Pod Insights Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast Your Favorite Creators' Favorite Cameras! About this episode Ever wondered what camera something was shot on? Then you might just be the type of person that will find this obsessive kind of deep dive interesting! Studio producers Eric and Rich talked with creators like Casey Neistat, Becca Farsace, Inga Lam, Tyler Stalman and many more about which cameras are taking up space in their gear bags. Why did Casey switch to Sony when he was vlogging? Why not just use iPhones? We have the answers in this weeks bonus episode!
Special thanks to all the creators we spoke to!
Special thanks to all the creators we spoke to go watch their stuff!
Austin Evans: https://www.youtube.com/@austinevans
Inga Lam: https://www.youtube.com/@IngaLam
Brittney Janae: https://www.youtube.com/@BrittneyJanae
Joshua De La Victoria : https://www.youtube.com/@JoshuaDeLaVictoria
Shua Films: https://www.youtube.com/@shua_films
Stewart Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/@stewarthicks
Casey Neistat: https://www.youtube.com/@casey
Jetlag the game: https://www.youtube.com/@jetlagthegame
Brandon Y Lee: https://www.youtube.com/@brandonylee
Tyler Stalman: https://www.youtube.com/@stalman
Colt Kirwan: https://www.youtube.com/@ColtKirwan
Becca Farsace: https://www.youtube.com/@BeccaFarsace
Michael Tobin: https://www.youtube.com/@initialfocus
Links:
Media Division: https://www.youtube.com/@MediaDivision
Andy To: https://www.youtube.com/@andyto
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
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Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd
Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli
David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel
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Transcript 15,246 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:45 David Imel? Support for the show comes from JIRA by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from, but when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that JIRA solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together from JIRA, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more, so nothing falls through the cracks. With JIRA, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who,
1:26 David Imel? and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com. That's J-I-R-A dot com.
1:32 Speaker 02 There was a camera called the Canon. I cannot believe I can't remember the name of this camera.
1:39 Speaker 03 What, the?
1:40 Speaker 02 You got to look this up.
1:41 Speaker 03 Small point shoot?
1:42 Speaker 02 No, okay, I'm gonna describe it to you. I have two. I have two of them in my office. The most beautiful camera.
1:52 David Imel? 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.
2:24 Speaker 04 Oh, that was pretty great.
2:25 Speaker 05 Dude, yes. So, uh, 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.
2:44 Speaker 04 Hello, I'm Rich and no one refers to me as Eric.
2:47 Speaker 05 That is not true. That happened 10 minutes ago. Adam called you Eric.
2:53 Speaker 04 That's true, yeah.
2:55 David Imel? Thank.
2:56 Speaker 05 Rich, what do we do for a living?
3:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, me and Eric, uh, we're the studio producers and we make our behind the scenes videos here at, um, MKBHD.
3:07 Speaker 05 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.
3:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, so we decided to talk to some of our favorite creators, ranging from 20,000 subscribers all the way up to 20 million.
3:31 Speaker 05 And, well, you know, almost 20 million. Anywho, now subscribe to the MKBHD channel. Marquez needs more subs. And our goal is to not just to 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.
3:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:53 David Imel? Yeah. 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.
4:10 Speaker 05 I don't know if I agree with that.
4:12 David Imel? But I do think there are standout brands that are dominating.
4:16 Speaker 05 Okay, well, all right, there's evidence, there's evidence for and against that.
4:19 David Imel? Okay.
4:20 Speaker 05 Okay, so the first camera brand that we wanted to start with is a camera brand we're, we're very familiar with here and a lot of people aren't very familiar with. Um, Mr. Red Marques Brownlee.
4:29 David Imel? Red.
4:30 Speaker 05 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 of Red cameras, but isn't really using them anymore. Why, why do you shoot your videos on Red? Let's start there. We talked to other creators.
4:49 David Imel? Wait, you mean Nikon? They got bought by Nikon, but I do shoot Red. I do shoot Red.
4:56 David Imel? That's a deep cut.
4:56 David Imel? 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. And, yeah, I know. But the two reasons that I'd switched to my first ever Red camera, which was an Epic W, I believe, at the time.
5:12 David Imel? Epic.
5:15 David Imel? Oh, yeah. It was called the Red Epic W.
5:16 David Imel? Oh, man.
5:17 David Imel? Or maybe it was a Scarlett W before the Epic W. But one, resolution. Two, color science.
5:23 David Imel? Yeah.
5:24 David Imel? So one resolution was I was shooting 1080i, 1080c 100, and I was looking for my first 4K camera. And I skipped right to the, 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, 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.
5:54 David Imel? 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, 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 taken in. It's not completely real RAW RAW, you know, video. That sounds like a
6:18 David Imel? Compressed RAW.
6:19 David Imel? Google Gaga.
6:20 David Imel? Lady Gaga.
6:22 David Imel? Lady Gaga lyric. But yeah, it's compressed RAW.
6:26 David Imel? Yeah.
6:26 David Imel? 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, so.
6:33 Speaker 05 I feel like the, 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.
6:49 Speaker 05 But we called with Austin Evans, who actually accidentally bought two Red cameras.
6:55 David Imel? Accidentally?
6:56 Speaker 05 Yeah.
6:56 Speaker 04 You wanna? Sure. I believe Austin had Scarlett W on preorder, and then Epic W came out, so he bought that, and then
7:03 David Imel? Can't believe they called it that.
7:04 Speaker 04 You didn't like the W?
7:05 David Imel? Epic W.
7:06 Speaker 04 The W's not for weapon, right?
7:08 David Imel? Really hard to fly with these cameras.
7:11 David Imel? 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.
7:18 David Imel? Very different.
7:18 Speaker 07 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 patience, 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? So luckily we had like an A60 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 its moments, but even when we shot Red, we shot it in ProRes. Like we didn't, we never, ever, ever used the AK because who needs AK, right?
8:02 Speaker 07 Especially back, you know, six, seven years ago. So, uh, we still technically have our Red and it is a lovely paperweight.
8:11 David Imel? I mean, we gotta, we gotta make something clear. Like Red cameras are studio cameras. They are shot, they're used for movies.
8:18 Speaker 07 Yeah.
8:18 David Imel? Right? In very controlled environments.
8:20 Speaker 07 Yeah.
8:21 David Imel? Right? It was a, it was a weird thing when Marquez and Austin and Jonathan Morrison and Lou went and decided to, decided to buy Red cameras for YouTube videos. Like that was extremely novel.
8:32 Speaker 07 Yes.
8:33 David Imel? It's still, it's still novel because the newest models are still extremely expensive. You can get a Scarlett W for like $3,000 now, but back then that was like, nobody was doing that.
8:43 Speaker 05 But even if you bought the Scarlett W for $3,000, 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.
8:58 David Imel? Yeah.
8:58 Speaker 07 Yeah.
8:59 Speaker 05 It's probably not a good idea.
9:00 David Imel? It's, it's a locked off kind of situation.
9:02 Speaker 05 Probably not a good idea.
9:03 David Imel? I'd say a Red camera is the equivalent of it's a sensor in a little box and that box is a computer.
9:09 David Imel? Yeah.
9:09 David Imel? 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.
9:20 Speaker 07 Yeah.
9:20 David Imel? So if you've ever seen like a Hollywood movie set, it's built out to the size of, of.
9:27 David Imel? A dog.
9:28 Speaker 05 Oh, that's pretty accurate.
9:29 David Imel? I'm trying to think of like a size reference.
9:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
9:31 David Imel? It's got multiple monitors and a ton of cables coming out of it. And it's got, obviously, the memory isn't plugged into the side, but it's got all accessories for shooting external memory and all this other stuff.
9:38 Speaker 05 It's the brain.
9:39 David Imel? It's not ergonomic at all. You might have two or three handles on it for maybe that one time. They're going to 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 came from, which is built for one person to shoot everything.
9:53 Speaker 05 Yep.
9:53 David Imel? 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.
10:04 Speaker 05 Right.
10:05 David Imel? Uh, I've 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.
10:27 Speaker 05 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.
10:45 David Imel? Yeah.
10:46 Speaker 05 I think the more they all congregated around like two brands.
10:49 David Imel? Okay.
10:50 Speaker 05 Um, 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 Farsace, who's like, como se dice, the goat.
11:13 Speaker 05 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 punchier.
11:35 Speaker 07 And yeah Nikon just naturally right out of camera. I can have something that I'm really pleased with.
11:40 David Imel? 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 DSLR has a mirror that you see what the mirror sees, 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.
12:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, we were all, all the kids in like the YouTube cook groups I was in back in the day. Yeah, that's, that's what we called them instead of group chats.
12:21 David Imel? Yeah.
12:22 Speaker 05 We would, pretty much everyone switched to the Sony ecosystem around this time and like never looked back. Cause Sony was really the first manufacturer to bring us cheap mirrorless. I like, I guess Panasonic kind of beat them, but.
12:35 David Imel? Micro four thirds.
12:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's different.
12:37 David Imel? We'll, we'll get into it.
12:38 Speaker 04 Do you have context David on why Nikon was so slow to switch?
12:43 David Imel? 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, like they were two of the, 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 were shooting like bird photography or like wildlife photography.
13:25 David Imel? Nikon is famous for bird photography. You will very rarely meet any other brand that.
13:30 Speaker 05 On the box, they're the one with the cheetah on the box, right?
13:32 David Imel? Yeah. Uh, and then they also are very popular for concert photography. So, cause their low light used to be, well, it still is very good, but for that reason as well.
13:42 Speaker 05 So I was talking to Becca about like where Nikon goes in the future. Like, are we going to see a Nikon comeback? Especially with like the red kind of. Acquisition. Yeah, I guess acquisition.
13:55 Speaker 07 I have no knowledge of what's gonna happen, but I think Red's are very expensive systems. Not only is the camera expensive, but the amount of footage that you're gonna shoot is gonna 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 they price their cameras very competitively. Coming together with Red means that we're gonna 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.
14:29 Speaker 05 Do you guys think that the future of this acquisition is like more and more people could buy Red camera? Like, maybe, because it sounds like Nikon is relatively accessible now, but no one's just thinking about it. Maybe people are gonna start thinking about Red cameras.
14:42 David Imel? 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 weirdly, 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.
15:07 Speaker 04 I believe that's the correct pronunciation, right?
15:09 Speaker 05 Really?
15:10 David Imel? Yeah.
15:11 David Imel? No.
15:13 David Imel? 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 Nikon cameras if they get there.
15:25 David Imel? So just about two weeks ago, so Red makes a camera called the Komodo. They, 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.
15:47 Speaker 05 Sure.
15:47 David Imel? 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?
16:04 David Imel? V Raptor.
16:04 David Imel? 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.
16:16 Speaker 05 Yeah.
16:16 David Imel? 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.
16:36 Speaker 05 Compressed RAW.
16:37 David Imel? Compressed RAW video. Eventually Nikon just bought Red and they dropped the lawsuit. Uh, but
16:43 Speaker 05 Convenient.
16:43 David Imel? Convenient.
16:45 Speaker 05 I wonder if these two unrelated factors are connected.
16:48 David Imel? But the N-Raw that the Nikon Z6 series and Z9 and whatever can shoot, uh, Red, they just announced a bunch of LUTs with Red that try to give it the Red sensor look on these Nikon cameras.
17:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
17:03 David Imel? So it's clearly not going to be exactly the same. It is a LUT, it's a lookup table. It's not the same as the sensor technology. But they are working together in ways to bring the Red cache to Nikon and to bring the Nikon accessibility to Red.
17:17 Speaker 05 Yeah. Okay. So speaking of accessibility, we dove into black magic with two creators who are cinematographers by day. Michael Tobin and Brittany Genet, um, and also have their own YouTube channels about cinematography. Rich, could you give us like context on black magic? How do people think about black magic?
17:37 Speaker 04 I feel like people think about black magic as the accessible Alexa in the sense that the color science is beautiful, easy to work with.
17:45 David Imel? Great menu system.
17:46 Speaker 04 Yeah. The only thing they're lacking? Autofocus, which is a big thing.
17:50 David Imel? It is. Well, but like it's, it's deeper than, okay. So when we talked to Michael Tobin, he gave this great analogy. He said,
17:57 Speaker 03 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 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.
18:13 Speaker 05 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.
18:23 David Imel? Yeah. Unless you count Red CineX. Most people don't.
18:28 Speaker 05 Are like, no one.
18:29 David Imel? No one does that.
18:30 Speaker 05 No one.
18:30 David Imel? Yeah, that's crazy.
18:31 Speaker 05 But so his whole thing is like, you can build like a full workflow with Blackmagic. When we talked to Brittany, she was just like.
18:39 David Imel? Wow, the image quality is so beautiful. It's such a beautiful sensor that comes out the Blackmagic 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, 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.
19:18 David Imel? I don't have to put diffusion on the 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.
19:46 Speaker 05 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?
20:01 David Imel? 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.
20:23 Speaker 04 Really?
20:23 David Imel? 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 the Ursa 8K and all sorts of other stuff, but I haven't seen test footage that tempted me.
20:37 David Imel? So, well ironically, so Blackmagic 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 most of the time when you're shooting raw, you're actually shooting raw because you want to stylize your image.
21:04 David Imel? Or correct for it. We just shot, uh, we just shot the, uh, the Pixel 9A hands-on in New York City. And Rich and I were, we, 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, we can nail every single shot with perfect.
21:28 David Imel? Which by the way, when I worked at Android Authority was the most annoying freaking thing. There'd be like 50 of us reporters in one room and all of our videos look horrible because, because the lighting was terrible, super yellow. And then we'd all watch Marquez's video and it'd be perfect.
21:40 David Imel? Yeah.
21:42 Speaker 04 That's the advantage of Red, right?
21:44 David Imel? That's a Red.
21:46 Speaker 05 It's 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 Blackmagic had like, nothing to do with color or, or, like the big, the big reason is like,
21:59 Speaker 03 Up until the Pixis, the body style on the Pocket series is a reason a lot of people hated it. Cause it was like this DSLR vibe, but also cinema camera components that just didn't make a lot of sense. Battery life is rough. Um, 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 autofocus to it.
22:22 Speaker 07 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. It's just like, alright, 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.
22:44 Speaker 04 There's no autofocus.
22:45 David Imel? Yep.
22:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, on the more affordable ones.
22:48 Speaker 04 Especially if you're a single person shooting, like you just want to have autofocus to know that you're in focus.
22:54 David Imel? It's, 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.
23:02 Speaker 05 I think if you're a DP, or you're saying like-
23:06 David Imel? The solo shooter.
23:07 Speaker 05 If you're like a young DP.
23:09 David Imel? Right, yeah.
23:10 Speaker 05 I think a Pocket 6K could be in your universe.
23:14 Speaker 04 Especially if you have a crew and you're in controlled environments for lighting.
23:18 Speaker 05 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.
23:28 David Imel? Yeah.
23:28 Speaker 05 There's 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.
23:38 David Imel? 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. 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 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're 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.
24:21 Speaker 05 So one last, I guess, kind of quote on blackmagic. We talked to Brendan Lee, who was the like 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.
24:43 Speaker 05 Anyways, so short circuit was, short circuit on LTT was all black magic for a little while. And Brandon said they ran into some pretty frustrating technical issues, just in terms of like how they managed. I think it was like mostly like codec management. And there were a lot of things that because black magic is proprietary, you have to build out these workflows that in theory could be better. But you almost need to be like a black magic domain expert in order to get these cameras to be like excellent, excellent cameras. I think it takes time for mastery over these. You could say that about a lot of cameras, but black magic especially because of its relationship with software.
25:22 David Imel? Yeah.
25:23 Speaker 05 And the hardware.
25:23 David Imel? So yeah, black magic 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 black magic 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 black magic system and you
26:06 Speaker 05 If you commit to it.
26:07 David Imel? Commit to it.
26:08 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:08 David Imel? 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.
26:17 Speaker 05 Especially if you have an old workflow. If you build from the ground up with black magic in mind, it could actually probably be a very efficient
26:24 David Imel? Yeah.
26:24 Speaker 05 stack. But you need to like, take the time to understand the tech.
26:27 David Imel? Sure.
26:28 Speaker 05 All right, David, I would take a quick sip of Red Bull if I were you, because we are about to talk about Fuji cameras. And Mr. Amel?
26:39 David Imel? Yes.
26:40 Speaker 05 You, in many ways, to much of the internet, to much of the world.
26:45 Speaker 05 You're the, you're, you're an introduction to a lot of the, the science and a sort of an understanding for how Fuji cameras work and what makes them special.
26:55 Speaker 04 Ah, that's perfect.
26:58 David Imel? Bring the Fuji.
26:58 David Imel? Sure, I'm bringing the Fuji.
27:00 Speaker 05 So I guess, 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 phenomenon? What is it about these cameras has enabled them to kind of like leak into the social fabric?
27:17 David Imel? TikTok.
27:18 David Imel? No, just TikTok.
27:20 Speaker 04 That's why I bought mine. No, and you.
27:23 David Imel? Oh, it was trendy. I think I know.
27:25 Speaker 04 It's true.
27:26 David Imel? It was kind of trendy.
27:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was popping up.
27:28 David Imel? Yeah, okay, but it was trendy not necessarily because, okay, there's a lot of things.
27:33 David Imel? 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 inaccessible.
27:50 Speaker 05 Okay.
27:50 David Imel? Right, so Fujifilm democratized color. Because it is, it takes a very long time to get really good at doing good color.
28:01 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:01 David Imel? Yeah. In 2016 or 2017 or so, I bought my first Fuji camera. It was a Fujifilm XT2. 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, Astia. 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. There are color profiles on the camera. You do not only have to shoot with them in JPEG, you can also apply them to video.
28:41 Speaker 05 Video.
28:42 David Imel? Yeah. And so I literally was not color grading at all. I was just choosing the one that fit what I was shooting the best.
28:49 Speaker 05 Yeah. We, so we talked with this creator named Colt Kirwan, who is like, I don't know if you guys have seen his stuff. His, 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
29:08 Speaker 02 Had a different experience where um your JPGs magically look really good and you can kind of customize within camera versus throwing it into Lightroom and having to do that already. Um, so I feel like Fuji has really gotten a cult following in the past couple of years because of their specific film emulations in that, oh, you don't have to shoot raw anymore. I just shoot JPG, blah, blah, blah. Um, and it's it's nice. I think it's a 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.
29:46 Speaker 05 And that key word fun.
29:48 David Imel? Yeah.
29:48 Speaker 05 Came up over and over and over again when we talked to people.
29:53 David Imel? So Fuji is the the nothing phone of of uh.
29:57 Speaker 05 I think I think nothing is more utilitarian.
30:00 David Imel? Really?
30:01 Speaker 05 I because I would buy my mom.
30:04 David Imel? It's like the mono razor.
30:06 Speaker 05 I think so.
30:07 David Imel? Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I guess the fun aspect of like, we're not going to have the craziest specs.
30:12 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
30:13 David Imel? Right. But when you use it, you will feel you will feel things.
30:16 Speaker 05 Yeah. Yeah. So so Brandon, who is like the chief cinematographer at LTT, I'm keeping his resume. Um, he said like.
30:23 Speaker 02 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. 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 could just start learning and that's the thing too is I find that what what Fuji picked up that idea from Canon is that they pushed it further by saying, well, let's not just.
31:03 Speaker 05 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 want to buy a Fuji camera specifically to make videos. We talked to a creator named Joshua de la Victoria. Yeah. Who does, um, 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.
31:31 Speaker 04 And then using the Fuji, I kind of fell in love with photography side of it. Cause 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.
31:45 Speaker 05 I think that these are probably still, still cameras.
31:50 David Imel? There's an, there's a whole era of this happening. This may be around the same time that, 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.
32:10 Speaker 05 Yeah.
32:11 David Imel? And if you put the right lenses on a 5D and a 5D Mark II, you can get this incredibly 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.
32:34 Speaker 04 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, um, 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 I don't like using gimbals. I find them really annoying to use and the autofocus in the Fuji was horrible.
33:08 David Imel? 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 with the person you talked 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 that if you shoot manual for everything and you control everything. You want that, they're still very good for that.
33:37 Speaker 05 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.
33:49 David Imel? Yeah, that, that used to be an import. It was an import tax rule because basically if it, 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.
34:05 David Imel? A lot of cameras from that day had a 29 minute, 59 second.
34:07 David Imel? Yeah.
34:08 David Imel? Yes.
34:08 David Imel? Exactly.
34:09 David Imel? It was very dumb.
34:10 Speaker 05 That's ridiculous. And then the other thing is like autofocus isn't fantastic for Fuji cameras. Like there's a lot of stuff where like if you're, if you're running gun, 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.
34:27 David Imel? Yeah.
34:28 Speaker 05 It's like, it's a real contender.
34:29 David Imel? I would agree with that. Also, just side note.
34:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
34:32 David Imel? The Fuji XT series cameras, they use APS-C sensors, which are smaller than full frame. And then they also have this GFX series, which is larger than full frame, it's medium format. They never wanted to compete in full frame because 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, 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.
35:04 David Imel? Full frame experience.
35:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, right. Okay, so speaking of sensor size.
35:08 David Imel? Yeah.
35:08 Speaker 05 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.
35:19 David Imel? Yes.
35:19 Speaker 05 They oftentimes don't get good credit for it. Their color science is a little weird and they do, and they have micro four thirds 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 have with creators?
35:35 David Imel? I'm like 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.
35:43 Speaker 05 Hundred percent.
35:43 David Imel? Like the Panasonic move.
35:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:45 David Imel? So understandable why some people will gravitate towards it, but why they might not become like a mainstream huge option.
35:51 David Imel? I will say 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.
36:09 Speaker 05 Optimize.
36:10 David Imel? 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.
36:18 Speaker 05 Right.
36:18 David Imel? So it, the way it always went was it was like, oh, we got five axis stabilization in, in micro four thirds. And now it comes to APS-C and now it comes to full frame.
36:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
36:28 David Imel? So, yeah.
36:29 Speaker 05 So I guess for, for those following along, if you're still listening, but you're also confused, thank you so much.
36:36 David Imel? I know this is not our normal waveform conversation.
36:39 Speaker 05 Thank you so much.
36:40 David Imel? Yeah.
36:41 Speaker 05 Um, no, no, but essentially like Panasonic uses smaller sensors.
36:44 David Imel? Yeah.
36:44 Speaker 05 Right? And that, that leads to on paper more advancements.
36:47 David Imel? Yes.
36:48 Speaker 05 Yeah. But a lot of their, I guess, a lot of the reason that Panasonic has historically been able to be ahead of the game.
36:54 David Imel? Because they use smaller sensors.
36:55 Speaker 05 Because they use smaller sensors.
36:56 David Imel? Correct. Take a series with computational photography.
36:59 Speaker 05 Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we were only able, 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.
37:20 Speaker 05 What is it? New Jersey? Jersey Hoboken? No. Top 10.
37:24 David Imel? San Francisco. San Francisco.
37:26 Speaker 05 Okay. All right. Well, delusion aside. It's right there, guys.
37:32 Speaker 05 So we asked him, like, why do you shoot on Panasonic? Your videos are gorgeous, but why did you do that?
37:37 Speaker 00 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.
37:48 Speaker 05 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.
37:59 Speaker 00 I mean, one question is, 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 become a problem. GH5 has notoriously awful autofocus. It is unusable. You know, I've made videos of the, the way I learned that was I made a video where I used autofocus. And I thought it'd be fine because I was just sitting there and a viewer commented about how it was unwatchable because of the focus breathing.
38:33 Speaker 05 He's like, the GH5 has kind of notoriously awful autofocus. He's frustrated with a lot of aspects of Micro 4/3s. And then he's like, you know, he loved things like shallower depth of field, stuff like that. And so in addition to like the actual sort of marketing advantage of Micro 4/3s, we also asked Tyler Stalman, 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.
39:01 David Imel? Yeah.
39:02 Speaker 03 And he said, There are three use cases that I think Micro 4/3s 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 4/3 sensor is as close to square as you get. So if you need to shoot for both formats at the same time.
39:34 Speaker 05 There's, 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, is pretty amazing. And you can only do on something like the GH7. This is usually like referred to as like open gate.
40:06 David Imel? Open gate.
40:06 Speaker 05 Shooting. What's open gate?
40:08 David Imel? Generally, what you have, 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 nine, two by one, 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 the fourth sensor, which is normally for a four by three aspect ratio.
40:38 Speaker 05 Reason number two that Tyler said Micro Four Thirds could be useful is as an overhead camera, like, 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.
40:52 David Imel? More in focus.
40:53 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. And then the third reason is because it's a smaller sensor. So generally, stabilization is better.
41:01 David Imel? Yeah.
41:01 Speaker 04 Smaller, lighter body.
41:02 David Imel? Totally.
41:03 Speaker 05 Also, really cool bonus that 99% of people wouldn't care about, but people would yell at us if we didn't mention.
41:09 David Imel? Perfect.
41:09 Speaker 05 Tyler was using Ari colors on his Panasonic camera, because Panasonic has, like, I guess in agreement with Ari, to like optimize Ari color science for Panasonic. So if you wanted to shoot Ari and get a bit of an Ari look.
41:23 David Imel? I did not know that.
41:24 Speaker 05 We could, we just find like a really, really, really open wide aperture lens plus Ari color science. And, and then, and then we'll, and then we rent an Ari camera and we get to do a photo shoot of you holding it.
41:37 David Imel? Interesting. I wonder how much of that is similar to the red color science on the Enra, because when I applied those LUTs, they did not really look like red. They're very nice.
41:46 Speaker 05 Tyler spoke pretty highly.
41:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:48 Speaker 05 I know Ellis has mentioned like a production company as well, that like loves shooting on Panasonic and has shot like these excellent shorts.
42:01 Speaker 03 Cool YouTube video called Media Division that does like, uh, 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.
42:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, just use the right color.
42:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, they're just like, there's no, yeah, but that's them.
42:17 Speaker 05 Super interesting.
42:19 David Imel? Also, uh, 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 fourth thread sensor to a full frame, a micro fourth thread lens to a full frame camera.
42:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:35 David Imel? Yeah.
42:35 Speaker 05 Alright guys, we have one more brand before we get to our break.
42:39 David Imel? Yeah, I noticed the elephant in the room.
42:41 Speaker 05 With two more brands, right?
42:42 Speaker 04 We're missing two, yeah.
42:43 David Imel? Yeah. So we're gonna do one more, then do a break.
42:46 Speaker 05 That was the elephant for all the audio listeners.
42:49 David Imel? Okay.
42:49 Speaker 05 Um, okay.
42:51 David Imel? We technically didn't do Canon yet, either.
42:52 Speaker 05 Okay, so we're on, so I want to talk about Canon.
42:55 David Imel? Okay.
42:55 Speaker 05 So.
42:55 David Imel? Peter McCannon?
42:57 Speaker 04 Nice.
42:57 David Imel? Whoa.
42:59 Speaker 05 That worked out too well.
43:00 David Imel? I just made that up.
43:00 Speaker 05 We could end the video here.
43:03 Speaker 05 Okay. We can hear that Red Bull slur. It's crazy. Okay. When people talk about Canon cameras, they talk about it like with this insane nostalgia, like, oh, I couldn't, like, oh, I loved them. Like when, like, so we, 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.
43:35 Speaker 02 There was a camera called this 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, that show was predicated by a documentary called Catfish that my friends made. And most of the documentary Catfish, that was at like Sunday at Film Festival, MTV bought it, put it in 2000 movie theaters. That movie was shot primarily on T1, T1? Are you looking it up right now? I'm looking up, there's a few. T, no, no, is a vertical form factor. It was way before that. Triscannon T1, T.
44:16 Speaker 02 Yes, and it was like the first kind of point shoot that was really optimized for video, not for stills. No, no, no, no, no, no. A beautiful.
44:30 Speaker 02 Where's my phone? 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 and buy it if you can find one.
44:43 Speaker 02 Not even, is that beautiful?
44:46 Speaker 02 What's the name of the Canon camera that was like all stainless steel, it was really small, it's the one Rell Film Catfish on? Like the flip outside? That's it, that's it. What's the name of that?
44:58 Speaker 07 TX-1.
44:59 Speaker 02 TX-1, Van Nice that knew it. Thanks, Van.
45:01 Speaker 07 Yeah, I still have mine.
45:03 Speaker 02 Me too, I have two, but...
45:06 Speaker 02 The Canon TX-1.
45:08 Speaker 05 First of all, like, that was like a, that was a very fun experience, getting, getting to talk to him. I think as a, as a youth in this space, it's very cool being able to go and interview Casey. Felt like a career moment for me. I don't think he knows my name. That's cool. My name is Rich.
45:25 Speaker 04 Yup.
45:26 David Imel? My name is Earl.
45:27 Speaker 05 But yeah, but like so many people would wax poetic about like Canon in the past. Like we asked Colt Kirwan, who's like my Gen Z Casey Nice Dad. He said like,
45:38 Speaker 02 The way I see it was Canon had a chokehold 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 they're 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.
46:16 David Imel? 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 stronghold. The strong squared hold on the like prosumer DSLR market.
46:32 Speaker 05 Right.
46:33 David Imel? Right. They had the one DX camera, 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.
46:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
46:54 David Imel? By far.
46:54 Speaker 05 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, 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 can be matched, which wasn't the case a few years ago.
47:27 David Imel? 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.
47:38 Speaker 07 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 going to bang through all these recipes. And more just like, this could be an average day in your life too. So that kind of translates a little bit to that. 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. So my natural lighting is a little darker overall, but I think it kind of played into it a little bit,
48:23 Speaker 07 which I kind of also like, but you know, I, I think it just fits sort of the homey vibes overall.
48:29 David Imel? It's this soft. It's always like a little bit warm with like silly raised shadows. And it's kind of this like dreamy, warm.
48:37 David Imel? 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 like editing some JPEGs because it has very warm, natural skin tones.
48:48 Speaker 05 The next bonus up, I'll get married if this video hits 200K views. And I'll do, and then I'll do my bonus episode there, shot on Canon.
48:57 David Imel? Nice. Does your girlfriend know about this?
49:00 Speaker 05 What girlfriend, David?
49:01 David Imel? It is fascinating.
49:02 Speaker 05 We're getting married, David.
49:05 David Imel? 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, not even close. No one else is close.
49:31 David Imel? And I think there's, there's like a bunch of other reasons, like people might choose Sony, Blackmagic, Ari for specific color reasons. For whatever projects there are. And it's always fun hearing those.
49:41 Speaker 05 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, once you have 10 bit color, it doesn't matter. And like, if you're buying a Blackmagic. Yeah, I suppose.
49:53 Speaker 04 Yeah. No one wants to go in and drop a load on all their color, right?
49:57 Speaker 05 All right. So, so we've, you know, we've gone through all of these brands, but there's, 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.
50:19 Speaker 04 And us.
50:20 Speaker 05 After the.
50:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:23 David Imel? So.
50:24 Speaker 05 After the.
50:29 Speaker 05 After the break, what is the camera brand that every creator seems to want to switch to? And is it overhyped?
50:36 David Imel? It's Sony. It's not overhyped. It's so new. We love switching. There's a lot of reasons. I'm totally game to do the next session. I know. I'm all for it. Sorry, it's great. That's true. Big guy. There's so much in town.
51:02 David Imel? What if managing company spend took less managing?
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52:42 Speaker 05 Alright guys, Sony.
52:45 David Imel? We gotta talk about Sony.
52:46 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:47 Speaker 05 Wait, could we do it where everyone at the table just says Sony really quickly?
52:52 Speaker 04 Sony.
52:52 Speaker 05 Just like...
52:53 Speaker 04 Sony.
52:53 David Imel? Yeah.
52:53 Speaker 05 Alright, ready?
52:54 Speaker 04 Sony.
52:55 Speaker 05 Alright guys, Sony.
52:55 Speaker 04 Sony.
52:56 David Imel? Sony.
52:57 Speaker 05 Sony.
52:57 Speaker 04 Sony.
52:58 Speaker 05 Sony.
52:58 David Imel? Sony.
52:59 Speaker 04 We love Sony.
53:01 David Imel? You know how when you say a word too many times, it starts sounding like...
53:09 Speaker 05 Uh, yeah.
53:10 David Imel? That's me now.
53:10 Speaker 05 So, okay, creators...
53:12 David Imel? Knee.
53:13 Speaker 04 Sony.
53:15 Speaker 05 I have to find a different conjunction.
53:17 Speaker 04 Hey, there we go.
53:22 Speaker 05 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's called Shua Films.
53:40 Speaker 03 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 A7-4 came out, it was kind of the perfect camera for me at the time because 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.
54:03 Speaker 05 Brittany, who's this DP who we talked to about Blackmagic, she switched from Blackmagic for her YouTube videos to the Sony FX3.
54:10 Speaker 07 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.
54:30 Speaker 05 Clients know like Sony has a rep and so they actually feel more confident seeing...
54:34 David Imel? That's funny.
54:35 Speaker 05 Yeah. Like people with that...
54:36 David Imel? That's true about Red in the past.
54:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:39 Speaker 05 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. Um, and yeah, like the dual...
54:58 Speaker 02 Native ISO that it has, allowing it to basically shoot, I mean, it's 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, uh, 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.
55:17 Speaker 05 We asked Austin about this and like, he, I mean, he switched from Red to a full Sony stack. He said like, FX3. We shoot entirely on Sony FX3, FX30, A7S3.
55:25 David Imel? There's no complaints I have. Like I just, I like, when our A7S3s die, where's to buy another one? I just, there's nothing else that we need. And maybe there's an FX4 or an A7S4, whatever. And, you know, 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.
55:48 Speaker 05 And then we asked Casey about it and he cited a few key features for that, like he just loved.
55:53 Speaker 02 It was smaller, it was lighter, it felt tougher. It had, I think, the magnesium body or metal body instead of a plastic body like the T2 series. Um, 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. Um, 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 contact with the lens, rack the focus and then frame my finger pointing at something in the background, which is a super dynamic shot.
56:37 Speaker 02 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.
56:48 Speaker 05 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?
56:59 Speaker 04 He said, he saw the FX6 shot and 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.
57:10 Speaker 05 Knowing that it changed cameras like that, that hurts a little bit. So I think that prompted me to think, oh, well, you know, this is, this is kind of important. The rest of the video is Panasonic and someone was like, oh, I like that. Like, people are like gravitating to the image of Sony cameras. Sony is
57:27 David Imel? Which is a newer thing, to be fair.
57:28 Speaker 05 It's super new. Okay. What happened?
57:32 David Imel? You really, you really want to know what happened?
57:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, let's hear it.
57:34 David Imel? 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 a seven, a seven S, the first ones, which were like super good.
57:49 Speaker 05 This was instead of like your C100 or?
57:51 David Imel? No, this was like, I, I, so I shoot red and then I have like sort of smaller crash cam and stuff for like R5 basically.
57:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, right.
57:57 David Imel? And, uh, you know, the built in mics for Sony's A7 series were good and the color science was 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, 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.
58:18 Speaker 05 But Rich, you, yeah, you like, you're trying to switch us.
58:21 David Imel? Yeah, wait, wait, Rich.
58:22 Speaker 04 I am absolutely trying to switch us.
58:24 Speaker 05 Give Mark has the pitch right now.
58:24 Speaker 04 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.
58:40 David Imel? Yeah, this is fair.
58:41 Speaker 05 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.
58:54 David Imel? Yeah. So Sony's are kind of computers with lenses attached to them. They were very early moving to the mirrorless, uh, camera game and that gave them a leg up in the many years that followed, right? 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, uh, the lens mount and the actual sensor.
59:20 David Imel? This allows you to adapt 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.
59:33 Speaker 04 And that's the E mount, right? And that's why everyone loves E mount.
59:35 David Imel? That's why everyone loves E mount. You were also, you also had five 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, yeah. Sony cameras, very famous for being able to basically see in the dark.
1:00:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:00:10 David Imel? Because they have a low native ISO and a high native ISO.
1:00:14 Speaker 05 For the easiest experience to get a high quality video, it's really tough not recommending the Sony A7S3. The low light and stabilization alone just make it so versatile that it's kind of the perfect camera for YouTube.
1:00:28 Speaker 04 But over the past few years, Sony hasn't just cemented its cameras as great options, but its entire ecosystem.
1:00:36 Speaker 05 Their ecosystem is completely compatible from cheapest, like the color science on the FX3, the same.
1:00:42 David Imel? Because the sensor is exactly the same as the A7S3.
1:00:46 Speaker 05 The E mount is completely, 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 B cam.
1:01:04 David Imel? Totally.
1:01:04 Speaker 05 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.
1:01:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:01:12 Speaker 05 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? And I was like, oh my gosh, like, we're just gonna talk about Sony. Like, it freaked me out.
1:01:25 David Imel? I don't know, there's like a lot of different reasons, but they did sort of build out an ecosystem.
1:01:30 Speaker 05 Their ecosystem is amazing.
1:01:31 David Imel? Because again, they have the A7S3 and the FX3, and then the FX30 if you don't want to spend as much money for the FX3.
1:01:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:01:38 David Imel? And the FX line is like similar to what Marquez 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 A7S3. Like, they have so many options.
1:01:49 David Imel? I, 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 A7R3, and I have an A1. Uh, so I have not shot FX series ever. So that's obviously a huge gap. Uh, 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 gonna 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.
1:02:31 David Imel? And when they released the new sensor that went in the A7S3 and the, um, other one.
1:02:37 Speaker 05 It's an FX3.
1:02:38 David Imel? FX, uh, that sensor is way better than the old sensor used to be, just in terms of color.
1:02:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:02:43 David Imel? Because Sony sensors used to be like ubiquitous with like purple, magenta color.
1:02:49 David Imel? I could watch a YouTube video, a vlog, and a clip on YouTube, and I'd be like, ugh, Sony. Like, without anyone saying anything, I'd be like, ugh.
1:02:57 Speaker 05 You could say the same thing, but you could say the same thing about Panasonic. You could say the same thing about a lot of different cameras.
1:03:01 David Imel? I kind of felt that about that, about Blackmagic, uh, 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.
1:03:16 David Imel? So I, yeah, I still feel like I have that pretty dialed, but there's a lot of Sony development that's happened since then.
1:03:22 Speaker 05 Yeah. When we talked to Becca, something that she brought up that was really interesting is how Sony invests in creators.
1:03:29 David Imel? That is also a massive player here.
1:03:32 Speaker 05 She was like, I went to this Sony event.
1:03:34 David Imel? Yeah.
1:03:35 Speaker 05 And in her words, it was popping. Ever like, people were there, you know what I mean?
1:03:40 David Imel? Kids are there.
1:03:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, like, yeah, there's like this little ecosystem and like Casey switched to Sony, like, there's all this like clout ecosystem in addition to like the fact that these are, are good cameras.
1:03:51 David Imel? Like Sony hosts these like camps and these like, these like projects that people can go all work on together. Multiple times a year.
1:03:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:03:58 David Imel? 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 glass, which is extremely expensive. Accessories of which Sony makes ones that only work on the Shoney Hot Shoes.
1:04:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:04:35 David Imel? 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.
1:04:48 Speaker 05 Marquez, in our interview, asked me, do you have a dream camera to shoot on? And I was like, I don't know.
1:04:56 Speaker 04 I have a dream camera.
1:04:57 Speaker 05 Well, an 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 and I was just like, yeah, I guess, 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, it's, I can attest to it. They, it worked. They got me hooked as a youth.
1:05:17 David Imel? Yeah.
1:05:18 Speaker 05 But I think I, I like, I walked away with like a little bit of like dread here for a couple of reasons. For the, 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 to this video, and I was really scared that like, I was gonna 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, 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
1:05:58 Speaker 05 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 kind of depressing to me.
1:06:12 David Imel? 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, 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.
1:06:45 Speaker 05 Oh, absolutely.
1:06:46 David Imel? And I got no problem with shouting out quality of product.
1:06:48 Speaker 05 That's fair.
1:06:49 David Imel? Like, they're actually making the best stuff. Okay, fine. They're making the best stuff.
1:06:52 Speaker 05 So, 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.
1:07:05 David Imel? David has a take on this.
1:07:07 Speaker 05 The best camera is the one you, I don't, 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.
1:07:24 David Imel? Using just smartphones?
1:07:25 Speaker 05 Using just iPhone 13s.
1:07:29 David Imel? Wow.
1:07:29 Speaker 05 No, iPhone 14s. Apologize.
1:07:30 David Imel? That's awesome.
1:07:31 Speaker 05 So after the break, this conversation with this creator, and what it says about making the right camera choice.
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1:08:35 David Imel? That's J-I-R-A dot com.
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1:10:03 Speaker 05 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 is getting harder and harder.
1:10:16 Speaker 04 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.
1:10:28 Speaker 05 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?
1:10:49 Speaker 02 I reject the supposition that it's important to understand gear and have gear. I reject it wholly. Yeah, I mean, I'm, 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, 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
1:11:33 Speaker 02 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.
1:11:45 Speaker 05 Casey talks about how we 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?
1:12:01 David Imel? I started by doing this really cinematic intro where I turned around and
1:12:09 David Imel? Was an allegory where 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.
1:12:22 Speaker 05 Yeah. 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 Marquez promptly asked him to leave.
1:12:38 Speaker 05 That is a joke. They get along very well. They're both very famous.
1:12:43 Speaker 05 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." And to an even more sort of extreme extent, we talked with Adam, who's a co-host on this YouTube channel called Jet Lag. He's a co-host on this YouTube channel called Jet Lag. Have you guys heard of Jet Lag? Have you seen this?
1:13:13 David Imel? I've heard of it.
1:13:15 Speaker 05 Guys, this channel is so cool. So it's a travel game show like The Amazing Race. Like The Amazing Race, but the whole point of the show is like the chaos factor is 10 times more than any other reality TV show we've ever seen before.
1:13:30 Speaker 04 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."
1:13:41 Speaker 05 The only way that they could make that show is by just shooting iPhone, stock iPhone app, no color grading, nothing. Cause 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, you know, maybe you're not even sure if you're going to stick to filmmaking. 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
1:14:17 Speaker 04 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. 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 like 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 like $3,000 guitar?
1:14:59 Speaker 04 And it's like, no, it's not gonna make you better. Like, whatever you have, just practice on it.
1:15:06 David Imel? 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, 1000% agreed. 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 a 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 that. Yeah. Like the video process and the I want to make videos thing is all of the pre-work, the writing, the storyline, that stuff.
1:15:51 David Imel? 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. Yeah.
1:16:06 Speaker 05 So, but I, so I think Adam had this really cool analogy. Do you guys know the show like Candid Camera, like the?
1:16:12 David Imel? Yeah.
1:16:14 Speaker 05 You guys know the shows like Candid Camera? Yeah, like OG.
1:16:17 David Imel? Really old.
1:16:18 Speaker 05 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 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, and so Adam was like, that's kind of how he thinks about jet lag.
1:16:49 David Imel? You know, we've done other projects since where we did use like real cameras and like lighting setups and stuff. And I think it really opened our eyes to like, thank God we filmed the show the way we do because you could not make our show if we tried to film it a different way, frankly. The fact that you can make something on iPhones is an invitation for people to think, what can I make now 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,
1:17:29 David Imel? but lazier because you don't have to put in the work of setting up a better camera.
1:17:36 Speaker 05 You shoot on Red because your whole thing is MKB HD. 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
1:17:56 David Imel? 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 gonna enrich your life? Is it gonna 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?
1:18:13 David Imel? He shoots all Sony, all, 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.
1:18:22 David Imel? 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.
1:18:30 Speaker 05 This actually happened.
1:18:31 David Imel? Yeah. You want the camera to be above a floor where it's not like, it's not hindering your story or your video production.
1:18:37 David Imel? 480p.
1:18:38 David Imel? And in Jimmy's case, it's funny, he also wants it to be below a certain ceiling so it's not distracting.
1:18:42 David Imel? Exactly.
1:18:42 Speaker 05 Yeah. Yeah. 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.
1:18:56 David Imel? Yes.
1:18:58 Speaker 04 Damn. That's a bar.
1:18:59 David Imel? Bars.
1:19:00 Speaker 04 Bars.
1:19:02 David Imel? Yes.
1:19:04 Speaker 05 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.
1:19:11 Speaker 04 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.
1:19:17 Speaker 05 So gentlemen, do you feel like you learned something?
1:19:21 David Imel? I do. I, I love the multiplier. I think that's a great, like bow tie on it. Like gear is exciting and interesting to us because we're kind of nerds.
1:19:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:19:30 David Imel? And that's where we live. We're in the weeds and we love the gear and what it unlocks. But it only unlocks the, the multiple of the thing that you're trying to make. You gotta have the idea. Yeah, you gotta have the seed. If you're just watering dirt, it doesn't matter how, how great that watering can is, you need a great seed.
1:19:47 Speaker 05 So Rich, you come up with an analogy.
1:19:50 Speaker 04 Oh, no. Uh, it's like.
1:19:55 Speaker 04 The conclusion is the best camera is the camera in your pocket.
1:19:59 David Imel? No, it's not. The best camera.
1:20:04 Speaker 05 That should be our.
1:20:06 David Imel? No, I would say the best camera is the camera that does the thing that you want to do to tell your story.
1:20:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:20:15 David Imel? That the best camera.
1:20:18 David Imel? It's the Raptor XL. It's clearly a V Raptor XL.
1:20:22 Speaker 04 That is the best.
1:20:38 Speaker 04 At Edward Jones, we believe Rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with.
1:20:51 Speaker 07 Personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters, so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
1:21:08 Speaker 07 New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess Collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.
Previous Our Favorite YouTube Videos Ever! Next Modular Tech is Cool Again! Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated