"best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

Hi there...I need an informed opinion. I use a C100 mk2 as my main wedding/Corporate camera with a couple of Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 and the 50-100mmf1.8- I like the combo a lot. I also have many Canon STM lenses. I have been using a Canon 70D for broll / gimbal and even as second angle camera for some interviews, and with some tweaking the results have been passable.
I'm now considering getting a new B camera to "match" the C100 mk2 and I would like it to be a small one.
I considered the Canon XC-15 but too much for what it is...even a Sony A6500...and now considering a Sony A7iii...is this the "best" Alpha camera for video? I guess I will need an expensive adapter to use my Canon lenses? or I need full frame lenses? The new Canon EOS R mirrorless looks promising..

some help pretty pls...
thanks
E

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

As you say the EOS R is promising. I think for someone in your shoes, I'd go for that. It's disadvantages of a 4K crop and lack of IBIS is less relevant if used with your current lens and as a gimbal camera, and focusing is purported to be improved even over that seen in the C200. Especially useful for gimbal work. Why task yourself with another system like Sony if you're shooting HD. I saw a video today where the sigma 18-35 was being used on the EOS R that had been loaned out for testing, so clearly compatible with this camera. Plus you have the option to get fullframe lenses and shoot that in HD if needed.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

thanks Steve...I would prefer to stay with the Canon ecosystem for now of course, but it seems that Sony has lots to offer- I just hate the idea of these small cameras having a 30 minute recording limit! Some interviews/live shows need longer duration...if the GH5 wasn't "so bad" in low light I would consider it for sure. I was hoping that Canon would update its Canon 80D but I don't think that will happen. The EOS R may be the update. The 1.7 crop is a bit more than my 70D's 1.6- not sure if this would affect me a lot or not. I will research a bit more-my current gimbal is the Zhiyun Crane v2 and the 70D with a 11-18mm STM lens or a 18-55mm STM lens works fine as long as there is enough light. I haven't tried mounting the Sigma 18-35mm on it.
thanks
E

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

GH5 isn't so bad in lowlight. Not as good as fullframe granted, but better than some would have you believe. Besides the GH5s is very good in lowlight. I use it in tandem with my GH5. Great pairing. Many feel its lowlight competes with fullframe at comparable depth of field though not aperture. I think auto focus is more Panasonic's Achilles Heal over lowlight.

Would the 30 min limit affect your work? You have it already with the 70D and aside from Panasonic, few manufacturers offer unlimited recording for smaller cameras. The crop of 1.7 affects only 4K recording. Would you be recording 4K given your A camera is the C100? I think you'd do fine by the EOS R.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

thanks again Steve...you are right...I think the EOS R might be a good B camera to go along my C100 mk2 which is really good in low light even with STM lenses, but the 30 min recording limit is a problem when recording some live events -like dance shows etc..it would be awesome if it be like the GH5 with unlimited recording time.
So all the Sony Alphas cameras are also limited to 30min? hmm. I have "survived" with the 70D in most cases- or I use my XF300 which is good but lacks the pretty pictures appeal-nothing compares to the picture look that a large sensor camera provides. I also think that at least one of my future cameras should have 4k video capabilities. It may come in handy sometime soon- for now I don't do any 4k recordings.

I'm going to have to research more carefully. I'm done buying cameras & equipment out of impulse or because a camera etc was "in fashion"! Have to watch my money carefully!

so you use the GH5 primarily? the crop factor is even higher with it. Autofocus on the 70D is good most of the times. Even better with the 80D I hear but I won't buy that-it has to be a real upgrade at a reasonable cost.
thanks!
E

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

So basically, you're looking for a smallform camera with excellent 4K, no crop, great lowlight, excellent auto focus, as good as Canon, can take your current lenses and has no time limit on recording.

Welcome to the Holy Grail of the mirrorless video World... :)

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

"I just hate the idea of these small cameras having a 30 minute recording limit! "

Erick, You probably know already, but just in case: you can circumvent the 30 minute limit quite easily by using Magic Lantern. I know some users worry about ML but I have used it frequently on two 5D Mk II's without any issues. The only function I ever use with ML is to run beyond 30 mins up to the card capacity or battery capacity. I use these even now occasionally and its very acceptable at 4000ISO 50fps f5.6 as B-cams. I understand ML is also usable on the 70D.

You can of course also use wifi to restart recording at appropriate times using the Canon app (or similar) on a smartphone. I have three old Galaxy S3's that can do that with my two 5D-IV's and one 6D-II. I can if needs be also use my 5DS-R with a wifi card in one of its two slots to enable remote functionality with the app.

I can't offer an opinion on colour matching your C100 and 70D as I have not used either.

As an aside, the Crane 2 offers a much higher max load than the Crane V2 and the price has dropped a lot. It offers a lot of extra functionality with Canon (not Sony or Panasonic and not much with Nikon so I understand at present) but a key element for me is that the max load capacity is now so high that I don't have to balance very accurately; I can switch lenses, cam bodies, microphones etc without having to rebalance. Imprecise balancing uses more battery power and warms up the gimbal as you might expect but it works fine for me.

As regards 4k its inevitable in due due that it must be offered but - in my opinion - its largely marketing pressure rather than real life as so many people are going to struggle to see a real difference compared to upscaled 1080p

The main 4k TV I use is a 55" LG OLED and an LD 4k disc player. I bought a bunch of matching 4k and 1080p blurays e.g. Blue Planet II, Dunkirk, Fantastic Beasts, Fury, Goodfellas, Grease, Hunger Games x4, La La Land, Planet Earth II, n.b. a mix of newly shot and vintage shot stuff. I would not know the difference without studying hard.

An interesting lecture here as well:

The upshot being that you will need to offer 4k in due course partly because people will expect it, but maybe not rush into it at this stage. Canon's dual pixel auto-focus on the other hand is a real game changer.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

If you must must MUST stick with the Canon world (not something I'd recommend!) then consider say the Canon EOS M5 / M6 / M50.

However you'd have your dollar go much much further if you buy instead a Panasonic GH5 / G80 / GH5S or BMPCC4K instead.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

An amusing video. YouTube's full of opinion stuff like this that I dare say, you can probably find one arguing the World is flat with some credibility. It's an old video as 4K content is now readily available and overlooks that old movies shot on 35mm are compatible with 4K. Ironically movies shot on digital in the last 20 years have to be upscaled for 4K as even those that had higher resolution, often their visual effects, if they had any, were rendered in HD. The arguments he presents are flawed. I occasionally set up a 4K TV at Wedding Receptions when booked and show a basic video in 4K and it gets a great reaction. Comments like, its like looking through a wIndow, so much clearer than my own TV. Amazing detail etc.

Of course the arguments against 4K are the same we had for upgrading from SD to HD. And why many still get DVDs and don't notice the difference on their HD TV. So maybe we should compare SD to 4K. Watching DVDs on my 4K TV is an awful experience. Upscaled HD can look almost as good as true 4K. But upscale SD to 4K and it looks obvious. So I see 4K as the more natural upgrade from SD, which HD never was judging by the fact I'm still getting DVD requests. As the video said, people take time to upgrade their TV but they do eventually and the HDR aspect of 4K offering is more important than resolution. Once we get more broadcast content in 4K and more importantly HDR, I can see it becoming more mainstream.

All that said, unless your main camera is 4K, I'm not sure there is too much advantage in having a B camera offering 4K. If you're prepared to wait, there is a big announcement from Panasonic that is heavily rumoured to be a fullframe camera. The big issue is, will they improve the AF significantly to make it consistent with Canons DPAF. If they do, then it's going to be a much better video camera than what Canon have to offer. But it's still a big if.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

thanks guys! I wait a bit before purchasing a new camera. What I have works fine for my market, but I'm sure that I will need a camera with 4ketc in the future! thanks for the opinions.All are welcome!
E

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

I knew I was asking for too much!! thanks for the reply...darn!
:-)
E

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

If you ar not interested in 4K then the new EOS R could be the best choice. Alternatively just get another C100. A C100 Mk1 especially with the DPAF upgrade is still a great camera & they are cheap used.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

hi there...I tried Magic Lantern for the 70D a while ago and I confess I didn't explore its capabilities enough...I guess I would forget that ML was on the SD card and I would format the card without thinking! but I may try it again.So...ML can make the 70D record beyond the 30 min mark without me having to re-start the camera? well..this could be handy sometimes. I may try it again and this time remember not to format the SD card!
thanks

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

thanks but a C100 mk1 would be too heavy for a gimbal. But it would match mine Mk2 very well :-)
E

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

I love the C100 and have flown it on gimbals for a few years now. And having tried smaller cameras, to be honest the C100 is actually really lightweight with the Canon 10-18mm on a gimbal. You can fly it on a DJI Ronin-S no problem. Some of the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras actually end up being heavier by the time you add an adapter or heavier lenses.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

ML doesn't circumvent the 29'59" recording limit. The recording limit still exists but Movie Restart will restart recording when you hit the limit but there will be a loss of a second or two in the recording. This can be worked round of course but does make synchronisation with other cameras problematic.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

SD to FHD was a much bigger leap forward, while 4K (and soon ish 8K!) are hitting harder diminishing returns.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

Be fair, HD was the first major upgrade to picture resolution for TV for decades. HD had considerably less time as top resolution before 4K came along. I agree about 8K, but in time with HDR linked to it as well, 4K has the potential to be more accepted even than HD. Once we get 4K broadcast, those who sat on the fence about HD with their SD channels and DVDs may see more of a difference in 4K than they currently do in HD. Not in the next 4 to 5 years, but eventually broadcast technology will catch up with video specs.

Re: "best" small camera for Gimbal and B roll?
 

You're being your usual pedantic self. Its easy peasy to sync with other cams and to work around momentary restarts.

The only instances when I'd had to resort to unlimited clips have been legal ones in which its not usable evidence if any files are split.

I routinely sync with Pluraleyes. I used Pluraleyes 2 until recently as I didn't much care for version 3 but I had to upgrade PE to use Vegas Pro version 16. I've started using PE 4 and its fine. For last Saturdays wedding I ran a 5DII with Magic Lantern as it was inaccessible for the ceremony and the reception, both of which were scheduled to run for well over 30 minutes. I also ran a 5D-IV and a 6D-II, both with 30 min limits but I was able to restart at the most opportune times. In addition I ran a Gopro 6 as a safety during the ceremony - it was too dark for GP's indoors afterwards. The GP6 of course runs indefinitely; its battery only lasts about an hour but its 128gb card was good for almost 6 hours. A GP6 can run on various gimbal batteries if needs must among other options. I also had 3 small audio recorders for the ceremony and reception and of course these have no upper limits.

I'd rather there wasn't a 30 min upper limit but in practice its seldom an issue and is a doddle to cut between two or more cams if one has a restart at a crucial moment.

Incidentally, the GP6 is surprisingly good compared to earlier versions for weddings. I only ever expected it to for emergencies or for very specific moments such as confetti throws outside in good light; but its new linear facility which kills the fisheye effect and in decent indoor ambient light it can be very usable. At this wedding a guest blocked my main cams view at the last moment as the recessional was in full flow. I got her out the way but no opportunity to reset the bumped main cam. Its "emergency" GP6 did this:

https://www.ashtonlamont.co.uk/image...ab-12_hasx.jpg

Certainly better than nothing!