Advice needed on YouTube video cams

Got to be better options than cell phones and my old digital camera. Those of you who produce all those really good videos.......what camera and mics are you using?

BTW, I also use Camtasia to edit them. Hard to improve on that.

Never heard of Camtasia or anyone using it I'll have to check it out.

I would say try to find a good used Canon Vixia G40, it's pretty foolproof, does excellent video and you should be able to get a good used one for less than $1000.

There are no doubt many more but I know Bernies videos are super. Hutch and Wolfdog91 also put up quality videos so maybe they will chime in too

I am going to try out a different route. As I needed to upgrade my phone anyway, I went with the I Phone 13 pro. It is supposed to be able to take his res video and I also ordered a bluetooth microphone. The Mic is small enough to be able to stick it in a shirt pocket when not in use and I mostly have my phone with me anyway. Neither is going to drive till the 12th of next month. But I'll let y'all know how that works out.

GoPro and a Sony camcorder is what I use. With both if those an external mic is not needed. I found with my phone that a mic was needed.

I just upgraded to a Samsung S21, it takes better 4k video than my Sony camcorder. It's amazing quality

Most of my videos were shot with a gopro or akasio cameras. If your cell phone isnt 8+ years old it can still do pretty goos for videos. Video editing software can blowup the cell phone vidoes if you dont want the crappy half sized vidoes on YouTube

Newer cell phones today take amazing video in certain situations. I use my iPhone 12 for some close-up work and it is great. But if you ever need to zoom, you're not going to be happy with the results. Not at all. Even if you zoom in during editing, you lose quality very very fast. And if you want to create quality audio, such as the ambient sounds of the outdoors from a treestand, a cell phone just won't cut it.

Have you seen the 100x zoom on the S21 ultra?

Looking to do the same. My son would love to make some trapping and outdoor videos.

It's digital interpolations, which means quality will be horrible if you zoom much at all.

That's digital period. The s21 ultra would surprise you, especially if you are only familiar with iPhone. My wife uses the iPhone and it isn't even comparable.

Back to the original subject, Sony is decent but I have had a few problems with mine. My next one will probably be a Canon.

I would beg to differ. At least with my editor, powerdirector, and a 1080 or 4k camera, you couldn't really tell the difference. Now if you had the camera zoomed in a lot then resized the video, you could get some pixelation.

I'm not really talking about degradation of quality anywhere near a point of pixilation. Keep in mind that a LOT of people are watching YouTube on HD TV screens of 50 inches or even bigger. You start zooming in with digital zoom, especially in low light, and the quality you see on the big screen is going to look terrible.

You realize the phone I'm talking about has optical zoom and not digital zoom right?

100x optical zoom in a phone's camera? Doesn't seem possible.

The 100 is digital, it's up to 10x optical. Which in a hunting situation is plenty. Atleast here.

Well that makes more sense.

I honestly just use my phone 80% of the time.
This kinda illustrates the difference


The main video of me is my phone the top right is my cannon digital and the bottom let is my other digital that's kinda tweaking because I used it in a welding video. Honestly you can drop $100 and get a cheap burner phone and use it just for filming. I actually have my daily use one one I use kinda like a PDA for my ballistic apps , and other stuff .A good editor helps alot too. If you want a cheap one for your phone I highly recommend youcut. ( Android only I think) but for like $3 it's well worth it .
If your wanting to long range stuff I've also bout a cheap spotting scope a $60 android burner phone and a camera stabilizer and it works pretty well.
On top of that hill in the distance is a group of cows (least 350yd)




All that being said I've learned knowing how to shoot video and having good equipment are two different things

My life just got easier. I need to do a video I call in the Wolf man!