This is the cheapest iPad in production, and it serves as a camera, monitor, and control surface, all for $329. 

Let’s break that down. This iPad (and now, most current-generation iPads) have a camera on the same side as the screen. This is enormously helpful, because you can film yourself while watching to make sure you’re in frame (that’s called “monitor” in the film biz). I’ll show later how I also use it as a teleprompter. I find the front-facing camera and screen combination ideal for A-Roll, also known as the video of the person who is talking. The iPad is a little ungainly for shooting B-Roll, or supporting imagery of product shots and detailed shots, but some folks like it because the screen makes for one heck of a big viewfinder, making it possible to see what’s being shot in great detail.

I like that $300 price because I’m working on concrete floors, and if it falls while doing some production move, it’s a lot less expensive than dropping a fully-equipped iPad Pro. There’s a 10th Generation, but it costs $120 more and doesn’t add much for the work I’m doing. Once I could capture video using the iPad itself, that gave me a front-facing monitor and a camera, all in one unit. This one capability, especially at the less-painful-if-dropped price of $329, opened lots of possibilities.

You could use an iPad Pro or the 10th Generation iPad for this as well if you wanted a more general-purpose device with better performance. But because those more expensive units contain exactly the same camera as this generation, and I use it solely for video, it works best for my own video-making applications.