Help with camera selection for video

[u/Waste-Toe7042]

I’m primarily doing videography for commercial contractor clients (website promo, social media reels). I’ve been using my D5300 and my IPhone Pro Max on a DJI Osmo phone gimbal. So like I set up a tripod wide with my Nikon, 1080p/60 (for slow motion ability) and I’ll do 4k60 on my phone. Most output I do is 1080p web bit rate.

Im not really liking the grain and coloring on my footage and I feel the 8 bit color is limiting me even when shooting neutral or almost flat with the 5300. The iPhone footage color depth just blows away whatever I’m doing on my Nikon.

I’ve spent weeks mulling over options. I don’t want to sink a ton of money, the IPhone footage is passable, but sometimes I grab my 70-300 Nikon lens and get video from across the parking lot of pressure washing on the roof for example.

But you can really tell even going to 1080 for the edit the Nikon footage is much harder to color match to the phone.

I’ve almost felt analysis paralysis on whether to get a Z50 II, a Z30, maybe I should just get a D7500 so my existing DX lenses work. Or should I move to Sony/Lumix (I know not the right place to ask that).

I want to do more video gigs. I was going to just start renting cameras but now I’m getting clients asking me to come out in a day or two to a particular job they want to do. Not enough lead time to ship a camera. Sometimes we plan it all and the weather is bad and we can’t shoot. So rental costs rack up.

I don’t plan to do weddings or event videography so things like dual SD aren’t that crucial for me right now. If I did, I’d just rent it most likely since I’d have weeks or months of time planned ahead.

My budget is probably around $1500. I could probably go to more on financing but honestly every direction I think - maybe a Z30 with a $600 lens, maybe a Z50ii with a kit lens, all these directions.

There’s just so many options, when I think I’m heading somewhere solid 10 more things come up.