Are you trying to find ways to improve the quality of your videos? Have you been using your smartphone or webcam to record your videos so far? This is a great start but if you are wondering about up leveling to a more professional camera then read on…

There are several types of equipment for your smartphone such as lenses, mics, and tripods to improve the video quality for smartphone video recordings. However, with the current technology no smartphone with all the extra equipment is able to match the quality produced from a DSLR camera.

If you are serious about creating videos and wish to create more professional content, getting a DSLR camera is a wise investment because they offer more options and better quality than your smartphone. These options include adjusting frame rate, aperture, shutter speed, white balancing, and resolution size. All of these settings are important to customize accordingly when filming video.

In today’s article, we’ll be discussing three entry level DSLR cameras that are known for their ease of use and simple to learn menu system. Each DSLR camera listed comes with a kit lens that ranges in size for each camera.

Canon Rebel T7i

The Canon Rebel series are great cameras for beginners because of their simple menu interface that helps people get familiar with DSLR cameras. The menu interface is touch screen, making it straightforward to make changes to your settings without having to navigate through endless menus by pressing buttons. The screen is also rotatable, making it easy to film yourself because you are able to look at the screen when it is flipped.

In the Canon Rebel T7i they have increased their video recording quality to 1080p and 60ps. This enables you to film slow motion footage because of the higher frame rate. It also features Dual Pixel auto-focus that can focus on a subject and maintain it in focus even if the subject is moving closer or farther away from the camera.

The main drawback with the Canon Rebel is that the audio quality with microphones contains white noise in the background. White noise is that static hiss sound in audio recordings. You will have to manually clean up the audio in another program to remove the white noise. It also doesn’t have a headphone jack in the camera so you can hear the audio while it is filming.

The Canon Rebel also has difficulties filming in low light conditions. The video quality can get grainy even if you switch to a lens that has a lower aperture while filming in the dark.

The Canon Rebel T7i with a 18-55mm lens is currently listed at $810.

Pros:

• Rotatable touch screen
• Dual Pixel auto-focus
• 1080p at 60fps

 

Cons:

• Audio quality contains white noise
• No headphone jack
• Struggles in low light conditions

 

Panasonic Lumix G85

The Panasonic Lumix G85 is a powerful camera that has the capability of filming in 4K at both 24fps and 30fps. When you are filming at 4K, the battery life does drain quickly so having a few extra batteries with you would be recommended. You also have the option to film at 1080p to save battery life. 

Just like the Canon Rebel T7i, the Panasonic has a touch screen interface and a rotatable flip screen to interact easily with the menus. It also has the function to set up shortcuts in your menu to access different settings quicker.

The main feature on this camera that stands out from the rest besides the 4K video quality is the dual stabilization. The camera body and the camera lens both have stabilization in them and in most cameras they would often try to counteract each other. However, the dual stabilization feature in this camera unites both the body and lens stabilization to work together. This improves the stabilization on the camera drastically.

The Panasonic Lumix G85 also has an auto focus feature that does a fine job at focusing on subjects. There can sometimes be some lens noise when the camera is auto focusing though. For the manual focus, there is an enlarging box that appears on the screen to help you see the fine detail in your subject to make focusing in on the subject easier.

Like most DSLR cameras in this price range, it also doesn’t have a headphone jack to listen to the audio.

The Panasonic Lumix G85 with a 12-60mm lens is currently listed at $900.

Pros:

• Dual stabilization
• 4K at 24fps and 30fps
• Rotatable touch screen
• Shortcuts for settings
• Manual focus made easy

Cons:

• Runs through battery life quickly
• No headphone jack

 

Panasonic Lumix G7

The Panasonic Lumix G7 has near identical functions to the G85 such as the ability to film 4K video, the rotatable touch screen, setting shortcuts, and an enlarging box for manual focusing.

The large difference between these two cameras is that the G7 doesn’t have the dual stabilization. If you plan on filming on a tripod, then this camera would work perfectly fine.

The camera kit for the Lumix G7 does have the added bonus of coming with two different lenses. Having multiple lenses allows you more control over how far you can zoom in on an object or being able to film in low light conditions by decreasing the aperture to a lower f-stop.

The Panasonic Lumix G7 with a 14-42mm lens and a 45-150mm lens is currently listed at $700.

Pros:

• 4K at 24fps and 30fps
• Rotatable touch screen
• Shortcuts for settings
• Manual focus made easy
• Comes with two lenses

Cons:

• No image stabilization
• Runs through battery life quickly
• No headphone jack

 

Recommendations

If you are new to DSLR filming then the Panasonic Lumix G7 is a great option. We like that it has a touch screen that is easy to use similar to the Canon Rebel T7i and it is able to film high quality content in 4K like the Lumix G85. It also comes with two lenses that will help you save money if you intended to purchase another lens for your camera in the future. The only thing it is missing is image stabilization but that is fine if you intend to mostly use it for filming on a tripod.

For more tips or equipment recommendations for video creation, check out our other articles at https://www.learntoflourish.com/blog/. If you’re not quite ready to make the leap to filming on a DSLR but you would like to up your game with filming using your smartphone then we recommended that you have a look at our articles on external lenses for your smartphone, mics for your smartphone, and our tripod recommendations. 

 

Wishing you inspiration, innovation, and continuous learning!

Lorena and the Learn to Flourish Team

 

(Prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of publication. Learn to Flourish does not receive a share of sales or any compensation from sharing any of these products, they’re just some of our favorites!)