Budget Friendly Camera with Mic Input and IBIS? (Around $400 used?)

Off The Mark wrote:

PhotoTurtle wrote:

Off The Mark wrote:

Thanks for the reply.

Speaking of the G85...

I see it is on sale for $797 including the 12-60mm OIS Kit lens. I have a $200 credit at Adorama so that might work.

So now I have to decide if I go for the BMPCC4K as my A Cam, or for the GH5 as my A Cam and the G85 as my B cam / son's camera...

You're welcome.

It's up to you. That would still be about $200 more than you had specified. See the message from James and my reply to him. It looks like GX8 and E-M5 mark II would also be possibilities.

As for BMPCC4k vs GH5, I think it really depends on what kind of work you're hoping to do with it. The BMPCC seems more geared specifically to cinema-style video shooting, while the GH5 seems more geared to everyday, run-and-gun, documentary, etc style of video production, plus photography.

Yeah, you are right on both counts.

I am pretty undecided at the moment.

I currently shoot with sony a6500 (real estate stills and video) and I kind of hate the a6500. The usability (or lack thereof) drives me crazy. Plus the 8-bit video is in a very compressed codec and falls apart when doing basic color correction.

GH5 appeals to me for doing stills (although sony stills are excellent) and for using on a gimbal.

The BMPCC4K appeals to me for the sheer ability to recover over-exposed highlights and / or underexpose two stops and bring it up in post, even when using prores codec (if shooting at ISO 400). In real estate videos, we don't get a chance to light, so wide DR is a real problem.

Yeah, sony S Log has wide DR but it is a real pain to work with, and again, being both 8-bit AND highly compressed, it falls apart real easily unless you absolutely nail both the exposure AND the color / white balance.

The question about the budget-friendly camera is because if I move from Sony to M43, I would want an m43 camera for my son (to replace the a6000 / a5100 he uses, which are ok but not great cameras).

I probably need to think on this more...

Ah, ok, that's a pretty specific usage scenario, and I can see why having raw plus wide DR would be useful to you. It sounds like the BMPCC4K might actually be a better solution for you because of that, as long as you can use some external stabilization solution, like tripod, dolly, gimbal, etc. You would also probably want a separate camera for stills. Either the a6500 or go larger sensor maybe for the wide angle, resolution, and DR benefits (I think?). That's interesting to hear about those real world pitfalls of working with the a6500 by the way.