Video Blogging – What’s the Best Camera to Use?

What the heck does it mean to vlog anyway?

Blogging, as you know, is expressing your thoughts via text.  If you’re a natural writer and words flow from you easily then blogging can be fun. For someone like my husband who is NOT a natural writer, blogging is a challenge.

Something that is not a challenge for him…talking. Which is why he has a new found love for this little thing they call vlogging.

For those of you who are not familiar with the term “vlog”, the only difference is that instead of expressing your thoughts via text, you express your thoughts via video.

That’s right.

Sitting in front of a camera and letting the whole world see you talk.

It can be a little frightening at first, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually a lot of fun.  If any of you despise writing as much as my husband does, then I promise you will truly love vlogging.

One of the biggest obstacles preventing people from getting started with vlogging is they don’t know which camera to use.

How do you get started?

There are a lot of obstacles that he encountered whenever he first wanted to dabble into vlogging. The first video that he ever filmed was done using a flip camera that we borrowed from my parents. It wasn’t HD, but it did the trick.

Nowadays almost every camera that you get is going to be some form of HD so you don’t have to worry about that.  When he realized that he wanted to really get serious into video blogging, he set out on acquiring camera after camera after camera until he  found the one that he wanted.

*Insert snide comment: Wife does not always agree with the camera after camera after camera purchase. Of course unless husband is okay with the handbag after handbag after handbag purchase? Just sayin’.

The camera we use now is on the pricier side, but you can’t deny the quality.  It’s slightly amazing. And by slightly, I mean extremely. However; you don’t need an amazingly expense camera to shoot video.

The purpose of this post is to show you all of the different cameras you can use to film your vlog and let you compare the quality of each. I went through a lot of our old videos so that I could show you what it looks like when you are filming with each one.

So…let’s take a look.

1. The webcam

The first HD camera he bought was the Logitech Quick Cam Pro 9000.  We bought this one on Amazon for around $65.

 As you can see by the video below {How Do You Define Success}, it has really good video quality and it also has a built-in mic so that as long as you’re fairly close to it, the audio is really good.

He used this both on our home and work PC, but unfortunately it’s not compatible with the Mac and right now we are operating on all Apple products.  If your comfortable sitting in front of your computer and shooting a quick vlog (and you use a PC), this is a great choice.

2.  Webcams built in to your computer

If you have a laptop that has a built-in webcam or if you’re an Apple lover like us and have an iMac at home, you can always utilize the web camera there.

The video below {Thursday Latelies – Sleepy Momma Style} will show you what it looks like when you shoot with the webcam built in to the iMac. If you’re a stickler for video quality like my husband, then you’ll appreciate that the webcam is HD quality.

We also use the webcam on our MacBook Pro’s; however, his MacBook Pro webcam is not HD (mine is) and I do think you can tell a significant difference. If you have the choice, I would highly recommend sticking with the HD quality webcams.

3.  The camera in your pocket

The iPhone has become more and more popular as a video camera. It’s amazing what you can do with it. I’ve seen professional video shots using this small device.

Jeff and I both have the iPhone 4 and the video quality is very very good. I’ve heard even better things about the iPhone 4S and if you’re a video junkie like my hubby, he’s been salivating over that thing for months. I’m making him be patient and trying to make him realize that the iPhone 5 will probably have even better upgrades, so he needs to wait.

Below you can see one video {Financial Rant – Department Store Card Offers} that was shot in a mall in Chicago while the other video {Bottle Rant} was shot at our home.

The one thing I would say about shooting with your iPhone is that my husband was holding his phone horizontally, where I was holding it vertically. It looks much better when you don’t have the black space on the sides (lesson learned for me) so try and shoot with it horizontally if you can.

4.  Flip it up

The HD flip cam was a very popular camera at the time he shot this video. Unfortunately, Cisco has discontinued them, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t get one at an affordable price.

This video {How to Make Videos} is actually at our home when he was showing people how he films his videos and he used the flip cam to demonstrate. The flip cams have great video quality.

If I had to say anything negative about them, is that it does not have an external mic jack. Depending on where you’re filming, you’ll see what I mean when you don’t have the ability to have an external mic jack because the audio can be poor. Audio is everything.

The video quality can be subpar, but if they can’t hear you then the video is worthless.

5.  Easy to use & offers it all

Realizing that we needed better audio, he was able to get his hands on a Kodak zi8.  Both the Kodak and the flip cameras video quality are almost identical, but the big key difference is an external mic jack which the Kodak zi8 offers and the flip cam does not.  We bought a $9 Lavalier microphone on Amazon and it has made all the difference in our videos.

The first video {Financial Blogger Conference} below was shot at the financial blogger conference in Schaumberg, Illinois, in conjunction with the external mic jack.

As you can see the video quality is awesome and the audio quality is just as good. Keep in mind that this was in a hotel lobby that was very crowded.  I’m pretty confident if he had used the flip cam, it would have been very hard to hear the people he was interviewing.

The second video {Financial Rant – Making Pennies into Millions} is one of my financial rant videos that I shot at my house.  The one thing I love about both the flip and the Kodak is that no matter what happens, you’re always in focus.  So whether you’re three feet in front of the camera or five feet in front of the camera, you don’t have to worry about looking being blurry.

6.  Canon – the mother of all cameras

If you’re just getting started into video blogging, then all the methods I listed before will work just fine. Trust me.

If you’re a stickler for top-notch quality, which unfortunately my husband is, then you may want to dig a little deeper in your pockets because top notch quality does not come cheap.

We had a Canon T1i that took great pictures and also had video capabilities, but the only downside was it did not have an external mic jack.  As you can imagine, whenever he saw that the Canon T3i had both an external mic jack and a view screen that would flip to the side so that he could see himself when he was recording, he was sold instantly.

We were able to get an awesome deal on the Canon T3i so we decided to upgrade.

Below are three examples of shooting with the Canon all using different lenses.

Let me explain.

The first video {Mutual Fund Explained} was shot with two different lenses. The first one is the 50mm lens which I strongly recommend.  The lens itself is only about $100 and it does an awesome job of bringing the subject (in this case my husband) extremely in focus and blurring out the background. It really makes the video quality pop.

At the 1:10 mark of this video, he switched to the standard 18-55 mm lens which is still good quality so you can see the difference.

The second video {Week 6 of the 90 Day Video Blogging Challenge} he is also using the 50mm lens. Once again, you can see how he’s in focus and how the lamp and the curtains behind him are blurred.  What can we say?  We love this look.

The last video {Stop and Smell the Roses} is one that I filmed recently using the Canon, but I went with the 18-55 mm lens.  I  am still in focus and there is a slight blur in the background.

As you can see, all three qualities are phenomenal.

Quick note, when my husband first told me that he had to have the T3i, I laughed and told him he always has to have the best of the best.  After I just shot my last video, I confessed to him that I would never shoot another video using the webcam or the Kodak.

So now, of course, he loves to tease me about how he is always right. Pssst. I hate admitting that.

Just in case you’re not completely comfortable putting your yourself on the big screen, another option you have is purchasing a screen-capturing software such as Camtasia or ScreenFlow.

This gives you the ability to film what is on your screen, which is what we  have used to film some of the tutorials that you see here on this blog.  You don’t have to include your face in the bottom, but it is an option.

If you want to do a recording of just your screen, that is an option too.

Note that all our videos are currently edited in iMovie which comes standard on any Apple computer.  That’s a common question that we get.  If you don’t have iMovie and you’re running on a PC, I’ve heard decent things about Windows Movie Maker.  I don’t think it has all the bells and whistles of iMovie, but it will still get the job done.

Although I haven’t experimented with it yet, once you upload your videos to YouTube, it also has editing capabilities.  They are limited, but it does allow you to add a little bit of flare to your videos.

I think the most important thing for you to realize…you don’t have to have the BEST camera on the market. Any of these cameras will work just fine. The key is to just get behind the camera and press record.

Are you considering getting started video vlogging?  If not, what’s holding you back?  Share any comments below.

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Tagged as: Choosing a Camera, Video, Video Blogging, Vlog, Vlogging, What's the Best Camera to Use