Mark Romero 2

Agreed with each of your points. Yeah, the D750 in flat profile has plenty of DR. If I were ONLY shooting on either a tripod or a slider and I could live with the softish 1080p then I am pretty sure I would stick with the D750. I think... But I need to be fast so I would use a gimbal and the AF of the a6500 makes me feel it would have an advantage here. As for slog... I obviously DON'T know what I am doing...

Yup, in 95% of the cases, 12MP is enough. Plus it speeds up the workflow so much more, and it takes up less hard drive space. The one drawback (for me) of full frame is that you basically have to close down one stop more for the same depth of field that you would get with crop sensor, meaning I have to crank up my flash guns one stop higher to compensate. And I already use my flash guns pretty hard, so that is a bit of a trade-off. I could just get an original a7s, shoot in 1080p internally, and probably use the a7s for stills as well. The only time i really NEED more than 12mp is when I have to crop in significantly for a view shot, and since I am in the hills above San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge, well, there are lots of view shots to be had... Yeah, one fellow real estate photographer I know shoots stills on his D300 and video on his D7200. He seems to be fine with it. I like Nikon a lot (I started with a D5000 for RE photography and then moved to D5100 and D7000 and D750). Just for the way I work, and with my bad back, I find the Sony is just a bit better for my style.

Yes, well the 5D Mk III did enter my mind for a moment or two, but the lack of a tilting screen (I photograph 95% at waist level) and the fact I would probably have to upgrade my gimbal from a Zhiyn crane to a Ronin M or Movi was kind of off-putting.

Well... I already started to sell off my Nikon lenses ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sold off the 18-35 G and sold off the 85 f/1.8 G and my Sigma 10-20. So right now I only have my 50mm f/1.8 G and a couple of DX lenses that I use on my D7000, which I am selling off as well. For the Sony a6500 / a6000 I have the 10-18 (my bread and butter lens, 98% of my still photos are done with this lens, and about 75% of the video I shoot is with this lens), a couple of 16-50 kit lenses (one is a really bad copy), a 50mm f/1.8 OSS, a Sigma 30mm f/2.8 (not the f/1.4, but still a competent - if a little slow at f/2.8 - prime lens that is sharp). I also have an 85mm f/2.8 SAM A-Mount lens that I use with an adapter. I just picked up a 70-300 G original version A MOunt to use with an adapter but I am having some problems with it. Might just be human error, might be the lens, might be my adapter. So that's kind of another reason to sell the D750 and just consolidate; I don't mind paying for lenses, I just don't want to have to pay for the same lenses for two different systems! And almost as important is I don't want to have to keep track and organize two different systems. Especially as I will start to add video lights and maybe a filter or two. Plus I also have a drone (Phantom 3 Advanced), so keeping it to one camera system really is just going to make it that much easier to get me a bit more organized. At least I hope it will help make me more organized...

Yeah, I know a few people doing real estate stills with a D300 (12MP crop sensor) and a Sigma 10-20 (hardly the sharpest lens out there) and they do quite well for themselves. I like the D750, but I DO need a backup, and it kind of makes sense of I am going to do video in addition to stills to have an a6500 and an a6000 as a backup (or an a6300 as a backup) instead of a D750 and D5500 (I would get the model that has the touch screen for faster focusing). The problem with D750 plus D5X00 is the lens focal length difference going from FF to crop. I'm not going to lie: for pure IQ, the D750 + 18-35 is a little bit better than the a6500 and 10-18... but not as much as you might think. It's only when I really need to push an underexposed image by more than a stop or recover highlights that I really notice the difference. Otherwise, for real estate stills, the image quality difference just isn't relevant. Well... I am not sure I am going to do this job forever, but I do LIKE real estate photography a lot. Lucky for me I am in a higher priced market and charge reasonable rates. I am on the more higher priced end of photographers, and there is no telling what the future brings in terms of low priced competitors. So I do like to be prepared for the future. RE photography CAN be quite profitable, but it does come down to being good and efficient. The ability to move fast and meet deadlines is incredibly important because a lot of real estate agents are often quite disorganized and as a photographer you often get pushed back until the last moment while the cleaners are doing the last vacuuming or the stager is putting the last pillows on the couch. Anyway, that's my feeling this morning. Who knows if I will change my opinions again by the afternoon

Thanks so much. Yes, I really do think that letting go of the D750 is probably the right thing for me. Then I can free up some cash for other things. Thanks again, and thanks for the tips on hustling.

Thanks for the link. I know that would seem to make more sense, right? But I actually find that for the kinds of still photography I do, the a6300 / a6500 allows me to work faster. The difference is that for the settings I change the most, I can use one hand on the a6300 / a6500, while on the D750 I need two hands. The problem is that I am almost always holding a flash gun and some RC triggers and a release cable in my left hand, so using the D750 is a bit less user-friendly for me Also, since I use the LCD 99% of the time for stills, the touch-focus on the a6500 is really nice. Using the live view focus of the D750 it takes a few seconds longer to move the focus point from one side of the screen to the other. I guess at the end of the day, in terms of video (and stills, to an extent), I am enamored by the easy dynamic range and pretty easy grading of the D750.

Yes, that is true. But while I like tilt shift lenses, I just can't afford to spend $3K on one. I mean, I already feel kind of miffed that I normally haul about $4K worth of equipment to a photo shoot where I am only going to make between $150 to $250. Hauling $7K worth of equipment would probably make my head explode. I usually do a "faux tilt shift" where you keep the sensor plane parallel but just shoot really wide and crop away from the side that you don't want. With 24mp you can really crop away a lot because the LARGEST image I normally would need would just have to be 3K pixels wide in case they end up printing in a magazine. Yes, for stills I generally bracket five ambient shots (no flash) straight up, and then I take a couple of flash frames and blend them later. I generally shoot at ISO 200 instead of 100 just so the flash guns don't have to work so hard and to get the recycle times down a little bit. And yes, I agree with you about selling one system or the other to expand my video capabilities... IF I can figure out where else I can drum up business for my video services. I guess that is the big thing is I don't want to be all dressed up with no place to go. Any suggestions on what sorts of jobs I should aim for are greatly appreciated. It's weird: my friend who is in more of a rural area gets a LOT of video business to go along with his still photography business. I get a lot of requests for drone photography and occasional drone video, but it is a hard sell for me to get real estate video jobs (and my prices are competitive). Thanks for the note and for catching that part about the money I make from a job. Part of that is I am new to doing video and the established people charge more. I know many people hate this, but I am undercutting them on price for now. I tell them it is a special introductory price. The established people would charge about $400 for what I am charging about $250. The lens evaluation tips it in favor of Mirrorless for me, especially since I am pretty much committed to using a gimbal as much as possible to save time (and the agents want a walkthrough as well). Hence, the Optical Stabilization of the a6500 and the OSS on the Sony 10-18 lenses is significant. Yes, the 1080p of the D750 is... soft. It is softer than the 1080p on my a6000. But then again, the 1080p on the a6000 is better than the 1080p on the a6300 or the a6500, despite being a lot less expensive. The D750 is less noisy in 1080p at higher ISOs than the a6000 but I think what ever noise filtering the D750 uses really gets amped up because at ISO 1600 to 3200 I found that there was a LOT less detail than the a6000. The ability to recover highlights on the D750 is amazing to me (in my various tests, at least). That is really a big thing to me. The thing about Sony is that it is (for me at least as of November 2017) more of a complete system, meaning if I need full frame for stills, I could buy a used a7 or a7 II and a used canon FD lens and cheapo adapter and have something that would work on both the FF a7 II and the a6500. And I would be scared of renting a D850 as well. I feel like I have gone down enough rabbit holes already...

Thanks for the clarification and for the link to your video. A few follow up questions though: Did you try shooting in SLOG but in different color gamuts to see if the large amount of colors were still being thrown away? Does using the various Cine Gammas throw away colors the way that SLOG does? Thanks again.

Thanks for the well-thought out reply. I would love to see your video about why Nikon doesn't use slog. For me, the appeal of slog (and expanded dynamic range in general) is because in Real Estate video their just isn't the time or budget to deal with lighting. And often we have to film when the light is directly overhead so often have to film in VERY contrasty situations. For stills, I have PLENTY of flash power, although I will probably pick up another 600WS strobe to go along with my One X 300ws strobe and three X 80ws flash guns. Lots of light stands. As for transcoding, I usually use resolve (the free version) and it seems to handle the XAVCs ok as long as I use optimized media. But then when I get into the coloring panel, I was told that I should use the actual footage when grading since how the actual footage looks when graded will be somewhat different than what the optimized footage preview looks like while graded. That's when things slow down a bit. Would handbrake be good for encoding? Any suggestions on which codec to encode to (using Resolve with Win 10 64bit on an i7-6770 with 24GB RAM and a GTX 960 2GB graphics card) As for using the D750 for stills, yeah, I like it, but to be honest for the last year I had pretty much been using my a6300 and the 10-18 for stills and the D750 was sitting on the shelf. About two months ago I was on a ladder that gave way and it destroyed my a6300 and I had to send in the 10-18 for repair. So I only started using the D750 for stills again a couple months back. So - and this may sound derpy - I guess I am more worried about losing the D750 for video than for stills. .. In terms of other video-centric gear, I have a Zhiyun crane (the first one, not the Crane 2), a cheap amazon slider that is pretty much useless, a "sort-of" video tripod with a manfrotto 501 "sort-of" fluid head (I've hear that it is not a "true" fluid head), a Zoom H1, a $30 lav mic, a YN600L light panel and a YN216 LED. Am thinking of picking up a rode video micro to go into the zoom H1. So, admittedly, enough stuff to maybe do a vlog and not much more. Which is why I want to consolidate around one camera or the other (as opposed to keeping both, as was suggested earlier) to free up more budget for acquiring the necessary gear for other jobs. I do have like 8 light stands and lots of umbrellas and a couple reflectors and a couple of dollar-store flags.

Hi there, Trek: Yeah, if I used the 10-18 on an a7R II, it would be in crop mode (both for stills and video). 42 Megapixels is WAY too large for shooting real estate, which is more demanding of dynamic range than sheer resolution. On full frame (in full frame mode) the 16-35 is indeed pretty much perfect for RE photography. I was using the 18-35 on my D750 and it is actaully an excellent lens, but that 2mm difference between 16m m and 18mm is actually kind of significant when shooting a bathroom.

Thanks for the kind wishes. Yeah, an a7R II would also be a possibility - in theory. Even with the crop sensor Sony 10-18 lens on an a7R II there would still be plenty of megapixels for shooting real estate stills. Don't know what video is like on it with the 10-18 lens though. Feel like I am running around in circles though

Yeah, but it is also beyond that really a question about how much I might be giving away by moving away from 4K... if not now, then in the near future, too. For example, if I shoot 1080p on the D750, will I soon miss the ability to zoom in on the 4K footage on the timeline if I am working on a 1080p timeline? I see lots of one camera documentary or talking head commercials and it seems like a lot of them use just one camera (maybe two at most) and just punch in for close up shots. Yes, I would gladly buy a D7500 or D500 if it weren't for the crop factor. For me to shoot at about 20mm full frame equivalent in 4K I would need a stabilized 10mm APS-C lens. By the way: how is the 1080p on the D500???

Well... can't sell both because I have lots of stills photography gigs coming up soon. G9 I am sure is a great camera. But since (for video) I think that dynamic range and high ISO performance would be more important than even 4K for me, I think that an a7s original shooting at 1080p might be a better video camera for the type of work I am LIKELY to do in the near future. Unless I can line up other types of video work...

That's a good question... I guess watching Mattias' video again just got me thinking that maybe the D750 isn't that bad of a camera after all... And the fact that the dynamic range of the D750 is about equal to the DR of the a6500 - but without having to deal with slog 2 / slog 3 - is appealing. But those are the only real things. I think that I could eventually nail down a good picture profile with the a6500 that would be quick and easy to grade and give me good DR and low light. Overheating seems a bit better controlled compared to the a6300, and as I mentioned in another thread, I can more or less see the LCD of the a6500 as long as I am wearing a sombrero. Although there is the fact that if I want to shoot 60fps, the 1080p on the a6500 is not that good. I usually edit / produce to 1080p so the ability to zoom on the timeline with the 4K from the a6500 is nice for replicating a dolly in shot.

Thanks for the well-thought out response. I thought kidzrevil shot sony?!?!?! Maybe both and I just missed it. Yes, with the D750 being due for replacement, I do feel a bit of pressure for selling it. They also have something of a bad rap due to the shutter problems, but Nikon has basically been replacing shutters on out-of-warranty cameras for a while and there seems to be a possibility that the will be covering other issues out-of-warranty as well. The GX85 does seem like a good camera BUT the two things I would most likely need would be low light (maybe up to ISO 6400 in some dark houses for video), and really wide angle (about 20mm to 24mm full frame equivalent and I think the GX85 has a crop factor when shooting 4K). The D850 looks gorgeous (aside from rolling shutter), but I am also thinking / hoping that a D750 replacement might also have some of the video features of the D850. Sigh... Thanks. I don't know anything about the 5D MK III. Does it have a tiltable screen (like D750, D850, most sony cameras)? Because if not, that would kind of be a deal killer for me since I am ALWAYS shooting at waist level (at least for stills).

WARNING: This is a long post... Is "seller's remorse" a thing? I've brought this up before, so bear with me please... After watching Mattias' review of the D750 again (for like the fiftieth time) I can't help but feel I am making a mistake selling my D750 and Nikon lenses and using my a6500 as my hybrid camera. I shoot 95% stills and only 5% video, and the stills I shoot are almost always large, stationary objects (i.e., architecture, or people sitting in a chair). I like the a6500... to an extent. As a stills camera, for shooting real estate like I do, it really is just about on par with the D750. I use the LCD for shooting (since I am almost always shooting at waist level), and despite having a worse LCD monitor, the AF using the a6500 is so much better than the liveview AF of the D750 that it is hard to give that up. I've only had about five video jobs this last year, but I really want to do more. The average pay I will get for each job is only going to be about US $250 or so. Because of that, I need to get kind of quick video and will be on a gimbal for doing walk-through videos. (Setting up a slider / jib just takes too long). I know the a6500 with IBIS and light weight is better for gimbal work. It's just really smooth on my Zhiyun crane. The a6500 is capable of getting some great footage (thanks in particular to Andrew's EOSHD Pro Color for Sony). But it is a pain to capture 4K with the overheating and the dim, smaller screen and the difficult to press buttons (when you are holding the gimbal in one hand and trying to press buttons with your off hand). And while my computer can handle 4K XAVCS ok, it handles the 1080p of the D750 better. And the dynamic range (very important to me) is about equal to Slog 2 on the a6500 But I like the size and weight of the a6500 so much better than the D750. If I am going somewhere with my family I would just leave the D750 at home... Arrggghhh.... So here is how you can help me decide: Aside from the potential handful of real estate video jobs I am likely to get going forward, what sorts of areas can I make money with video with "minimal" gear? (A video tripod, gimbal, slider, couple of LED lights, couple of mics, basically a one-man-band setup)??? And which camera is going to be better for those things moving forward? Financially, I could keep both. But I would rather stick with one or the other so I could invest in other areas that would contribute to a better filmmaking experience. Sorry if that is beyond the scope of this forum. And thanks again for bearing with me.

Just to confirm, they were 4K files xavc s files, right? Files in other codecs go in a different folder, I believe... but don't quote me on that.

My choice was to buy a sombrero!!! Works great at keeping the LCD in shade. The only problem is... now my balls keep getting caught behind the tilting screen...

Great Work! Love the fuji X-T2 video.

Thanks again. I will look into that link. I appreciate all the help.

Thanks again. I will definitely look into them. Sometimes I need to shoot in 1080p for the faster fps. As you know, the 1080p on the a6300 / a6500 is not... beautiful... Would these help out with the aliasing in the 1080p on these cameras? or would it just be more mushy? Thanks in advance.

@kidzrevil Thanks for posting the video. I think I understand a bit better. Is this something that people do when they are either shooting people or trying for a more atmospheric look? I shoot real estate videos, so I don't know if I would do this most of the time. I could imagine it would look good for twilights but maybe not so much during the daytime???

Ok, I am kind of baffled by this discussion. So, you are saying that we should buy a 4K camera for the resolution, but we should use a filter on it to reduce the resolution some? Or am I totally misunderstanding this??? Thanks in advance.

Thanks to everyone who suggested a Lav. Yes, that is my PREFERRED method, but the boom mic would be plan b if I just can't get the Lav to be hidden enough or if it keeps getting ruffled by the talent.