touring guitar player and he'll shoot like guitar videos, either teaching people guitar or just like doing cool covers. And he needed like a compact, simple, easy camera to shoot. And then using the Fuji, I kind of fell in love with the photography side of it because I mainly bought it for video. And then I was like, oh, this thing also shoots awesome photos. Of course, it made it made photography really fun in a way that I think other cameras don't. I think that's.

that these are probably still cameras? There's a whole era of this happening. This may be around the same time. So I remember also getting into...

still cameras getting good at video. Like Canon 5D kind of was the beginning of a lot of these trends where, oh snap, big sensor, shallow depth of field, looks like movie. I can make movie with still camera. And if you put the right lenses on a 5D and a 5D Mark II, you can get this incredible, beautiful video. And then I think around GH2 or GH3,

People started like hacking them and putting the the magic lantern software on them and getting higher bit rates out of them and doing the same sort of stuff with those cameras and There was this little mini era of this is actually a camera for photos But I can make videos that look pretty good with a big thing for me was I started doing more like work for clients like photo stuff or video stuff for other people because like I guess I

I had somewhat of a distinct style that other people kind of wanted. So then I was starting to do some freelance stuff and I was having a lot of trouble with the Fuji did not have any kind of image stabilization.

And I didn't want to invest in like a huge rig or like a, I don't like using gimbals. I find them really annoying to use. And the autofocus in the Fuji was horrible. So at one period of time, all of a sudden the processors got fast enough. The sensors got good enough readout speed where every camera could be a hybrid camera. So the person you talk to,

It is understandable that they would have switched off of Fuji because Fuji still is geared towards the photography workflow. But I would argue, but I would argue. Yeah.

If you shoot manual for everything and you control everything you want that, they're still very good for that. I think that makes a lot of – because I think the big things that we heard for why people maybe don't like Fuji for video are oftentimes there's a 30-minute record limit. That's not like a hard and fast rule, but oftentimes depending on which Fuji camera you're shooting on. Yeah, that –

That used to be an import tax rule. Because basically if it could record for over 30 minutes, it was taxed as a video camera, which is a much higher tax. And it would have jacked the price of the camera up by a ton. So most of the cameras... That's why a lot of cameras from that day had a 29 minute, 59 minute. It was very dumb. Ridiculous. And then the other thing is like, autofocus isn't fantastic for Fuji cameras. There's a lot of stuff where if you're run and gun, you

You just have to like figure out which settings would be good but if you really like stylistic color and there's not a lot of like intense movement in your videos. Yeah, it's like it's a real contender. I would agree that also just side note. Yeah the Fuji XT series cameras they use APS-C sensors which are smaller than full-frame. Yeah, and then they also have this GFX series which is larger than full-frame medium format. They never wanted to compete in full-frame because Sanic

Canon, Sony, Nikon are all in this space. So they were like, we can dominate the APS-C space and we can dominate the medium format space. So they never even competed with full frame, which I think is another reason that people didn't start using them for video either because people wanted that full frame experience for video. Okay, so speaking of sensor size, I want to talk about Panasonic because I...

Even though Panasonic does have full frame cameras right now, I largely associate Panasonic and their brand with they do a lot before everyone else. Yes. They oftentimes don't get good credit for it. Their color science is a little weird and they have micro four third sensors, which have...

I would argue more downsides than upsides. But what are your initial impressions on Panasonic before we dive into some of the conversations we had with creators? I feel like I'm making smartphone analogies in my head. They're like the OnePlus. Like people who are really, really into specific sets of specs and things they want to get out of a camera might like the Panasonic move. Yeah. So understandable why some people will gravitate towards it, but why they might not become like a mainstream huge option. Yeah.

I also note, because they were micro four-thirds, the sensor size will dictate what you can do on the camera because you have to have so much data readout. Panasonic was the company that brought a lot of features to the camera industry because they had the smallest sensor, so it was easier for them to move the data. They could add the features because...

They didn't have to move as much data in order to allow things like log recording and things like that. Right. So the way it always went was it was like, oh, we got five axis stabilization in micro four thirds. And now it comes to APS-C. And now it comes to full frame. Yeah. So, yeah. So I guess...

For those following along, if you're still listening but you're also confused, thank you so much. I know this is not our normal waveform conversation. Thank you so much. No, no, no. But essentially, like, Panasonic uses smaller sensors, right? And that leads to on paper more advancements. Yes. But a lot of their, I guess, a lot of the reason that Panasonic has historically been able to be ahead of the game is because they use smaller sensors. Correct. So, yeah.

- Okay, so we were only able to find one creator who regularly shoots on Panasonic. His name is Stuart Hicks. He's an architecture professor in Chicago and he makes videos about architecture. Shout out Chicago, greatest city on earth. And... What is it, New Jersey? Hoboken? No. - Top 10.

San Francisco. LA is the best. San Francisco. Okay. All right. Well, delusion aside. It's right there, guys. Um,

So we asked him like, why do you shoot on Panasonic? Your videos are gorgeous, but why did you do that? So I still use the very first camera that I ever purchased for doing this stuff. And it's a Panasonic GH5 from the year 2020. And he goes, you know, he still uses the first camera he ever bought. He bought the GH5 in 2020. And he kind of immediately just went into things he didn't like about it. I mean, one question is, um,

Are you going to be in a studio or out in the world? I think that that makes a big difference in the studio here. For instance, the autofocus doesn't matter. I can set it and it doesn't, um, become a problem. GH5 has notoriously awful autofocus. It is unusable. Um, you know, I've made videos of the, or the way I learned that was I made a video where I used autofocus and I thought it'd be fine. Cause I was just sitting there and a viewer commented about how, um,

it was unwatchable because of the focus breathing. He's like, the GH5 has kind of notoriously awful autofocus. He's frustrated with a lot of aspects of micro four thirds. And then he's like, you know, he'd love things like shallow depth of field, stuff like that. And so in addition to like the actual sort of

the marketing advantage of Micro Four Thirds, we also asked Tyler Stallman, who's like this excellent camera creator. So he's like, there are three basic reasons. When we called him, his video was like gorgeous. And we're like, what are you shooting us on, bro? He's like, he's shooting on a GH7. He was shooting on Panasonic. And he said- There are three use cases that I think Micro Four Thirds is actually the best for. Because in many ways, you know, less depth of field, less dynamic range, noise isn't as good. But there are some things it does better at.

One that we're looking into right now is we're quoting on a client that we currently do their vertical social media, but we might want to do the same campaigns in horizontal. And a Micro Four Thirds sensor is as close to square as you get. So if you need to shoot for both formats at the same time,

there's really no better sensor. Like you get almost a square. So when you crop both, they both look good and are not compromised. And a new firmware update actually lets you move multiple markers around. So for me, I would say that like, I want to use the bottom 16 by nine of the image for YouTube. And then I want to use the center nine by 16 for Instagram. And you can see those markers as you're shooting, which I think is pretty amazing. And you can only do on something like the GH7.

This is usually referred to as open gate shooting. What's open gate? Generally, you have a sensor and you project the light over the sensor. And generally, you're not using the whole sensor because...

Displays are usually 16 by 9, 2 by 1, whatever. When you're recording on that sensor, you're only recording a certain amount of it. Open gate recording, just like the throughput thing that we were just talking about with micro four thirds, where they advance faster than other companies, is where you use the entire sensor and you read out the four sensor, which is normally a four by three aspect ratio. Reason number two that Tyler said micro four thirds could be useful is as an overhead capability.

like just like a simple top down because micro four thirds traditionally you're not going to get a super shallow depth of field. So it's just clutch so you can get like everything in focus. Smaller sensor, more in focus. Yeah, exactly. And then the third reason is because it's a smaller sensor so generally stabilization is better.

Yeah, totally. Smaller, lighter body. Totally. Also, really cool bonus that 99% of people wouldn't care about, but people would yell at us if we didn't mention. Perfect. Tyler was using Arri colors on his Panasonic camera because Panasonic has, like, I guess an agreement with Arri. Yeah.

to optimize ARRI color science for Panasonic. So if you wanted to shoot ARRI and get a bit of an ARRI look... I did not know that. We just find a really, really, really open, wide aperture lens plus ARRI color science and...

And then we rent an ARRI camera and we get to do a photo shoot of you holding it. Interesting. I wonder how much of that is similar to the red color science on the NRA because when I applied those LUTs, they did not really look like red. They're very nice. Tyler spoke pretty highly. Yeah. I know Ellis has mentioned like a production company as well that like loves shooting on Panasonic and has shot like these excellent shorts. Stopping in here.

No, they're a really cool YouTube video called Media Division that does like really, really, really intense camera stuff. And their whole thing is if you want to buy a cinema camera, just buy a GH6 or a GH7 or whatever the most recent one. Yeah, just use the Arri color. Yeah, they're just like, there's no, yeah. But that's them. Super interesting. Also, I mean...

It can often be easier to adapt more lenses as well to smaller sensors because you can more easily cover the sensor. You can't adapt a micro four thirds sensor to a full frame. Micro four thirds lens to a full frame camera. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys, we have one more brand before we get to our break. Yeah. I noticed the elephant in the room. Well, with two more. We're missing two. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're going to do one more, then do a break. That was the elephant for all the audio listeners. Okay. That's good. Okay. We technically didn't do Canon yet either. Okay. So we're on. So I want to talk about Canon. Okay. So Peter McKinnon. Nice. Whoa. Wow. That worked out too well. I just made that up. We could end the video here. Okay. We could hear that Red Bull slur. That was crazy. Okay. Okay.

When people talk about Canon cameras, they talk about it like with this insane nostalgia. Like, oh, I loved them. So we had Casey Neistat come in because when I think about a creator who shoots on Canon, I still think of Casey Neistat. That daily vlog, the 300-day sprint insane thing, that was all Canon. And so when we asked Casey to come in and just tell us about the cameras he used. There was a camera called the Canon...

I cannot believe I can't remember the name of this camera. The HBO show Catfish, you know that show? Like, be careful who you date. That show was predicated by a documentary called Catfish that my friends made. And most of the documentary Catfish that was at like Sundance Film Festival, MTV bought it, put it in 2,000 movie theaters. That movie was shot primarily on T1. T1? Are you looking it up right now? I'm looking it up. There's a few. T1.

No, no, it's a vertical form factor. It was way before that. Try Canon T1T. - This is a camcorder. - Yes. And it was like the first kind of point and shoot that was really optimized for video, not for stills. No, no, no, no, no, no. A beautiful, where's my phone?

I look right now, if you're watching this at home, everybody in this room is on their phones trying to figure out the name of this camera. It's a stunning camera. Go to eBay and try to buy it if you can find one. Not even, is that beautiful? - Yo. - What's the name of the Canon camera that was like all stainless steel, it was really small, it's the one Rel filmed Catfish on, like the flip outside. That's it, that's it. What's the name of that, Marques? - TX1. - TX1, Van, nice, that knew it. Thanks, Van.

Yeah, I still have mine. Me too, I have two. Bye.

The canon TX1. First of all, that was a very fun experience getting to talk to him. I think as a youth in this space, it's very cool being able to go and interview Casey. It felt like a career moment for me. I don't think he knows my name. That's cool. My name is Rich. Yep. My name is Earl. But yeah, so many people would wax poetic about canon in the past. We asked Colt Kirwan.

Who's like my Gen Z Casey Neistat? He said like the way I see it was canon had a

a choke hold on the market if you want to be a real photographer you get a canon camera right um and there's still that that boat and then sony kind of like from the they were in the dslr world and then sony kind of took that leap to do mirrorless cameras and in the beginning like uh sony's color science is not good or the battery life sucks stick with canon and then

I feel like now the mirrorless market has taken over everything. So that's where Sony has kind of like, quote unquote, failed, I guess, and then continued to iterate until they perfected it. Similar to Nikon, they released their first mirrorless camera like the same time Nikon did. Like it took them a really long time. But they had a very strong, strong hold, this strong squared hold on the like prosumer DSLR market. Right. Right. They had the 1DX camera. Yeah.

which was like insane. Canon, the reason they're good for like Casey Neistat is because their autofocus has traditionally been like some of the best in the entire industry. It has changed a little bit more recently, but up until recently, like they had the best autofocus in the industry by far. It's also color science. I find the advantages of the Canon in terms of color are...

More at the entry level, like if you don't want to touch it, it's just going to give you something pleasing right away, no effort. Once you take it a step deeper, like for professionals, I don't actually think it matters. I think you, a Sony and a Canon and a Lumix and even, you know, even where Fuji is right now, like everything that has a modern log profile matters.

can be matched, which wasn't the case a few years ago. We talked with a creator named Inga, who's a food creator, and she just like makes these great food videos and wants to focus on the food. And she said that someone in the comments described her videos as like a Rembrandt painting.

a lot of like why I do what I do is I want people to have like a better relationship with food I want them to like be introduced to cooking in a way that doesn't feel like burdensome and so I think the lighting I use kind of want to translate to that like not just like like of course I want it to feel warm I want it to feel comfortable but I also want it to feel like it's not something that's overly produced in the sense of like oh we're in a studio and like we're gonna bang through all these recipes and more just like this could be an average day in your life too um so that kind of

translates a little bit to that um but i also think like recently there was a comment that said the color was a little bit like rembrandt style i think my lighting because because winter time it's darker now um so my natural lighting is a little darker overall but i think it kind of played into it a little bit which i kind of also like but you know i i think it just

fits sort of the homey vibes overall. It's this soft, inviting... It's always a little bit warm with sadly raised shadows. And it's kind of this dreamy, warm tone thing. Canon is very, very often used in the wedding industry for that reason. Because you don't have to do as much editing if you're just editing some JPEGs because it has very warm, natural skin tones. For the next bonus up, I'll get married if this video hits 200k views. No.

And then I'll do my bonus episode there shot on Canon. Nice. Does your girlfriend know about this? No.

What girlfriend, David? It is fascinating. We're getting married, David. I will say it is fascinating to see the reasons, the very, very specific reasons that certain cameras and brands get selected for certain applications. That is like, okay, the wedding industry, the warmth, the friendliness, okay, Canon color works for that. I have my own reason actually for red too, which I've told the story before, but skin tones, specifically darker skin tones with red color science is,

Not even close. Yeah, no one else is close And I think there's there's like a bunch of other reasons like people might choose Sony black magic re for specific color reasons. Yeah, whatever projects there and it's always fun hearing us the whole like oh I buy this camera for color thing the more we looked into it like we asked Tyler about this and he was like dude, I

Once you have 10-bit color, it doesn't matter. And like if you're buying a black magic, yeah, I suppose it doesn't. - Also workflow. - Yeah. - No one wants to go in and drop a load on all their color, right? - Yeah. - All right. So we've gone through all of these brands, but there's an issue.

There is one camera brand that absolutely ran away with it. One third of the creators we spoke to either were shooting with this camera, switched to this camera, or were considering switching to this camera brand, including Casey Neistat, Austin Evans, and so many others. So, after the... So, after the...

After the break, what is the camera brand that every creator seems to want to switch to? And is it overhyped? It's Sony. It's not overhyped. It's Sony. We love Sony. There's a lot of reasons. I'm totally game to do the next section. I know I'm all in. That's true. That's so magenta. That's so magenta.

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We got to talk about Sony. Yeah. Wait, could we do it where everyone at the table just says Sony really quickly? Sony. Just like... Sony. Yeah. All right, ready? Sony. All right, guys, Sony. Sony. Sony. Sony. Sony. Sony. Sony. We love Sony. You know how when you say a word too many times, it starts sounding like... Sony? Stop sounding like...

- Yeah. - That's me now. - So, okay, creators. - Knee. - I have to find a different conjunction. - Hey, there we go. - Creators love this camera. Just to list off a few of the creators that we've seen and haven't seen who use it. We talked to Shua Films.

He's the co-founder of this like magazine studio in Chicago and he also has his own channel called the magazine studio called Powder Blue. His channel is called Shua Films. You know, when I started vlogging, I, the main person that got me into it was of course Casey Neistat. I think a lot of us. For me personally,

- I, when the Sony A7IV came out, it was kind of the perfect camera for me at the time, 'cause it was a nice hybrid of photo and video. And just like the autofocus was always trustworthy when it came to Sony's, especially like the recent years. - Brittany, who's this DP who we talked to about Blackmagic,

She switched from Blackmagic for her YouTube videos to the Sony FX3. I'm always recommending some kind of Sony camera, you know, because it's just, it is easy. So I just think it's so versatile. I use it for client work all the time because people, even clients know about the Sony ecosystem. So that is also a go-to camera for them. So it's just one of the most versatile cameras I've ever used. And I've pretty much used every brand possible.

clients know like Sony has a rep and so they actually feel more confident seeing that's funny yeah like people with that that's right sure about red in the past yeah mm-hmm we asked Colt and he said so I feel like the a7 s3 came out and kind of changed the game for everybody this is everything you could have ever needed you know we had great battery life and the color science was now 10-bit color so now you can actually color grade it and stuff and

And yeah, like the dual native ISO that it has allowing it to basically shoot. I mean, it sees better than we can see, you know, that really made it so versatile to where you weren't kind of like subject to, you know, like,

The sun went down, so we can't really shoot anymore. But now you can shoot whenever. There's no more excuses. We asked Austin about this, and he switched from RED to a full Sony stack. He said, like, we shoot entirely on Sony. FX3, FX30, A7S III. There's no complaints I have. Like, when our A7S III's die, where's you going to buy another one? There's nothing else that we need. And maybe there's an FX4 or an A7S IV or whatever, and they bring out 4K 1000 or something cool, whatever.

But like, it just, it has completely changed the way that we shoot videos. And it's crazy to think that it's been five years and this camera still feels like it's absolutely badass. And then we asked Casey about it and he cited a few key features that he just loved. It was smaller. It was lighter. It felt tougher. It had, I think, the magnesium body or a metal body instead of a plastic body like the T2 series. But most importantly...

It had a lens that fit around, that had a hot shoe on the top, so those two were never in competition with one another, and it had the touch the screen to focus, which was a gigantic leap for me. There's a lot of shots where I'm talking to camera,

And without my arm entering frame, I tap behind me and it rack focuses to whatever I'm talking about. And I would often also sort of point to what I'm talking about. And I'm able to frame that in real time with my sunglasses without breaking out of time to act with the lens, rack the focus, and then frame my finger pointing at something in the background, which is a super dynamic shot. And I was able to do it by like tapping the screen once and filming by myself with no assistance. And I think like,

Sony was the first camera that enabled me to work with like that level of precision. - That's like all people who use it. We also talked to like Stuart. He said that he shot one shot in a video on the Sony FX3 and he shared it to somebody and they were like,

What was that specific shot? He saw the FX6 shot without knowing. And he was like, "Wow, that is gorgeous. How did you guys get that?" I was like, "Oh man, the fact that you could point that out without knowing that it changed cameras, that hurts a little bit." So I think that prompted me to think, "Oh, well, this is kind of important."

The rest of the video was Panasonic and someone was like, oh, I like that. Like, people are like gravitating to the image of Sony cameras. Which is a newer thing, to be fair. It's super new. Okay. What happened? You really want to know what happened? Yeah, let's hear it. Sony got good? I mean, I remember thinking about switching to and using more Sony in the early mirrorless camera days for them.

This was A7, A7S, the first ones, which were like super good. This was instead of like your C100 or? No, this was like, so I shoot red and then I have like sort of smaller crash cam and stuff for like R5 basically. And, you know, the built-in mics for Sony's A7 series are good and the color science is way less magenta and way more usable and maybe even matchable to the red stuff. And I was starting to get like, oh, maybe I'll shoot more Sony stuff. And even to this day,

on and off we we roster some sony cameras we don't shoot with them very much but they're very useful but rich yeah you like you're trying to switch us yeah wait wait absolutely right now look when we were at south by southwest and we were you know in the audience i would have died to get some fx6s for the dual native iso um it was very dark in there very challenging situation

And our C70s and R5s could not handle the dark environments. Yeah, this is fair. The less control you have over the environment, the more Sony makes sense because it just makes so much of the process not thoughtless isn't the right way to put it, but just like you just the last thing you think about is the camera itself.

Yeah. So Sony's are kind of computers with lenses attached to them. They were very early moving to the mirrorless camera game. And that gave them a leg up in the many years that followed. Something that's really good about Sony is mirrorless cameras have a shorter flange distance than non-mirrorless cameras. And a flange distance is the distance between the lens mount and the actual sensor itself. This allows you to adapt better.

Basically any lens you want to it that is, you know, covers the full frame sensor. Because of that, a lot of people that shoot Sony will often be able to use like vintage lenses or all these dreamy lenses or all these different things. And that's the E-mount, right? That's why everyone loves E-mount. That's why everyone loves E-mount. You also had 5-axis stabilization. Newer Sony cameras, like you said, had dual native ISO. Native ISO.

ISO is basically electronic gain where you're taking the image on the sensor and you're amplifying that image. There are noise pixels and there are clean pixels. If you're amplifying the ISO, you're also amplifying the noise. So it makes it a lot easier to see. If you have dual native ISO, the native ISO is the cleanest the sensor can be. So once you hit that native ISO, you're back to a very low ISO.

Sony cameras, very famous for being able to basically see in the dark because they have a low native ISO and a high native ISO. For the easiest experience to get a high quality video, it's really tough not recommending the Sony A7S III. The low light and stabilization alone just make it so versatile that it's kind of the perfect camera for YouTube users.

But over the past few years, Sony hasn't just cemented its cameras as great options, but its entire ecosystem. Their ecosystem is completely compatible from the cheapest. Like the color science on the FX3, the same. Because the sensor is exactly the same as the A7S3. The E-mount is completely ubiquitous. So it's one of those things where it's like, if my dream is to be a cinematographer on a set one day, and if I go and I buy an FX30, like an APS-C cinema camera,

I could use that glass one day when I upgrade to a Venice or I could use that footage on a shoot with a Venice as just like a simple beacon. You know what I mean? And so it just becomes this like insane, like it's just kind of a no brainer if you have to buy one camera. Yeah.

But that's also what gave me like massive existential dread about this video because I was like are we really gonna make an hour-long video about what camera you should get in and I was like oh my gosh like we're just gonna talk about Sony like it freaked me out. I don't know there's like a lot of different reasons but they did sort of build out an ecosystem. Their ecosystem is amazing.

Because, again, they have the a7S III and the FX3, and then the FX30 if you don't want to spend as much money for the FX3. And the FX line is similar to what Marques was saying with the RED being basically a brain. You build stuff around it. If you need that, you get that. If you don't need that, you get the a7S III. They have so many options. I will admit I am definitely behind on my appreciation of Sony as an ecosystem and as an image because most of my –

experience with shooting Sony. I have an A7R. I think I've shot most of my video stuff with A7R III and I have an A1. So I have not shot FX series ever. So that's obviously a huge gap. And I think...

Just menu system stuff, little things like about the colors that come out of that camera and me trying to match it with a red is probably unfair. It's not ever going to quite match, but how versatile the entire lineup is and how many different options they have across the board to just have a camera for whatever situation we need to get an image from.

is admirable in a way that makes me want to give it another shot. And when they released the new sensor that went in the A7S III and the other one... A7S III and FX3. FX. That sensor is way better than the old sensor used to be, just in terms of color. Yeah. Because Sony sensors used to be like...

ubiquitous with purple, magenta color. I could watch a YouTube video, a vlog, and a clip on YouTube, and I'd be like, ugh, so annoying. Without anyone saying anything, ugh. But you could say the same thing about Panasonic. You could say the same thing about a lot of different cameras. I kind of felt that about Blackmagic, at least back in the day.

I could see Canon and basically identify it right off the bat. And then, yeah, there was a little bit of red sprinkled in there and I'd be like, oh, my people. So, yeah, I still feel like I have that pretty dialed, but there's a lot of Sony development that's happened since then. When we talked to Becca, something that she brought up that was really interesting is how

Sony invests in creators. That is also a massive player here. She was like, I went to this Sony event and in her words, it was popping. People were there, you know what I mean? Yeah, there's this little ecosystem and Casey switched to Sony. There's all this clout

ecosystem in addition to like the fact that these are good cameras like Sony host these like camps and yeah, he's like these like Projects that people can go multiple times a year multiple times a year yeah, and they invite creators from like various different levels of subscribers they do this for the same reason that Google makes Chromebooks

Chrome Chromebooks are not made to be sold to regular people They're made to be put in elementary schools and get kids used to Google services So when they grow up they keep using the Google ecosystem And so if you're a if you're a camera user especially because the ecosystem of a camera is very

Glass which is extremely expensive Accessories of which Sony makes ones that only work on the Shoney hot shoes Yeah, if you're investing in this ecosystem, you're way less likely to just sell everything and move out of it So doing this outreach is like very smart not just because you will make a sale now Because you're most likely to make many sales in the future Marques in our interview asked me do you have a dream camera to shoot on and I was like, I

I don't know. I have a good camera. Well, in FX6, I kind of shrugged because I was one of those kids who just like, I got an A6300. I was on E-mount. I understood the menu system. I was just like, yeah, I guess I just keep shooting Sony. But I've come to really like shooting on Canon, which is what we do on the studio channel. But yeah, no, I can attest to it. It worked. They got me hooked as a youth. But I think I walked away with a little bit of dread here for a couple of reasons. For the video itself,

I was like, I don't like this as an ending. I don't want to make a video where I'm just like, well, everyone else shoots Sony, so you should too. Like it just didn't, like usually we'd scrap this video, but to be honest with you, like I introduced myself to a lot of these creators who I really liked through this video. And I was really scared that like, I was going to embarrass myself in front of these people that I'd spent a long time trying to build a career where I could feel confident talking with them. And I think it was also just like,

I don't know if I like the idea of the internet just increasingly looking just like Sony cameras. Like there's, is something existentially scary and maybe even monotonous about the idea of like, well, you just buy a Sony camera if you want to be like the modern filmmaker YouTube stack. It was, it was,

It was kind of depressing to me. Yeah. I think we all root for competition in general. And so since we know that mirrorless cameras are this wave and Sony is at the crest of this wave, it kind of feels like Sony is the only thing anyone can be using. But I think everyone is on their way, catching up, adding features, making new cameras. And there will be another wave in the future. And it'll be like, oh, my God, everyone uses Nikon now or Nikon now. It'll be I think there'll be more waves in the future.

But at the same time, it's way less regional than smartphones. I think if Sony is dominating in cameras where everyone has free choice, that must just mean they're making really good cameras. Oh, absolutely. And I got no problem with shouting out quality of product. That's fair. Like they're actually making the best stuff. Okay, fine. They're making the best stuff. So we had one more conversation with the creator that I think...

Kind of changed my perspective on the whole, like, what is the best camera? Because, like, the whole take of, oh, the best gear is the one that you have. The best camera is the one you have. I don't think that that's true. But I also don't think that you should just buy a Sony camera. So we talked with the creator who didn't buy a camera at all. He's a part of a team that grew their channel to over a million subscribers. Using just smartphones. Using just smartphones.

iPhone 13s. Wow. No, iPhone 14s. I apologize. That's awesome. So after the break, this conversation with this creator and what it says about making the right camera choice.

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So after hours of interviews, Rich and I are staring at the timeline for this video and we're getting nervous because figuring out where the story is, it's getting harder and harder. Yeah, at this point we had looked at every popular camera brand and their ecosystem and it felt like the answer was just buy a Sony or that every camera brand is great and to not worry about your gear. Neither of those answers feel like

they're satisfying or that they'll genuinely help you find the right camera for your videos. So out of a bit of desperation in our interview with Casey, I just straight up look at him and I go, Casey, gear still matters, right?

I reject the supposition that it's important to understand gear and have gear. I reject it wholly. Yeah, I mean, I'm a... I've become much more of a sort of like anti-gear purist. Like I think when someone says, "I love that video you made." It's a beautiful compliment. It makes you feel warm on the inside. When they say, "What did you shoot it on?" It is the greatest insult you could ever say to someone. It's insulting.

And I take it personally. So, you know, especially when talking to newer creators, newer filmmakers, my line is always the gear doesn't matter. And by de-emphasizing the gear, what it does is it puts the focus back on what you uniquely bring to storytelling.

And I think right now, like we're at the most sort of virtuous place in that technology cycle, which is that almost every camera out there, almost every phone out there gives you a look, gives you an aesthetic that is way above the line of good enough to do something great with. Casey talks about how he saw our S25 Ultra video.

And, you know, it's kind of ironic that like this is a video about how the tech and the changes in the tech are kind of minimal and small. And the way that I guess do you want to describe how you differentiated that video? I started by doing this really cinematic intro where I turned around and.

was an allegory where I went, I went from the outside to the inside by going and turning around and cutting through the background and moving to the inside of the set. It was a fun cinematic piece that sort of started the story arc of the video. And in Casey's words, he goes, that one storytelling device was far more interesting to me than the last 20 gear upgrades that we had at a studio. And, um,

Marquez promptly asked him to leave. That is a joke. They get along very well. They're both very famous. That kind of speaks to why I think on like a philosophical level, Sony catches on because Sony is all about enabling people to think about the context of the story and what's on screen and stop thinking about the camera. So you can constantly ask yourself, like, what do I want to depict or what's the story I want or what's the context I want to be in? And like, I can trust that this camera will capture that.

To an even more sort of extreme extent, we talked with Adam, who's a co-host on this YouTube channel called Jetlag. He's a co-host on this YouTube channel called Jetlag. Have you guys heard of Jetlag? Have you seen this show? I've heard of it. Guys, this channel is so cool. So it's a travel game show like The Amazing Race.

But the whole point of the show is like the chaos factors 10 times more than any other reality TV show we've ever seen before. Like in The Amazing Race, you know, somebody might end up in the wrong part of town, but you're never going to end up in the wrong country. And we wanted to make a show where like maybe you end up in the wrong country.

The only way that they could make that show is by just shooting iPhone, stock iPhone app, no color grading, nothing. Because they're chewing through tons of footage, so they need like a simple post workflow and manageable files. This got me thinking about shooting on iPhone in general. We asked Tyler about it. I think if you're just getting started out and you maybe you're not even sure if you're going to stick to filmmaking. Yeah.

If you pick up at least an iPhone 15 Pro, that's when Apple Log was introduced, you can take that as far as you want. You can make it look as good as those other cameras and learn all the most important lessons of filmmaking with just an iPhone. Don't add any more than you need. The most essential things are a wireless mic, which both Rode and GGI make great tiny ones right now. And then an iPhone clamp. I designed one called the Stallman Clamp that...

But what's important to me, like whatever clamp you choose, the most important part is that it is rock solid. So like when you press record, it doesn't vibrate your phone.

If you're doing something like transitions, you don't want the phone to move in between. So looking for some kind of tripod clamp that is never going to change the shot when you're operating the camera. Dude, I get so many questions about people asking me, like, oh, should I buy this $3,000 guitar? And it's like, no. It's not going to make you better. Yeah.

Whatever you have just practice on it the storytelling is always going to be more important than the video quality and that's actually where a lot of People that are just starting to get into making videos sort of like lose track Yes, that was a person because it's really easy to just look at YouTube and get obsessed with the gear Oh, yeah, I think there are a lot of people who watch

YouTube video from a youtuber who's been doing it a long time and sees fancy editing or cinematography or camera work or something and goes I want to make YouTube videos what gear do I have to buy to be able to do that and it's not about yeah yeah like the video process and I want to make videos thing is all the pre-work the writing the storyline yeah that stuff and getting people to care about that thing

And then if you have more time or if you're making like an amazing video, then you can focus on the other stuff, building it up instead. But yeah, that I think people get distracted by the gear and trying to make a good video gear. So, but I, so I think Adam had this really cool analogy. Do you guys know the show like Candid Camera? Like the, yeah. You guys know the show like Candid Camera? Yeah, like OG. Really old. So,

The candid camera was originally candid microphone. It was an audio show. And it existed because mics got small enough where people couldn't see the microphone. And that technological innovation enabled that new format and that new creative format. Candid camera, same thing. Camera got small enough where people would be candid on camera. And so it actually changed the contents of the story. And so...

Adam was like, that's kind of how he thinks about jet lag.

with an iPhone that I couldn't have made before when iPhones weren't this good? And I think that if you can come up with a compelling answer to that question, you'll have a format, you'll have something that is new and interesting and that actually takes advantage of this as opposed to just

making the same thing but lazier because you don't have to put in the work of setting up a better camera. You shoot on red because your whole thing is MKBHD and like that's a part of your ethos and it amplifies a part of who you are. Every day we put like clothes on to like feel ourselves, right? And sometimes when we wear a certain jacket it makes us feel like more powerful or better.

And I think you can translate that to cameras. Like sometimes when we hold a camera, it makes us feel like a professional. It gives us confidence. Does the camera bring joy? Like does it, does it, is it going to enrich your life? Is it going to make you inspired to do the best work of your entire life? Famously, Mr. Beast does not shoot 4K, right? Is this still the case? He shoots all Sony cameras.

I don't know if it's not 4K, but he does kind of just put any camera in your hands. And as long as he has coverage, that's the only thing I care about. It used to at least be the case that he didn't shoot 4K because he wanted to give you that sort of home video kind of vibe. This actually happened.

You want the camera to be above a floor where it's not hindering your story or your video production. And in Jimmy's case, it's funny, he also wants it to be below a certain ceiling so it's not distracting. Exactly. So I think my big takeaway is that gear is a multiplier. All it does is it makes what's great about you greater. But if you don't know what that is, you can't multiply anything by zero. Yeah. Damn. That's bars. Bars. Bars.

- Yes. - So if you like this behind the scenes video, I'm sure you'll love all the behind the scenes videos and ensemble videos that we do on the studio channel all the time. - And with that, I would like to say, I think the real best camera you can get is the friends we made along the way. - So gentlemen, do you feel like you learned something?

I do. I love the multiplier. I think that's a great bow tie on it. Gear is exciting and interesting to us because we're kind of nerds. And that's where we live on waveform. We're in the weeds. We love the gear and what it unlocks.

But it only unlocks the multiple of the thing that you're trying to make. You got to have the idea. You got to have the seed. If you're just watering dirt, it doesn't matter how great that watering can is. You need a great seed. Rich, you come up with an analogy. Oh, no. It's like... 15% of my diet is Cholula. There we go. The conclusion is the best camera is the camera in your pocket. No, it's not. The best camera is a Hasselblad.

That should be our outro. No, I would say the best camera is the camera that does the thing that you want to do to tell your story. Yeah. It's a V-Raptor XL. It's clearly a V-Raptor XL. That is the best camera.