I Test A lot of Cameras….Here’s What I ACTUALLY Use

Indexed: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]As a YouTuber, I get the opportunity to test and use a lot of cameras. And I feel like in those videos or those projects where I use and test these cameras, I'm not always explicitly saying I either rent this camera or I'm just using it for testing purposes. So, I figured in this video I could talk about the cameras that I actually use on a day-to-day so you can be more informed on the things that I like, things that I don't like in cameras and the reason why I actually do use these cameras that I do use because like I said, I get an opportunity to use pretty much any camera and I could buy pretty much any camera. So, this can be really insightful for somebody. Let's get into it. The first camera we're going to be talking about is my workhorse. The camera that I use for pretty much everything that you guys see on this YouTube channel, unless stated otherwise, and that's the Sony A7C Mark II. This camera is hilarious because I remember the first time I tested this camera. I was confused. In that video, I said, "Who is this camera for?" I just didn't understand the camera because Sony had the Sony A74 and this was like a mini version of that. But when I tested this camera, I immediately understood like, huh, this camera might actually be perfect for me. So, let's talk about the use cases of this camera.

[00:01:07]What do I use it for? I pretty much use this camera for everything. YouTube videos, talking head videos like this, Instagram reals, photography, short film, short visualizers, documentary pieces, music videos, you name it. I use this camera for pretty much everything.

[00:01:21]And that's one of the biggest reasons why I like it a lot. It's so freaking versatile on so many levels. Now, with that said, let's talk about the things that I like about this camera. Before I get into the first thing, I kind of got to give y'all a backstory on me. Before I got the Sony A7C Mark II, I primarily use cinema cameras, and that's because a lot of my work was centered around doing music video production. So, I figured I needed a bigger camera to kind of facilitate that part of my career. But, [music] as of lately, I've just been doing a whole lot of content, and this camera made a lot more sense for me. My issue with cameras has always been trying to sit between this balance of bigger cinema cameras or smaller cameras. I realized that I really enjoy the functionality of bigger cameras like cinema cameras. I love built-in indie filters. I love button customization. I love shutter angle. I love audio inputs.

[00:02:10]I just love cinema cameras. But I feel like for filming myself, they can be very cumbersome. So, I've been trying to find a camera that is a little bit smaller that facilitates a lot of these things I like about the cinema camera, but compromise is just enough for me to enjoy the image from a small camera, and I feel like this is the camera for me.

[00:02:28]Now, with all of that rambling out of the way, the first thing that I like about the A7C Mark II is that it's compact. I love the fact that this camera is so freaking small. But not only that, it's compact and I actually enjoy the image from it. So, I feel like it has the right amount of compromises for me, especially for the line of work that I'm currently doing, which is a lot of content creation. I do a lot of different things. Sometimes I'm going through the airport and I'm vlogging.

[00:02:53]Sometimes I'm doing a talking head like this. Sometimes I'm filming a short dock piece. And sometimes I'm even shooting a music video. And I love the fact that a camera this small can facilitate all of these different spaces that I sometimes work in. But I always work in here and I love it in this space as well. Hopefully that made sense. I love the size of this camera. Now, while we're on the topic of the things that I always do, I film myself pretty much 98% of the time. It's just me making these videos that y'all see on this YouTube channel and on my Instagram account. And with that being said, I need great autofocus. And the autofocus on the Sony A7C Mark II is just impeccable. It's so much peace in knowing that when you're filming yourself, if you point the camera at yourself and you press record, the autofocus is just going to catch you.

[00:03:35]And this is the camera for me. The autofocus on here is just good. any scenario that I put myself in, whether I'm using a telephoto lens, whether I'm using a wide angle lens, whether it's low light, whether it's overexposed, [music] this camera just works. The autofocus on it is so good. The next thing that I really like about this camera is the footage. The footage just looks good. I love the fact that you have great dynamic range. The file sizes aren't massive. Whenever I go out and film anything on this camera, I bring it back here, I drop it into my editor, I drop my everyday cinema lot on top of it. Nine times out of 10, it's going to look amazing with just minor tweaks in some instances. If you love any of the footage and the way that it looks in this video, this is all graded with my brand new everyday Cinema L. I'll roll a promo for it at the end of the video, but if you're interested, it's going to be a link down in the description below.

[00:04:21]But the footage from the A7C Mark II just looks good. You put it in Sony SLOG 3, you turn the autofocus on, you just get a good image. Man, I just love the way that it looks. It's crispy. Like I said, the file sizes aren't massive.

[00:04:33]It's a good mix of being convenient but also satisfying my personal need for my footage to look good. The next thing that I really like about the Sony A7C Mark II is the price. [music] You get great quality footage without breaking the bank. I'm a person who just does not like to spend a lot of money on cameras.

[00:04:51]understand in this camera market that we're in right now, whatever tier you land in, whether it's beginner friendly full-frame or whether you go up to intermediate full-frame to micro cinema to full cinema, all of these cameras look good. [music] So, I love the fact that you can achieve a great image inside of this camera. You can take great photos inside of this camera. You can create great content on this camera, yet it doesn't break the bank. I truly do feel like this is one of the best cameras that any upcoming creator can purchase right now and it will give you an image that you love and it won't break the bank and it's not a massive camera. And with all of those really good things that I said about this camera, there are some things that I don't like about it. The first has to be the [music] screen. It's not an amazing screen. It's not a unusable screen, but me being spoiled and being able to test so many different cameras, one thing that I always notice going back to my actual cameras that the screen is just not that good. So, I got to put that in their negatives. And another thing that I don't like about this camera is that when you film in 4K and you want to do slow motion, you're going to have a crop on that footage and it makes it annoying sometimes when you're trying to input that slow motion into [music] a project because now you got to do a reframing or you got to switch your lens to get that focal length that you had when you were in full frame nons slow-mo. But other than that, I think this camera is amazing.

[00:06:06]And [music] I would recommend this camera nine out of 10 times to anybody.

[00:06:10]I think it's going to be really hard for me to get rid of this camera in the future. like it might be another camera that I add to the kit for a different purpose. But as far as replacing this camera, I see this camera in my kit for the foreseeable future. It just checks so many boxes for me. And when I want to be lightweight and on the go and still create great cinematic images, [music] this camera does it so good. Let's talk about the next camera, which is the DJI Osmo Action [music] 6. Thing about this camera that's really funny is that it almost didn't make its way into my kit.

[00:06:38]I had been using the Osmo Nano for a really long time, which is a detachable camera that you can separate from the monitor and get wireless viewing and also just mounted as a necklace uh into your hat. It's a very small, lightweight camera, and I love the form factor of that camera. The thing that I didn't like about that camera is that [music] you couldn't replace the battery in it.

[00:06:58]Essentially, when this camera dies, you can't use it anymore. And for me, I found myself in a lot of situations where it's like, dang, I'm filming behind the scenes and I need a [music] little bit more juice to be able to continue to use this camera, but I just couldn't. So, ultimately, I ended up switching to the Osmo Action 6. So, what exactly do I use this camera for? My biggest use case for the Osmo Action 6 as of lately has been behind the scenes content. I do a lot of behind the scenes content, whether it's for Instagram res, whether it's for showcasing you guys on YouTube and my projects. I just needed a camera to do behind the scenes content, but I also didn't want that camera to be [music] super complicated to use or even super complicated to process and post. I love the fact that this camera is super easy. I can just point it at myself while I'm doing things and press record and this camera checks the box for that perfectly. And another use case for the Osmo Action 6 has just been in situations where I want a semi-professional look that I can input into projects, but I don't want to fiddle with using my actual camera. This could be scenarios like getting a car mount shot or getting a unique angle where I wouldn't necessarily be able to fit a [music] big camera or in reckless situations where I want to like mount a camera to a bike or something like that.

[00:08:08]The Ozel Action 6 works perfectly [music] for that. So, with those use cases out of the way, what are the things that I like about the Action 6?

[00:08:14]The first has to be the ease of use. I love this camera because it's so easy to use. The stabilization on it is amazing.

[00:08:21]And a lot of the times I literally just set it up and press record and let the exposure and the white balance be at auto. You press record, you are going to get the shot. And I love how easy this is. When I film behind the scenes for this visualizer that I did a couple weeks ago, I literally just set this thing on the light stand and press record and just let it run for like 20, 30 minutes. I just kept moving it around and it made it so simple for me to capture what was happening. I didn't have to think about it while I was actually doing my project. The next thing that I really like about the Action 6 is that as easy and as simple as this camera is to use in all of those auto settings, if you want to really dial it in and get a professional look, you can do that on this camera as well.

[00:08:59]I love the versatility in that aspect because like I said, there are situations where I want to use a smaller camera that I don't necessarily care about in reckless situations and be able to match that footage to footage from my actual camera. And the Action 6 does that really well. The next thing that I really like about the Action 6 is just the overall ecosystem inside of DJI.

[00:09:18]When I'm filming behind the scenes, if I need audio, I can literally just pull out a DJI mic and it'll connect directly to the Action 6. You also have the different bundles from the Action 6. The one that I have includes the three different batteries that come in a charging case. Just the entire DJI ecosystem makes it really easy for me to be able to use this in whatever scenario I need. If I'm blogging, I need to connect a microphone, I could do that quick. DJI has their mount that connects to all of their cameras. So, any of my previous action cameras that I've used, I got these different mounts to be able to mount the camera in different places.

[00:09:48]The DJI ecosystem just makes it really easy to use this camera. It's not many things more annoying than editing an entire video just to realize all of the audio at the end of it is messed up.

[00:09:58]So, this is the re-recording. Let's get back into it. Now, one avenue of content that I've been thinking about exploring, but I've been conflicted about is streaming. When you hear that, you probably thinking like IRL streaming.

[00:10:11]Not really that, more like behind the scenes streaming. I love doing behind the scenes on this channel because it gives y'all so much insight. But me thinking about [music] being able to remove the editing part and just showing y'all in live time what I'm actually doing sounds really cool. The problem with that though is if you're streaming while you're working, you don't have time to be thinking about streaming because you need to be focused on working. And I think that this camera that I'm about to talk about comes in clutch for this specific scenario. All right, so this is the OBS Tiny 3. It's a 4K webcam that gets as close to using an actual camera as I've ever seen. It's equipped with a gimbal. That means you can track your every move with a simple hand gesture, even a voice command using AI. It has a 1 over 2.8 in sensor, so you can actually get shallow depth of the field on this webcam, which is wild.

[00:10:54]It has a stereo microphone system, but you can also pair it with this wireless microphone. And it also has seamless integration with apps like Stream Deck, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and more.

[00:11:03]Let me just show you what this is all about. A large part of me creating these YouTube videos happens in this house.

[00:11:08]Whether I'm in my office doing a ideation, writing scripts, whether I'm at this white table behind me filming B-roll of a product, whether I'm in my garage doing lighting setups on backdrops, or whether I'm just in my living room filming cool B-roll of myself, I figure I could use the Osbot to film and do live streams directly to YouTube and Instagram so y'all can get that instant spark of inspiration and information. and basically my thought process when creating my YouTube videos.

[00:11:35]So this is what it looks like and this is what it would be like. So you know right now I don't have tracking on. You wouldn't be able to, you know, follow me around the room if I didn't have the Osbot. But I can literally just throw [music] my hand up like that. And now we tracking like follow me, you know, just come with me. Let me let me show you something real quick. So over here we got my A7C Mark II. And I'm going to start recording on here so y'all can see what this looks like when it's tracking me. You know, we should be on the A7C Mark II right now. Super smooth, fluid movements, and we can even adjust the tracking speed to, you know, track me at the speed that I want. We can adjust the zoom on the track. A bunch of really cool stuff. If you noticed, we switched angles. Y'all are no longer on my Mac Studio, but you're in a different part of the room, which is another benefit of this Osbot Tiny 3. On the bottom of it, it has a/420 thread. So, if you don't want to be mounted to a computer screen, you can literally mount it to anything.

[00:12:30]Like right now, y'all are mounted to a tripod. So, if I'm doing BTS in this room and I want to capture different elements of the behind thes scenes process and me creating stuff, I can move this around and be in different places and get different angles and get different details of the process of me creating videos, which is really cool.

[00:12:47]Now, while the quality of this webcam is great for it being a webcam, I'm aware that it's not going to be able to instantly cut between my Sony A7C Mark II and this without you noticing a difference. But that's not what it's about when it comes to behind the scenes. I'm literally just trying to capture the process of me making stuff.

[00:13:04]What I was referring to earlier when I talked about this camera being as close as you could possibly get to an actual camera, a lot of that had to do with the things that you can adjust inside of the software. So, let me show you those because it's a little wild. So us as filmmakers, we're used to exposure triangle, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, all that stuff like that. You have focus settings, you have exposure settings. You see, you can adjust your shutter speed, your ISO. So if you don't want to use auto exposure, which is here and works perfectly fine, but if you want to dial things in, especially like for me, I'm in a studio setting right now, so I know I got control light in front of me. I know I got a light behind me. I know I got windows and I want this to look as good as possible. I can just adjust my shutter speed, my ISO and all that stuff like that, as well as my white balance and even my contrast settings and stuff like that to really dial this image in to get it how I want it to look, which is actually really cool. You can adjust the view. So, I can literally just grab and move this around. And now we got like almost a 360 view of my my office. You can obviously still throw your hand up and get that uh that tracking, which is cool. You can see that that box that lit up around me.

[00:14:13]Beyond that, you have a bunch of different AI settings for the webcam itself. You can adjust the auto zoom where you want it to automatically zoom.

[00:14:19]You got your tracking speed right here.

[00:14:21]Another really cool thing about the Tiny 3 is it has a lot of different hand gestures and voice controls as well. You can adjust those in the settings, the ones that you do want to use, what you do want to say, and how it actually adjusts the camera itself. So, with all of those settings, there are tons of things that you can adjust on this webcam to make it as close to an actual camera as possible. If you're interested in getting in a streamer like I am, you want to upgrade your current streaming situation, or you just want to have a high quality webcam for online meetings, the OBS Tiny 3 is a great option. They also have a light version of this, which is a bit cheaper, has a bit less features, but it's also a great option.

[00:14:57]I'm going to leave links to both of those down in the description below for anybody interested. Let's get into my next camera. Now, this next camera is going to be the iPhone. Now, I was going to specifically put the iPhone 17 Pro Max because that's what I'm currently using, but for me, I feel like all iPhones kind of just fit in the exact same space. My use case for iPhone all the time is literally just freezing the moment. I just need to capture it. I'm not thinking about quality. I'm thinking about still being in the moment, but having the convenience to be able to capture that so I can look back on it when I need to or integrate it into a project. Last year I got an all expense paid trip to China and throughout that I was doing a lot of work and so I wasn't necessarily able to bring my big camera with my big lens and a tripod. So I just brought my iPhone everywhere and I filmed everything. I wasn't thinking about Apple log. I wasn't thinking about shallow depth of field. I was literally just thinking about capturing this moment. And I think that's the biggest thing that I absolutely love about the iPhone. The next thing I really love about the iPhone is while it freezes the moment and it captures it for me to be able to reflect and look back on, I feel like it does this without taking me out of the moment. The thing about the iPhone and the way that I typically use it is I just pull it out of my pocket, I swipe to the right, it opens up the camera, and I just press the record button and I get that quick clip of that quick moment. Whether I'm at my son's birthday party and I'm recording him blowing out candles, whether I'm in China doing some life-changing traveling or something super sentimental happening in my life and I don't want to be super intrusive to the people that I'm filming. I love how quick and easy the iPhone is. The next thing I really love about the iPhone is that while I use it this way, if I need to get professional, I can absolutely do that. It's nothing to open up the Blackmagic camera app, turn on OpenGate, turn on Apple Log 2, and get some great compositions and get footage that can easily fit within a project that I'm currently working on and not even have the viewer know that I filmed it on the iPhone. It's insane that you can film ProRes RAW, you can film Apple Log 2, you can film Open Gate. So, the iPhone has absolutely no problem with being professional if I ever need to put it in that setting.

[00:16:53]Another thing I really love about the iPhone is the versatility with lenses. I love action cameras and I talked about my love for my Action 6, but it doesn't match the iPhone when it comes to versatility. If I need to get a telephoto shot on the iPhone, I can get that. If I need to focus on something really close, I can get a macro shot. I just love the versatility in the lenses in the iPhone. I think that it adds to the experience of filming with it a lot.

[00:17:14]And the next thing I love about the iPhone is that it's always on you. You never have to worry about not being able to capture a shot. You always have your iPhone in your pocket. you can just pull it out, take the quick photo, take the quick video clip, and you always have that stored on you. Now, while I love the iPhone, it obviously has its problems. And the biggest one for me is that it's an iPhone, and that means it has so many other things going on with it. You have emails, you got notifications, you got text messages.

[00:17:41]It's just something that you don't want to use for filming. And that's why when I do use it, I tend to use it in spurts.

[00:17:46]It's not something that I plan to take out with me and rig it out with a cage.

[00:17:50]Even though I've tried all these things for my YouTube channel, I just don't enjoy doing that because the other aspects of the iPhone being a phone make that very difficult to do at times. And the last and final thing that I don't like about the iPhone is that ultimately if you want to capture the best possible quality, you have to use the back camera, which means you can't see yourself. It's just bad for monitoring.

[00:18:08]So, while I think the iPhone is amazing for vlogging and capturing quick clips, if you need to see what's going on on the phone, it makes it very hard to do because you can't see when you use the back cameras, especially when you're filming yourself. If you guys like the way the footage looked in this video, make sure you guys check out my brand new Everyday Cinema L. It's formatted for a bunch of different cameras and it [music] gets you to a very professional cinematic look with very minimal editing. Most of the time, it's just drag and drop. I use it for all of my content and [music] I love it. I'm going to promo for that right now. The problem with LUTs is they're way too situational. This is why I made the everyday cinema [music] L. It looks good everywhere, every time. Indoors, outdoors, cloudy, sunny, artificial lighting, low light. It just looks good [music] and it's pretty much instant. I tested this look and formatted it for Sony, Canon, Fuji, and even iPhone. It's also three variations of this [music] L to fit your temperature preference, and it even includes a Da Vinci Resolve, power grade for more in-depth adjustments. I use this look on all of my content. [music] If you want your footage to look as good as mine's, make sure you check out the Everyday Cinema Lab.