WHY I CHANGED MY CAMERA
Having the right camera for your needs is a bit ying and yang for me. I was convinced to go the Nikon route by a colleague a number of years ago after progressing from a somewhat high-end point and shoot. I don’t regret this decision and this isn’t what this blog post is about, it was a sound argument and since switching I’ve invested in more lenses and indeed more cameras all the way up to a used D300.
Over time however I’ve found my use of all this kit to be reducing, I put this down to the many other projects I have on the go complete with a regular day job resulting in me not really having the time to enjoy photography any more unless I’m on holiday. Being honest with myself here I don’t really want to be lumping around a great big heavy camera, perhaps I’m missing the benefits of a point of shoot?
One of the projects I’ve started getting into is having a corresponding YouTube channel to go with this blog, you can check it out here if you’d like to see some of the animated versions of the blog entries 🙂 With this comes the obvious requirement to have some kind of video camera, something again I’ve dabbled with in the past that due to poor quality has been confined to the cupboard of crap.
So it’s with this focus that I’ve gone searching and reading about what is the best vlogging camera to buy. Why vlogging I here you ask? Well simply put, these are going to be generally the masters of all needs, aaannnnd into the pit of despair I landed. You see, some people like portable vlogging cameras and some people like tripod mounted vlogging cameras and it seems both camps seem to like the Canon range for one good reason or another.
If you’ve already invested in one brand do you switch to another and hope you get some what most of your money back? After all I went with Nikon on the basis of producing still photographs, just because I want to now do video doesn’t mean I have to stay with them, right? So you’ve guessed it, yes I started looking at the Canon range and in particular the mirror-less EOS M3 model which by all accounts fits the bill nicely.
It’s a small form-factor mirror-less camera, produces quality pictures, records video and has a microphone jack on it, flip up screen so you can see yourself for framing, cheap at just about £350 and it’s got a great an appalling battery life, oh ffs! Why? Why Canon? Well it seems mirror-less cameras are just like that, they just drain the battery as the screen is always on it would seem. Oh and that flip up screen? Well when you put an external mic on the camera you can’t see the screen so you have to fashion some other way of mounting that sucker!
So back to the drawing board I go and again I start chatting with my camera colleague (yes that’s his new nick!). We talk about why the EOS M3 was such a good option, why Nikon doesn’t really have anything else that competes at the moment, why anyone else really doesn’t have anything else that competes at the moment – yes I know Sony have the A6000 range but seriously, have you seen the price?
Welcome to the new addition to the family, the Nikon D5300. What? You bought an old camera? Well it’s not that old, yes there are a couple of upgraded models since but they add very little to the original in my books and are almost twice the price.
No it’s not as compact as the EOS M3 but it’s just as versatile and I can use all of my existing lenses and it’s got amazing battering life and it does 1080 60FPS and the screen flips out to the side – you see where I’m going here?
This picture was taken with my Nikon D40X and by buying the D5300 I can replace both the D40X and the D300 selling them on and effectively getting this bad boy for free! Oh and this is lighter than the D40X as well, fantastic!
Word of warning when buying this model, make sure you get the one with the AF-P lens – it’s super quick and silent, a must when shooting video!
This isn’t meant to be some kind of camera review but I can tell you this model is superb. Whilst I’ve only really used the video side of things at the moment, the quality is A1, I really can’t wait to get back into taking some decent photographs as well – it really does have some amazing features that I’ll hopefully share with you guys going forward.
I bought mine from John Lewis in the UK however Amazon have it listed as well, just make sure you get the AF-P version and not the AF-S version 🙂
