When to Upgrade Gear as a Solo Filmmaker

If you’re a solo filmmaker like me, you’ve probably felt the urge to upgrade to the latest and greatest gear. First your camera, then the newest DJI camera drone, then your computer, monitor, gimbal, lights and… well you get the point. In this quick blog post, I wanted to share my experience with gear as a videographer living in Austin. I’m also a wedding videographer, so the most important thing when it comes to gear is reliability/redundancy. I need to have gear that can run all day, not overheat, not lose footage- and it needs to do that without me even thinking about it.

I’ll start by talking about cameras. I started out with a Nikon D7200 DLSR. Not a bad camera for taking photos, but definitely not optimized for video production. I quickly upgraded to the Sony a6600 when I first started to get paid shoots. This blew the Nikon out of the water and I was able to increase my production value a lot. The main limitation on an ASP-C camera like this is the dynamic range. 10-bit color depth makes a HUGE difference in compared to the 8-bit color depth that this Sony a6600 has. So I upgraded again. This time the Sony a7siii. And this is when my videos really started to shine. This camera in unbelievable as far as performance, reliability and image quality. The 10-bit color depth is night and day compared to 8-bit. I also started to shoot in S-LOG 3 instead of HLG, which gives you even more dynamic range, and more flexibility in post production.

I’m telling you all of this because the camera is probably the first thing you’re thinking about upgrading. And maybe it should be. But I’m here to tell you that the camera is just a tool used by cinematographers to bring their image to life. Lighting and composition matters a lot more than whatever camera you’re using. Even expensive 30K plus red cinema cameras can make a worse video than my old Nikon D7200 if the lighting and composition isn’t there. For me, I got really good benefit out of the 10-bit color depth and it makes sense to me to own this camera. But once you’re at this level, it doesn’t really make a huge difference what camera you have. Other aspects are more important.

Next, we’ll talk about drones. Kind of the same thing here. Choose a drone in your budget that has a decent size sensor, and ideally 10-bit color depth and that’s all you need. DJI makes some very expensive drones that record in Apple ProRes 422, and many other features. My pick; the Air 2s. It’s almost the same quality at 1/5 of the cost. Composition and lighting again are king.