 Hey guys welcome back to my YouTube channel this is Daniel Rosal here I want to record a video today about five pros and cons of using a good old camcorder to shoot video whether you're doing documentary work posting videos up on YouTube or even using it for client work or you're doing a mixture of all three and you are thinking about buying something such as my beloved Canon XA40 pro camcorder or something similar. So let's start with the pros and these are course just as I perceive them the main pro I think of one of the main pros of a camcorder is that it's kind of a complete package and you don't really need to do much in the way of accessorization but let's talk about lenses firstly so what typically camcorders and you know when you get to the top range of the camcorder in ENG this changes but at the kind of low end of camcorders both in consumer and the professional markets you're going to get a fixed lens camera that means that the lens sitting on top of the sensor is the lens and you can't change it now it doesn't mean you're totally hampered in terms of effects you can have on the lens even if you have a fixed lens camcorder like the Canon XA40 or the Canon XA series for that matter you can still put on you know wide angle adapters macro adapters fisheye lens adapters but the difference is that instead of being entire lenses they just kind of sit on top their lens adapters as opposed lenses you can also of course use UV filters if you want to play around with ND filters some of the pricier camcorders actually have built in physical ND filters but even if they don't have that like the XA40 you're still going to be able to pick up you know CPL filters different kinds of lens filters and change the image but you're definitely not going to have the versatility of a camera that's just a sensor and you bring your own lens now another major advantage of the camcorder form factor this is a very the XA40 which is a pro camcorder as I mentioned is a very typical pro camcorder form factor right you've got your top handle here which allows you it makes it really convenient to just kind of hold it or stabilize it with two points of your body like this you definitely look like either a news cameraman or I guess probably a news cameraman but the form factor that's popular for camcorders is actually a big advantage two real advantages to that one of them is that the bigger your camcorders get the heavier they tend to be and that sounds like a disadvantage but in some respects it's a it's an advantage because it makes it easier to stabilize the camcorder just with your body right it's got a good bit of mass and you just need to make sure the mass of the camcorder is positioned somewhere like on your shoulder or here you know that is basically going to keep it pretty stable now in terms of rigging options you know this camcorder is about I think a 1500 dollar camcorder and it may seem strange to say I think it's a bargain but I kind of also do think this camcorder is a bargain the more you use it the more you realize how much is under the hood for instance the pro audio top handle on the Canon XA series you've got two dedicated XLR inputs and you've got physical switches for controlling your gain toggling between manual and auto gain and you can even turn on or off the entire top handle and because we've got the space on this camcorder form factor we can put all these buttons at hands reach and that's we'll get to run and go later but that's another major advantage of camcorders I know why they're still super popular among ENG users okay another advantage of camcorders is that of course they are designed for video now digital cinema cameras are also designed for video stuff like the black magic pocket cinema camera but stuff like DSLR and mirrorless are clearly generally not intended for video so I wouldn't say videos in afterthought but the manufacturers first priority is packing them with good features for capturing images now you can do pretty much anything with anything these days right you can use a camcorder to take still images it's just not the right tool for the job you're you know you're having a big bulky thing for no reason you can just get a little point and shoot camera um so that's a big advantage that you kind of see that in terms of the features that camcorder manufacturers bring for instance again coming back to my camcorder the two dedicated XLR jack something you will not typically find on DSLR and mirrorless if they have an XLR at all and if they don't you're probably using adapters and that kind of just makes it a whole bit a whole lot more complicated to to shoot with that brings me on perfectly to point four that camcorders are amazing for what's called run and gun in other words if you just need to have a decent system for capturing video that you can quickly get out I can have this guy up and running in literally two or three seconds I just flip on the on switch flip down the hood and we're good to go um I've also got a shotgun microphone always attached to this in the holster and that's again a kind of very classic camcorder thing I do commonly use this with wireless XLR systems but I know that if I don't have time to rig up rig up a handheld microphone or rig up a wireless lav mic the shotgun's going to be there and getting me much better audio capture than internal audio and that goes across DSLR mirrorless camcorders the internal audio is almost always going to be pretty drastically inferior to what you can capture with a dedicated microphone now the fifth advantage I scribble down on my notes for this and it's not going to sound like an advantage but in my opinion it actually kind of is you actually have less you've less a good deal less options in the camcorder market I made a video about a month ago looking at bnh uh the very well known uh video store looking at their options for um did DSLR cameras mirrorless cameras and camcorders and what I found was that in the pro camcorder market we're talking about 64 models at top and 32 if you put in uh 4k shooting capability as a requirement so it's a much much smaller market than DSLR and mirrorless because they've just exploded in popularity and that might sound like it is advantage but I would actually contend it's kind of an advantage because if you have a budget in mind you have a couple of features in mind you may be choosing only between four or five camcorders sony jvc panasonic are really really well represented in the space so you might be assessing you know two or three options versus you know spending ages going through spec sheets and trying to determine the best DSLR or mirrorless for your video work okay let's get on to the cons here um in this video here's the first con that I never expected once I bought a pro camcorder uh but it's true everyone thinks you're working for a tv station I'm not kidding um I made a video last night at a wine festival here in Jerusalem and I was you know asking a couple of the guys selling wine would they like to be interviewed and a couple of them were like which station you know good for you they're like what station are you and it was the only one I told them it was for a youtube video that they agreed to be interviewed the second thing uh that you'll notice when people assume you're working for tv or the professional media is that you get photo bombed like crazy because apparently everyone wants to get on tv even if they're 40 or 50 years old so um one and this is actually I'm not just making this joke to kind of hit around one thing I would say is that having a small camcorder like the femi uh pamp two which I have sitting here on my desk I mean if you compare this in size to this it's there's and this is a compact camcorder technically when you're shooting on private property you need to ask the permission of someone to film there but show me a youtuber who has never filmed somewhere uh you know just just asked for forgiveness rather than permission it's a lot easier was this the moment you whip out something even this size out of your gear bag everyone in the vicinity is going to assume you're working for the tv news and people are probably not going to be very happy with you filming stuff without asking their permission so that is it's actually a serious disadvantage in my opinion if you're a little bit shy like I am about filming in public on the other hand it's a great way to get over it because everyone's going to stare at you using a big camcorder okay um number two is actually kind of related to that point they're definitely bulkier and this is again the XA XA series this is about as compact as pro camcorders has ever gotten but they're still a lot busy a lot bigger than DSLR and mirrorless with the kind of tidy lens on them so sometimes that I might filming video in order to grab my camcorder gear I really need to fill up a backpack you know to get a couple of extra power backs to get some lighting in it and sometimes I do kind of wish um I had something as easy to work with um as a as a camera now one disadvantage this is going to be kind of a sub point is that when it comes to gimbals you're going to have actually less options with camcorders because if you look at your typical gimbal like the DJI series of gimbals the Ronin series they just about were able to work with my old camcorder the Vixia HFR 800 I don't think there is any gimbal that's going to actually fit this camcorder it's just it's just too big for it that modern consumer gimbals are intended for box like camcorders now there are other stabilization systems on the market but they're a lot more expensive so you might need to look into doing something like uh steady cams or physical stabilization and not using those nice electric gimbals again I would say there's actually a lot of beauty to be able to learning and I'm working on this every video I make I'm trying to get better learning how to stabilize with your body two or three points of contact and that's kind of how camcorder operators have always had to do it so again you could see they're sort of an advantage and a disadvantage here at the same time uh jumping up to three uh my third con is that for the price you pay to get a camcorder you're going to actually get less features your money is not going to go as far as it would as it would buying a DSLR are mirrorless for instance in order for me to get into the one inch CMOS sensor range on a camera I need to pay a lot less money than I do for this this only has a one over 2.3 um another feature that you're going to have to pay a little bit over definitely over a thousand dollars to get in camcorder land is 4k capability now the reason for that is that actually broadcast journalism still mostly runs on 1080p even though the industry is slowly shifting towards using 4k so given that 1080p has been the industry standard for a while it's proving slow to dislodge versus DSLR mirrorless that are more kind of consumer facing technologies for video use you're going to find you're going to get your 4k you're going to get your one inch sensor for better low light performance at a lower price point than in camcorder land that can feel frustrating but again I would say that look with the camcorder you're getting you may be losing out on a couple of those features or paying more for them but you're getting a hell of a lot of features in terms of pro audio mixing uh sdi outpost 3.5 mil in and all the different capabilities time code all the different capabilities that are kind of expected in the professional realm for video okay um for con you're going to lose the ability to play around with lenses a lot of DSLR and um and mirrorless videographers really like different lenses to try to get more cinematic looks for their footage and obviously if you have a fixed lens camcorder like the xa40 you're just not going to be able to change lens as I said you're limited to what you can do with adapters and filters so if you're really interested in getting cinematic footage and playing around with lenses that's one disadvantage in the camcorder world okay final con to wrap up this video um and now this is going to again it sounds one that's kind of fluffy but hear me out here you'll meet less video you'll meet less camcorder people when you're going out shooting so most of my friends who do video stuff shoot with mirrorless camcorders and you know you'll be out shooting and someone will recognize your camera and you can talk about the camera now the point I'm trying to make here is that the user community for camcorders I would say is probably smaller at least among the non-professional side so you're going to have less stuff like internet forums Facebook groups other places to meet like-minded people who are using the tool for video just simply because there's less I would argue this probably in the consumer realm at least less folks out there shooting with camcorders that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of camcorder people out there the resources I love the videography subreddit which is our videography is super good I really like that community can and have some for for their users and the people who like camcorders I've noticed are really loyal to camcorders so you'll meet you'll I think you'll probably meet more really enthusiastic people in the camcorder space but that is just something to perhaps put at the back of your mind I hope that's been useful if you're looking at trying to size up what is going to be the best option for your videography needs whether it's going to be a camcorder or whether it's going to be a DSLR or mirrorless there are definitely pros and cons to each personally I've gone with camcorders for my whole video career to date even though my wife has a nice mirrorless camera and I've shot a few videos was that just to learn how to use it but personally my needs are much better served by camcorders than DSLR mirrorless or even actually cinema cameras those are kind of the big three categories I hope that that video has been useful if you do want to get more videos for me about videography and other subjects like this do please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel and thank you very much for watching