 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell here. We're going to be looking today at the state of the camcorder market with an emphasis on pro camcorders as it exists at the time I'm recording this video, which is the 20th of August 2022. Now I've done quite a number of videos about camcorders on this YouTube channel. I started out with the Canon Vixia HFR800, which was actually the first camera I bought. And about four to five months ago, I upgraded to a professional quality camcorder. I own the Canon XA40 and I absolutely love it. My only criticism is that the low light performance is not brilliant. And that's because it's a 1 over 2.3 CMOS sensor. But if you can afford a full one in sensor go for the Canon XA50. And I love camcorders. I'm one of a minority of folks on YouTube who will sing their praises for hours if given the opportunity. So I thought in this video, I would do a kind of synopsis of based on what's on bnh.com at the moment of who is making these things in 2022, late 2022, going into fall here. And what is, what is it that distinguishes camcorders from a couple of other adjacent product classes? So all this video is going to consist of is me going through bnh.com. So could you do this yourself? You could. But if you want to let me do the clicking, join along for the adventure. So something I really like about the way bnh do things is that they divide everything up into pro and consumer. And there's definitely kind of a hard gap between those two markets when it comes to camcorders. Consumer camcorders, I would say are even more or potentially the dying product category, because you know, if you ask who still uses camcorders, well, there's still very much industry standard in broadcast journalism, ENG camcorders, and we'll look at a couple of those ENG for those who haven't heard the term stands for electronic news gathering. And basically that's your really, really big camcorder. They have a, they have a name and that's the top end of the pro camcorder market. But looking at the consumer video, video camera market as bnh organizes it. So I've gone into the camcorder category, and then gone into consumer and look how small it is. And this is something about camcorders, that I think if you're, if you've decided to go down this route, as opposed to DSLR mirrorless is actually an advantage. Yes, you heard that right. There's nothing worse when you need something basic like a loaf of bread or milk, than going into a supermarket and having 200 different options. And it's quite interesting if we compare and I've opened up these pages in preparation, the narrow size of the modern camcorder market versus it's more glamorous DSLR and mirrorless, because if you type into YouTube now, you know, best YouTube camera for 2022 and the next year 2023, I promise you 80 to 90% is going to be recommending DSLR and mirrorless cameras. And even if you go out and you see other people shooting videos in the field, you're probably going to see folks with DSLR mirrorless. It's become more popular. Have a quick look at the numbers because I find this very interesting. Within the consumer video camera market in bnh, we have only 24 options. That sounds very small. DSLR 106 options, mirrorless 447 options. Now I'm using bnh here kind of as just a proxy for the general market. I realized that they don't have every mirrorless DSLR and camcorder in stock. But as a pretty well respected industry website, I think this is probably pretty, pretty representative. So it's a really small market. So within the consumer camcorder market in terms of the brands we have out there, which is listed up here at the top, I'm going to put myself out of the way for a moment, we have Canon, Hamilton, BUHL, JVC and Panasonic now and Sony. So I would say these are the main camcorder brands because these are the ones you're also seeing dominating the pro camcorder category. Again, Canon, JVC, Panasonic and Sony and that's only four. Now, of course, those aren't the only companies in the world who are still making camcorders, but they dominate. So within the consumer video camera market, now what's the difference between, I'm going to go through a few product categories today, what's the difference between a consumer camcorder and a pro camcorder. So basically it boils down to, I would say form factor. Now the truth is there's no hard and fast definition. So some folks would consider a pro camcorder probably not pro enough for their use cases. I'm just going to tighten up this microphone stand here. And others would consider, you know, consumer camcorder good enough to shoot pro video on, but it typically boils down to form factor. So if you take a look at these form factors for the consumer camcorders, I don't like, I hope that the term soccer mom isn't demeaning to anyone, but that's kind of what these get called or, you know, uncle at a barbecue, if you want the male equivalent, that kind of a thing. It's a body that has a flip out LCD built in monitor screen. And that's all it have. It often doesn't even have capability to take an external microphone. But if it does, it's probably going to be a 3.5 mil jack. Now if we graduate up to the professional camcorder market, have a look, this is quite interesting. One, you can see one to 30 of 62. So we haven't been hate to the time I'm recording this video, 62 pro camcorders, and 24 consumer camcorders. So that means that the, as the camcorder market contracts, we're seeing most contraction actually at the consumer camcorder level, because you're still strong industry demand for pro camcorders. So if anything's going to become obsolete, and this is always a question, our camcorders dying, whatever, I would say if anything's going to die, it's going to be the consumer ones. I don't see the pro camcorders dying because they're just so great for shooting on and so beloved by people working in broadcast media who use these things day in day out. Now, if you go into the professional camcorder market, we are seeing pretty much the same brands actually, it's an even smaller list. And we have the big four, if you want to call them that, here again, along with black magic. So we have Canon JVC Panasonic Sony. Now I'm interested to see what they're classifying as camcorders. So black magic have these guys as well as I thought it was going to be the black magic compact pocket cinema camera, whatever it's called. So in terms of your options here, today, if there is a filter here for 4k and BNH, you can choose 1080p capable or 4k. So I'm going to click on 4k, and I'm going to click on, actually, I'm not going to click on in stock. So these are the options. So the cheapest 4k capable camcorder is actually the number the camcorder I own. It's listed as the number one seller on BNH. It's the Canon XA40. Now let me just show you guys the kind of gap here between entry level compact pro camcorders, which is what I consider the Canon XA40 and ENG camcorders. Now just as there's no real kind of official difference between consumer and pro camcorder other than features you expect on a pro camcorder, which would be XLR, audio inputs, timecodes, STI, I put for those using them in broadcasting. I don't think the best of my knowledge is any hard and fast delineator between entry level pro camcorders and ENG suitable camcorders, but the gap in price is quite huge. You're going to go from starting here at the bottom of the 4k capable pro camcorder market, starting at about $1,600. We're going to see these jump all the way up to $20,000 for really big ENG. So that's a very sizable difference, of course. Now who's making these? So you've got some options from Canon. Canon have two series in the pro camcorder world, and I know the Canon range and not the others as well. The XA series and the XF series. So you can see this, the Canon XF605 is sort of the top of its pro camcorder offering here, and that guy clocks in at $4,700. So we're getting up to 5k, but in exchange for more money, we're getting a really big form factor, and we're getting that one inch CMOS sensor as opposed to the one over 2.3 that in camcorder world has often been industry standards. Now some other ones, I actually was considering, this was a little bit out of my budget, but I liked the look of this Panasonic because it's a 4k camcorder, and unlike the other ones, it actually comes with a built-in shotgun microphone. I think, I don't think this is just showing I'm actually not 100% sure about that, but you know, that's what it is. So more canons, more JVCs, and then black magic. So now I just want to talk a little bit about categories here. I'm going to skip over DSLR mirrorless and just talk about one interesting division, and that is what is the difference between a digital cinema camera and a camcorder. Now the best known digital cinema camera for folks who don't have Hollywood budgets is this one, the black magic pocket cinema camera commonly called the BPCC, this is the 4k, they've also got a 6k one, and someone on the videography subreddit, I described these and I thought it was a perfect description as a sensor in a box. These guys are basically the sensor, and you need to bring everything else, including the lens, versus in the camcorder world, it's not true that all camcorders have fixed lens, but the majority of them do, because when we get up to the very top of this market, we're going to see options like this one, in fact, that aren't going to come with a lens and their interchangeable lens, but typically for most camcorders, like this Panasonic, the best, they have a fixed lens with very, very wide focal range covered in it, and the best you can do is add on adapters, if you want to get UV filters or ND filters or ultra wide filters, so they fit onto the lens, but they're not actually lenses themselves, so that's the main distinction there. Going for something like this, the pocket cinema camera would tend to be used more for cinema making, cinematography, versus news gathering or documentary gathering. The beauty of camcorders is in the form factor, they tend to have buttons within physical reach, as opposed to within menus, and they're just designed to be great for run and gun, like the XA40, you put a shotgun in there, and everything, it's all in one package, make sure it's charged, make sure you've got battery, you're good to go, versus the black magic, you need your lens, you need some kind of cage around it to put a microphone on, so this is much more modular, and they're actually more expensive, if you look at the cost of something like the black magic pocket cinema camera, by the time you add on your lens, or your lenses, I did the numbers, it's going to end up costing you more than most of these camcorder options. So I'm just going to jump quickly, because this is pretty, I've covered pretty much all I wanted to say about where the market, how the market looks today, just want to show you guys, in fact, let's actually filter from high to low, so I can show you guys some ENG camcorders, so this is an example here, this is the Sony PXW Z750, and it's a shoulder mount broadcast camcorder, so that's kind of another way of saying ENG, right, they're big guys, they're designed to be carried on your shoulder. Here's another one, and then again, the point I made before, that not all camcorders have actually a lens on them, perfect example here being the Sony PXW Z450 4K shoulder mount has the sensor, but you need to bring the lens and look at the price of this bad boy, $25,000, so there is actually a lot of range in the camcorder pricing, we're still seeing ENG camcorders at this price point, including maybe this arguably the XF705 at $7,000, and the Sony XD cam I would say it's definitely qualifies as an ENG camcorder, that's at $7,000, likewise this Canon, you can see they're just bigger shoulder mount, that kind of a thing, but then as we drop down and price to $3,000, $2,000, we start getting into these, and I won't even call these, they're definitely still pro camcorders, you could use them for ENG absolutely, but they might be used by kind of college TV stations and rookie journalists and YouTubers versus professional broadcast media channels which are likely to have the budgets to go for these very expensive camcorders that have literally everything under the sun built into them. I hope that overview of the market was useful this summer, to answer the question on the title of this video, who's still making camcorders in 2022, mostly the big four of Canon, JVC, Panasonic, and Sony, it's definitely still a market, but it's a smaller market in many respects than the DSLR mirrorless, and within that contraction there is actually more pro camcorder options on the market today versus consumer, at least if BNH's current selection is anything to go by. Hope this video is interesting, if you're also a camcorder fan looking at your purchasing options. Thank you guys for watching, and if you want to get more videos from me about videography, camcorders, and other topics, do please consider subscribing to this YouTube channel. Thanks for watching.