(upbeat music)
- All right, we have another
new camera to review.
This time it is the Sony A6400
and this camera, it really seems like
they're marketing it towards vlogging,
YouTube filmmaking, which I love.
And so I thought I'd give
it a review and see if it
is any good for vlogging
slash YouTube filmmaking.
But that requires us to go outside.
There's been a snowstorm for, like,
the last two days, so should be fun.
First test, autofocus, can it keep up?
So far it seems like
it's doing a good job.
Anybody else ever struggle
with jacket zippers?
All right.
Matt!
- Yes?
- [Matti] You wanna go for a skate?
- Absolutely.
- He's always so excited. (laughs)
So the reason why I think
that this camera's kinda
geared towards vloggers, YouTubers as well
'cause it's got a flip LCD.
Hey, film this, Matt, the flip LCD screen
that kind of like,
tilts so you can see it.
It's not as good as having
like a flip LCD screen
from the side, but it's something.
Man, it's cold out here already! (groans)
But there's a few things that I feel like
would probably--
(horn honks)
Why are we honking?
There's a few things that
would limit this camera
from being a vlogging camera.
One is the lack of image
stabilization in-body
and then the other I would say
is that it's not full frame,
so kinda feels like it's zoomed
in on my face all the time
even on a wide 16 mil lens right now.
But I'm always up for trying new cameras
so let's see how the
A6400 does for vlogging.
(upbeat music)
Just gonna warm up by the fire quick.
They even have sound effects.
All right, so one of my big concerns
with this camera is the battery life.
We are already down to 67%
and we haven't been filming
for very long at all.
That makes it a little
bit difficult for vloggers
because, whoa, because
vlogging takes awhile,
you're filming long
days and if battery life
isn't super good, then
that makes it difficult.
And if you're wondering, I'm kinda using
an L-bracket thing to mount my mic
because otherwise the microphone
would be right in front
of the flip LCD screen,
which is no good, useless.
I don't think this one's the best one,
I think there could be better ones
to make it a little bit smaller profile.
Also, it kind of just spins
on my GorillaPod right now.
In general, I'm just
having a lot of issues
with the whole GorillaPod
set up in this cold weather.
Doesn't that just warm you right up?
I've been trying to teach Matt,
every once in awhile we
go out for a little break,
I've been trying to teach him
how to do a good ol' fashion hockey stop,
I guess that's what
it's called, is that it?
Is that hockey stop?
Yeah, one of these.
I guess we could show
some of his progress.
(skate blades scraping)
So as you can see, Matt's
making some progress.
I think, I'm not quite sure.
Well, let's just say he's making progress.
So far I think the A6400
has been actually pretty nice to use.
I haven't really had
too many issues with it,
although we are at 34% battery now.
So if you're gonna use this camera,
you're gonna need a lot of batteries.
Like a lot, a lot.
I am kinda bothered by the crop, though.
I would rather it be a little bit wider
so I don't have to hold my
hand out like crazy far,
I could hold it more comfortably.
That just really makes it so you can vlog
a little bit longer without
having crazy tired arms.
Okay, it's crazy cold out here,
think we're gonna get inside,
maybe do a few more tests
but, oh, Canadian winter just wrecking me
these last coupla days.
How's that, Matt?
- Cold, let's go back.
- I agree, think we're done here.
All right, so you've probably
heard of this camera already.
Sony did a really good job of
getting this into the hands
of a lot of YouTubers to review.
And I think that's because
they're trying to market it
towards YouTubers, vloggers,
because it's a small,
fairly affordable camera,
4K, pretty good autofocus,
and then it has this
sort of flip LCD screen.
And this is the first
APS-C size sensor camera
that I've tried vlogging with.
Usually I like full frame
because it gives you
a little bit wider
perspective as I'm vlogging
and I don't have to have
the hand so far away
to get kind of more than
just a close up of my face.
But here's what I found as I
was shooting with this camera.
And if you've tried this camera before,
I'd love to hear your
thoughts, comment down below.
It's always really nice to
have different perspectives
on cameras because there's certain things
that I look for that you
might not be looking for
and then there's certain things
that you're looking for that I might miss.
All right, so first off, let's talk about
this flip LCD screen,
sort of flip LCD screen.
I was super skeptical before I used this
because I've seen different companies
try to do it, well, Canon has.
They've kind of done both
the flip up and flip down,
so this one flips down.
And I've always thought
that both of those options
are kind of dumb because if it flips down,
then your tripod or your
GorillaPod or whatever,
it's gonna be in the way of the LCD screen
so you can't see anything.
And then if it flips up like this one,
once you put your microphone on here,
you can't see the screen anymore.
So I've always thought
it's kind of stupid.
And why do they
put these little?
(strap clip clicking)
They're such a pain, I always
clip those off right away.
So I was really skeptical,
but to be honest,
I didn't mind the flip up screen
as much as I thought.
Now, I was using this
sort of L-mount bracket.
I'll show you guys.
So I was using this kinda cheap
L-mount bracket from Amazon,
I don't necessarily
recommend getting this one,
but it allowed me to vlog,
to see myself as I'm filming,
and to also still have a microphone
without it being right in
the way of the LCD screen.
Now, it's not ideal and I almost wish
that they would just ship it
with some sort of really
small, nice, metal L-bracket
'cause this one kinda just wobbles around.
It's too big, it doesn't
need to be this big,
and then, also, in order
to change batteries
or memory cards, you gotta
take off this whole thing,
so that's a really big pain.
But I didn't hate this flip up LCD screen
as much as I thought.
It's definitely not perfect,
I still prefer the vari-angle
flip LCD screen a lot more,
but it's not bad.
One thing I feel like
Sony could have also done
is just instead of having
the hot shoe on the top,
why not just put it on the side?
I feel like sometimes
camera companies just do
the same thing over and over again
without really thinking about,
oh, could there be a
better way of doing it?
And when I was thinking about it,
there aren't that many
drawbacks to having the hot shoe
on the side instead of on the top.
In this case, I would
much rather prefer that,
actually, for this camera.
But overall, I would give this
flip LCD screen a thumbs up.
It's not perfect, but it's decent.
The camera's a nice, small size.
Now again, with this
L-bracket and microphone,
it gets a little bit bigger,
and that's just the nature of things.
But I also found that the button layouts
are pretty nice on here,
even though it is a really small camera.
I didn't feel like I was
pressing buttons all the time,
with the maybe exception
of this record button
being so small on the side.
That's a bit of a pain, but overall,
I like how small this camera is.
And image wise, which is
always the most important thing
for me, not too much
to complain about here.
The 4K was looking really
great on this camera,
120 frames per second, looked really nice,
not too many issues there.
A little bit of moire and aliasing,
but not that big of a deal.
It is only a hundred megabits
per second, I believe,
even in 120 frames per
second, whereas something like
the Fujifilm X-T3 could do
200 megabits per second.
So that's a lot more data,
which means you're
gonna get a better image
but overall I would say the 120p
is really nice out of this camera.
If you really need or want
120 frames per second,
here's another great
option to think about.
Also, the skin tones I
found to be pretty nice.
There are times where they're
a little bit too green or magenta,
but just using HSL and
changing the orange hue
and the red hue a little
bit, the image looked great.
Also, loved that they included
S-Log2 and even S-Log3,
I believe, but I only use S-Log2,
I feel like S-Log3 is
a little bit too much
for an 8-bit codec like this.
But having that extra dynamic range
on these Sony cameras is really nice.
I'd say Sony has probably
one of the best log profiles,
no big macroblocking issues
like I've seen on the GH5
with the V-Log and even on the X-T30
that I just reviewed in F-Log.
This one works really nicely.
Again, I do prefer full frame more,
but you can actually
make this full frame with
a Speed Booster.
This one's the Metabones one
that I just talked
about in the last video.
So with this, it was
pretty close to full frame,
not quite the same and
when I was comparing it
with the Sony A73,
the image looked pretty
similar, very similar.
Now there was a little bit more detail
in the Sony A73, so
it's not quite the same.
And then also I was
testing out the autofocus
and I found it to be hunting a lot.
So if you need autofocus, vlogger,
I probably wouldn't use one of these.
But if you're filming other people,
this is a great tool to have,
especially if you have
a ton of Canon glass,
just get one of these
Metabones Speed Boosters.
Speaking of autofocus, it was
pretty decent on the A6400.
I didn't have any issues, and
I find that Sony's autofocus
is great when the
conditions are really ideal.
And in this case, the
conditions were pretty idea,
there weren't any really tough
conditions to test it on.
So I didn't have any issues,
no issues vlogging with it.
It kept focus perfectly fine.
Then we have the gripes,
and this one is probably
one of the biggest,
if I can just get this L-bracket off.
These batteries are just not very good.
Just filming for an hour,
the battery was only at 30%,
so these run out really quickly.
Even when I was just
tryna figure out settings
and just set the camera up,
just in like a couple minutes,
I had gone from 90% to 82%.
So these batteries just aren't great.
You're gonna need a ton of them,
especially if you're vlogging.
So that's a really big downside.
I really wish they would've just put in
the new Sony batteries, but maybe it's
a size issue or whatever.
And then the second and
probably the biggest gripe
is the no IBIS, especially
if you're trying to vlog
and you're walking around a lot,
I found it to be really
kind of wonky at times.
The lack of IBIS mixed
with rolling shutter,
it was just going all over the place.
So that's probably the biggest downside,
I would say, of the Sony
A6400, is not having IBIS.
And again, I assume that
it's something to do
with either the camera overheating
or it just uses too much battery power
and that's why they didn't put IBIS.
But I think for a vlogging
camera, you really do need IBIS.
So this is probably the biggest
downside of the Sony A6400,
especially if you're
wanting to vlog with it.
Okay, so everybody knows this camera
does not have built-in image
stabilization in the body.
But is it enough to just
use a stabilized lens?
So right now, I have the
image stabilizer on this lens,
it's the 18-135, 3.5 to f.56
and it's got optical
stabilizer SteadyShot,
I think they're calling it in here.
Right now it is off,
so is it really shaky?
This is no image stabilizer at all,
and then let's test with it on.
Okay, now it's on, is it smoother now?
Are you getting a lot
of those micro jitters
if I'm moving around?
Do you still need in-body stabilizer?
I don't know, let's check it out.
So is this camera, let
me get this set up again,
is this Sony A6400 the vlogging camera
they're claiming it to be?
Yes and no.
It works, it's not bad,
it's definitely a great starter camera.
For the price, it's fairy affordable,
so you really can't be
complaining too much.
But the lack of IBIS
and the crappy batteries
are the big drawbacks,
especially if you're planning on vlogging.
Now is this camera good for
other types of filmmaking?
Yeah, I could definitely see
this being a great camera
if you're starting out in weddings,
or little corporate or
commercial videos, or a B camera.
Even if you have something
like the Sony A73,
this would be a great B camera
if you can't afford another Sony A73,
get something like this and it's gonna be
a really nice B camera
for weddings or corporate
or little commercial videos.
It's gonna match really
well with the color science
and all of that stuff.
Yeah, it's a great camera.
Any type of filmmaking
where you're usually
using something like a monopod or a gimbal
or a stabilizer, that's where this camera
would be great because
of the lack of IBIS.
Again, great camera if you're starting out
or you need a cheap, small B camera,
I would probably recommend this camera.
If you are looking in this price range,
I would definitely also
recommend checking out
the Fujifilm X-T3, but if
you already have Sonys,
I would probably just go with this one.
All right, so that's my two
cents on the Sony A6400.
I'd love to know what
you guys think about it,
especially if you tested it out.
So yeah, comment down below.
I'd love to hear what you guys think
and I'm excited to see what other cameras
come out this year, see ya guys.
(inspirational music)
