A Sony A6400 is certainly not a camera you’d compare to a high-end movie camera like a Red or Arri Alexa. However, PotatoeJet is known for doing these rather unusual comparisons and often enough they reveal some surprising insights.
Of course, it’s not a fair comparison and if you put both cameras side by side admittedly it’s not easy to tell which is which. And yes, comparing both on Youtube doesn’t make it any easier. But it’s still amazing how far these consumer cameras have come these days. So the question that inevitably comes to mind is: why should you spend 50K on a high-end cinema camera? The short answer is – post-production!
Sony A6400 – The Best Of Both Worlds
Manufacturers have done a great job squeezing the best quality out of small cameras to boost their sales. However, this comes at a cost and that’s codec quality. If you ever tried to color grade footage from any Sony alpha camera or cameras like the Panasonic GH-series you probably learned this the hard way. The footage from these cameras can’t be pushed too far, otherwise, your footage will fall apart in sense of looking mushy and showing artefacts. These codes are not designed to be beaten around in post-production, they are supposed to look good right off the bat.
So to put it short, you are getting an incredible performance in a tiny form factor, more than you could have imagined even 3-4 years ago. Incredible low-light performance or insane dynamic range with S-Log2 or HLG (hybrid log gamma) as stated in the video and as long as you don’t try to push the footage too far you should be getting more than decent results.
However, if you work in a professional environment flexibility is probably your most important option. And this flexibility does cost a lot of money! Something the average user probably won’t need and the manufacturers can set their professional camera line-up apart.
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Let’s look at it the other way around. If you are a million follower Youtuber and plan on doing your daily vlog or product review with a Red camera (like some Youtubers still do today – yep, I’m looking at you, Marques Brownlee) and have no plans to do a lot of post-production on that footage other than just cranking up the contrast or slapping a LUT on it, this is probably the biggest waste of money of your life.
If you are looking for the best bang for your buck in a tiny form factor, to get that creamy cinematic look, dynamic range and low-light performance and don’t bother much about doing a lot of post-production the Sony A6400 is currently probably the best choice on the market.
