What you need to make videos for Youtube channel at home | Articles | Photo, video, optics, Audio and video equipment

Source: Youtube chan­nel Kel­lan Reck

Gone are the days when all you need­ed to become a pop­u­lar vlog­ger was a phone with a cam­era and a few cool ideas. With­out ideas, there is still nowhere, but it’s already quite dif­fi­cult to get by with one smart­phone today. But the good news is that you can film your vlog at home. You don’t need a huge space or a sep­a­rate stu­dio, but there are a few things to keep in mind when work­ing in the tight space of a liv­ing space. Today we will tell you how to cre­ate a Youtube stu­dio right at home.

Camera

We rec­om­mend full frame cam­eras as they have a wider field of view than crop cam­eras, which can be very impor­tant when work­ing in tight spaces. Screw a wide-angle lens (any with a focal length less than 50mm) onto it. For APS‑C and oth­er crop cam­eras, choose a lens up to 35mm.

In addi­tion to a suit­able view­ing angle, wide-angle adds depth to the pic­ture, mak­ing the back­ground look more dis­tant than it real­ly is. To enhance this effect, sit (or stand) as far away from the back­ground as pos­si­ble, shoot­ing from the oppo­site side of the room.

Anoth­er tip: learn about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the appli­ca­tion for remote con­trol of the cam­era in advance if you are going to shoot your­self. For exam­ple, Fuji­film’s cam­era app does­n’t sup­port 4K video, and the only avail­able frame rate is 29.97p (a big bum­mer for 24fps movie lovers).

You can also shoot your­self on a cam­era phone — our rat­ing will help you choose the right one.

Tripod

From tripods, choose more com­pact mod­els. You can even take Goril­la­Pod. If the table you are sit­ting at does not rock, every­thing will be fine. The more com­pact the equip­ment, the more free space you have, which in turn helps to cre­ate a feel­ing of spa­cious­ness.

Goril­la­Pod and its coun­ter­parts are a good option for desk­top tripods for home Youtube chan­nels. Pho­to: Mar­co Verch / flickr.com

In case you are on a bud­get, you can use a reg­u­lar stu­dio stand of a suit­able size instead of a tri­pod. But keep in mind: the larg­er the stance, the more sweep­ing­ly open her legs.

Lighting

For video, you need con­stant light (don’t mix it up and acci­den­tal­ly buy a flash mono­light!). In gen­er­al, the larg­er the source, the bet­ter. But in a small room it is impor­tant to find a mid­dle ground. A com­pact source can be placed clos­er to the face, which makes the light from it visu­al­ly “larg­er” and soft­er.

If you have room for back­light­ing, a small LED light is a great option. You can also use any lamps by plac­ing them in the back­ground. We wrote about suit­able light­ing schemes ear­li­er.

In case you don’t have room for lights at all (or mon­ey for them), try shoot­ing near the win­dow, cov­er­ing it with cur­tains, tulle. This will help dif­fuse the bright day­light, mak­ing it soft­er. This method is quite a work­ing scheme, but be pre­pared for the fact that the light will con­stant­ly change, which can look strange when glu­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the video dur­ing edit­ing.

Background

If you think the inte­ri­or of the room is suit­able, you can shoot with­out using spe­cial back­grounds. To make the back­ground more inter­est­ing, you can use RGB lights and any oth­er light sources — ordi­nary lamps, gar­lands, etc. In gen­er­al, try to include var­i­ous ele­ments of your home envi­ron­ment in the video — this will save space and add per­son­al­i­ty to the rollers.

RGB light­ing is still a pop­u­lar Youtube trend. Source: Youtube chan­nel Jere­my Siers

Change the back­ground as you shoot: this will make it feel like you’re work­ing in a larg­er space while you’re just shoot­ing from dif­fer­ent sides of the same room.

If you decide to use a pho­to­phone or chro­ma key, you will need a mount­ing sys­tem — we talked about this in detail here. The pho­to­phone can also be beau­ti­ful­ly illu­mi­nat­ed with RGB lamps, adding addi­tion­al col­or con­trast.

When choos­ing a back­ground and type of fas­ten­ing, take mea­sure­ments of the avail­able space in advance: it will be extreme­ly unpleas­ant when sud­den­ly the “gate” for the fab­ric back­ground sim­ply does not fit into your room. From per­son­al expe­ri­ence: if you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase a “gate” with a tele­scop­ic cross­bar, buy them — it will save you a lot of time and nerves when prepar­ing the shoot­ing loca­tion.

Sound

Good sound improves our per­cep­tion of the pic­ture. And vice ver­sa — great video qual­i­ty with poor sound will auto­mat­i­cal­ly sound less cool. There­fore, a good sound when cre­at­ing a chan­nel is 50% suc­cess. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you will not be able to record high-qual­i­ty sound on the built-in micro­phone of a cam­era or smart­phone. You can improve the sound with an exter­nal micro­phone. In gen­er­al, record­ing equip­ment is gen­er­al­ly quite com­pact, so most of the avail­able options will be suit­able for a home stu­dio. The lava­lier micro­phone will be the most eco­nom­i­cal in terms of space occu­pied. If you want to improve the sound from it, you can record not direct­ly to the cam­era, but through a spe­cial audio recorder.

Teleprompter

Can you recite large chunks of text from mem­o­ry with­out any prob­lems, or do you just impro­vise well? You can skip this part! But, if you imme­di­ate­ly for­get every­thing in the world, just see­ing the lens, you may need a teleprompter. This device is designed to be able to read text while look­ing direct­ly at the cam­era. It’s def­i­nite­ly not worth buy­ing pro­fes­sion­al TV mod­els: for a novice YouTu­ber, this is just a waste of mon­ey.

Do-it-your­self teleprompter is a Youtube clas­sic! Pho­to: photowebexpo.ru

You can make a teleprompter your­self from impro­vised means (it works, but in the process you will def­i­nite­ly feel all the pain of exis­tence — ver­i­fied from per­son­al expe­ri­ence) or order a com­pact mod­el for mobile devices from AliEx­press.

Results

• To cre­ate your own Youtube chan­nel, you do not need a huge stu­dio: even a small room will suf­fice.
• It’s good if you shoot with a full-frame cam­era: it cap­tures a wider angle of view, which is very con­ve­nient in a lim­it­ed space. For the same rea­son, it is worth using a wide-angle lens (or a wide-angle zoom at one end of its focal lengths). How­ev­er, you can shoot with a crop cam­era and a smart­phone, but in a lim­it­ed space it may be less con­ve­nient.
• To mount the cam­era, it is bet­ter to choose a com­pact tri­pod (but you can even use a stu­dio stand).
• You def­i­nite­ly need one good light source. This could be a stu­dio light with a soft­box (big­ger is bet­ter, but size based on avail­able space), a ring light, or just a win­dow (in which case the light will be unpre­dictable). In a good way, you should also have addi­tion­al light­ing (in gen­er­al, there are not enough illu­mi­na­tors), but you can start with a min­i­mum, and already in the process of tri­als and exper­i­ments you will under­stand which scheme suits you.

There is no such thing as too much light! Source: Youtube chan­nel Peter Lind­gren

• You can use your inte­ri­or as a back­ground if it suits you (many YouTu­bers today high­light the back­ground with RGB lamps), or you can pur­chase a pho­to­phone and a mount­ing sys­tem. Then check the dimen­sions of the room in advance so as not to get into a mess!
• For high-qual­i­ty sound, you will need an exter­nal micro­phone — in most cas­es, a lava­lier micro­phone will do.
• If you want to read the text, and not recite by heart (or chat about every­thing that comes to mind), buy a com­pact teleprompter or try to make it from impro­vised means (you will find a lot of tuto­ri­als on the same Youtube).
• And the most impor­tant tip: start shoot­ing! Start with the equip­ment you already have and grad­u­al­ly add more as you need.