Moving from street photography to automotive videography

Seb64

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I’ve decided to make a switch to full frame videography from a Fuji X-T3 that I mainly used for photos. I would use the money from selling my Fuji gear to get into videography, so around 2300usd, and any extra if needed.

The X-T3 is great for photos, but I want to start filming more and more, with the focus being street automotive rollers and in the future filming racing events for cars and motorcycles. For this usecase I came to the conclusion that a full frame system is the better option, because of low light capabilities for evening and night shoots and better compatibility for video third party accessories compared to Fujifilm.

My roadblock right now is which is the better system between Panasonic S5ii, Canon R6 mk2, and Sony ZV-E1.

What I think I need is 4k60p uncropped (for the Panasonic I would use 6k30p open gate because full sensor filming is more important to me than 60fps), great stabilisation and autofocus and great lowlight.

My current top pick is the Sony, with the Canon a close second. The reason being the dynamic range is much better on the Sony from what I saw, and 4k120p could be really valuable when filming motorsport content. (posting to social media and in the future collaborating with racing circuits if possible)

What I would like to ask is: from somebody that is familiar with automotive/motorsport filming, what are the features that actually make a difference in content quality, and the best suited ecosystem for the industry in the 2-3k usd range? :)
 
First : I think you undersell the performance of APS-C cameras when it comes to video. There are some excellent APS-C options for video and your X-T3 is one of them. It has access to 10bit video which you can use with F-Log (which is a decent Log profile). It has a variety of codecs and record modes that will allow you to explore a lot of different things when it comes to videography.

Second : get a gimbal, this is unvaluable for car videography, especially rollers.

So, in your shoes that's what I would do : get a used gimbal (it's pretty cheap nowadays), start doing video work with your X-T3 (which is still a great videocam), that will give you a baseline of the things you actually want in a camera, and that will help you better for your future camera purchase than asking a forum to choose for you. And who knows, the X-T3 is an awesome video camera with a lot of video features, maybe it would end up being enough. And if not, that gives you a better understanding of the things to improve.

From the get go, I would say the S5II is the absolute highest value for a videographer, but it's neck and neck with the Sony FX30 in my eyes. The key point of these cameras is the ease of use of the interface for video, and the active cooling that allows you to record in the most intensive video types without overheating.
 
Thank you for the response. X-T3 actually did impress me with how good the videos turned out. The things that made me consider to change the system were: after I couldn’t make the autofocus stay constantly on a moving car, but I will have to tweak more the AF settings maybe; and that after buying a gimbal (if i can’t find a good deal second hand) for the entire cost of my Fuji gear, i could at that point just switch to a system better designed for videos.

I’ll keep an eye on some gimbal deals near me, worth testing before making a switch.
 

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