- So in this video,
we're gonna go through my single stand design
that I have for my YouTube studio.
Now, this is like a all-in-one package.
I've been thinking I've been wanting
to do something like this for a little while
just because I like the simplicity
of having everything on one stand.
And I've seen Caleb from DSLR Video Shooter
do similar builds on his channel;
however, this product kind of just got suggested
to me on Amazon.
It's called the Viozon Selfie stand setup.
Because apparently that's all we do is selfies all day.
But what the stand is is an all-in-one.
It's got four arms and it's supposed to be able
to hold your camera, your laptop, your audio,
your lighting, all of the different things.
However, out of the box, it's not perfect,
and so I wanna go through the different modifications
that I did to the setup to make it work
for the cameras that I shoot on.
Right now, I'm shooting on the Sony a7C.
I have the a7S III right here
with really nice full-frame prime, cine prime.
I was actually just out in the desert
with my buddy Justin McBride.
He's got an overlanding channel
and we just did a four-day, 650-mile trek
from salt Lake city to Tahoe, all on dirt,
and I shot the majority of it on these primes.
I'm gonna do another video about that in the future,
and this whole setup, this was like my cinema setup.
I got the PolarPro, ND filter matte box on the front,
which I'm actually pretty impressed by that,
a7S III, which is a solid camera,
and these DZOFILM Vespid Primes.
It's pretty fun.
But let's talk about the selfie stand.
I'm gonna have to pull the stand out
and we'll just do it here in the middle,
and I'm gonna pull everything off
and I wanna show you what all the components are
and what they do,
and then I'll show you where the modifications are
that I made to be able to make this work
for a different style of camera setup.
So, here, let's get this going.
So let me just show you what comes
with this Viozon Selfie Live Floor Stand,
5-in-1 10-inch LED microphone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's basically the stand
and you have the rolly wheels at the bottom.
You have four arms.
Now on those arms, you have a laptop plate.
You can get a phone holder for your camera
or a tablet holder.
It comes with a 10-inch ring light,
and then you have a boom arm for your microphone.
And all of this comes in the package for $223.
Okay, so right off the bat,
you could see that I'm pulling this out
and it's trying to tip.
And on its own, when you start putting heavy equipment
on this thing, it actually puts it off balance.
So I have to use two 35-pound sandbags.
Sandbags are your best friend.
So as I strip this down,
we're gonna talk about each of the components
that I put on here and what they replaced.
So let's just start with the light
because it's the big, bright thing right here.
So I use the Aputure 120d II.
It just happens to be the one that I have.
Now the light is not as important
as how your light is controlled.
What I mean by that is the softbox.
So I have the smaller of the softboxes that Aputure makes
because of the space in this room.
If I had a bigger studio,
then I might go for the bigger softbox
because it creates a better fall off on face
when you have a bigger source.
With the softbox, I don't just leave it the normal face,
the soft, glowing face.
I put the egg crate on.
Now the egg crate directs the light in a specific direction.
So right here, I'm not getting the light from this light.
My light's coming from over there.
This light, when you put the egg crate on it,
it only throws light in a specific direction
and it's soft light, so it's gonna look good for a face.
So you're not gonna get a ton of spill
on all the walls and everything around.
So these are kind of the two components
that I want on this light.
Now it came with a ring light, 10-inch ring light,
and ring lights are...
I mean, some people like ring lights.
I'm not gonna use a ring light.
It's gonna really just make your face glow.
You can't sculpt it in any way.
It just blasts light, makes everything look bright,
which some of you might actually like that look,
and you might keep the ring light on here.
But I took it off,
and I just used a little attachment
that goes from the screw that comes on the arm
to a pin that then goes into the Aputure.
You basically need these two pieces
to be able to attach any sort of light
that would go on a normal light stand on this setup.
This light isn't necessarily the best option for this.
I think it works great,
but if you had a skinnier light,
something like a light panel,
like one of those just soft, flat panels,
Falcon Eyes makes a bunch of them,
then this would be a much sleeker design
where your light can kind of be tucked back in a way.
I prefer these lights.
These are just what I've worked with,
and these are what I have.
So I made it work with the Aputures.
Moving right along. So we have the audio.
This comes with an audio boom pole
and then it's just got a threaded in
which you could put on basically any microphone mount.
I have a Sennheiser shotgun mic.
I just really like this style of microphone.
It's a shorter shotgun mic,
and so what that does is it only picks up audio
in a little area where you're shooting
versus if you had a super long shotgun mic,
that's gonna pick up audio in the distance.
The idea when you're using a shotgun mic
is you wanna have a microphone
that's gonna pick up the best audio for the situation.
And so when I'm sitting at my desk,
I don't need to have a long throw.
So I need to have a shorty,
little short microphone here
that picks up basically the audio
right in the space that I'm working,
and that's how you get that clean,
really crisp-sounding audio.
Now I just have an XLR running down this arm
and it goes to a Zoom.
The reason is I don't have the XLR attachment
for the Sony right now.
So there is an XLR attachment
that goes into the top of the camera,
and that's what I'm gonna use once I can get one
but they're all back-ordered.
So for now, I have the Zoom
and I have this tied on with a little clamp.
So these little clamps will work great
to just add anything to the stand.
So I have four arms, but I have five objects.
So I use this just as an additional thing to add on.
And you know, these clamps,
depending on if you wanna add other things onto the stand,
is a great way to just add extra stuff.
One thing I've done is I have Velcro
and that helps me tie up the cables all over this.
So wherever I have cables running,
I use Velcro and just tie it to the arms.
Now, one other thing when it comes to cable management
is I'm using this kind of like sheathing.
This stuff, it's pretty nice because what it does is
you can put a bunch of cables through it,
it's soft and bendable, but it opens up
so you can put a bunch of different cables in here
and basically clean everything up.
I use this all over my office.
This is super useful stuff, and it's not plasticky.
So there are hard plastic versions
of these cable management.
This one is super soft and bendable.
So I prefer this style.
I cut up a bunch of these pieces
and just fit them to the different spots on this stand.
Now, camera-wise, as I said, I have a7C.
Now I put the prime on here
because the lens I'm using is right here.
I use the 20-millimeter 1.8 from Sony
and I put it on the a7C, and that is my main camera.
Now, the reason that I use the a7C
for this setup is that it's got fast auto-focus,
easy to put on the system,
and it was cheaper than buying a second a7S III.
a7S III is my main go-to camera now,
so the is a7C great companion to that for my studio stuff.
Also, photo-wise, this has more megapixels,
so if I ever need a photo camera
that I need more megapixels,
I typically will pull this camera out.
Both the cameras look great and they work well together,
so I think this is a good little studio camera,
especially because I'm not using the monitor on the camera.
I'm using this monitor
to view what I'm doing here in the studio.
Now, one more thing before we go to the monitor though.
I wanna show you what I did here.
So this arm comes with a phone or tablet attachment
that goes on the end here.
Basically these arms,
all of them except for this microphone one,
have a screw that pops out, it's a 1/4-20 screw;
it's what you typically find on camera gear.
But instead of using the phone/tablet mount,
because I'm not gonna use that to shoot with,
I just put a JOBY ball head on here.
And this JOBY ball head just goes right on to the screw
that's already on this arm.
This makes it so that it can move the camera
in any direction, level it out,
be able to put all of my camera plates on here
and just pop it off.
So this camera can become more mobile.
So if I need to use it, I pop it off,
I go shoot with it, I bring it back in the studio,
just stick it on, I'm good to go.
Now, also with this, I have my HDMI cable
that runs down the arm into the monitor.
And there is some cable management
that comes with these arms.
It's just these little plastic pieces, it's not the best.
That's why I'm also using some Velcro
and some of this other stuff
to be able to keep cables nice and tight on this setup.
Okay, so this is the monitor that I'm using.
And the monitor mount that comes with the system allows you
to shift in all directions.
So back here, I can adjust it so that it goes flat this way,
straight down, left and right.
It can move all over.
And the reason is this is set up for a laptop,
so this actually isn't built for a monitor
but it's for a laptop that basically you could set in here,
have your keyboard like this,
and then your monitor here.
I guess it's for live streaming and things like that.
Now, the beauty is I have a 13-inch production monitor.
This one isn't the best in the world.
It actually doesn't take the 4K signal
out of the Sony cameras,
so I have to dumb it down to 1080 to use it,
but it still works great to see my image
and just make sure that I'm in focus
and see lighting and things like that.
How this is on here is it's just clamped on.
And you can see that this mount is a laptop mount,
so you got a little ledge down here to hold it,
and you have these two clamps on the side.
Now this production monitor is the exact size
of a 13-inch laptop, so for me, this works great.
These hold the monitor in place
so that I don't have to screw anything in.
I just pop this in and it's good to go.
So I didn't really have to make any major modifications
to this to be able to hold a monitor.
All right, a little intermission here.
Jay, you wanna show 'em your bunny?
Show 'em your bunny.
This is her new best friend.
- [Mom] Thank you.
- Oh, she's learned to drop things.
You wanna grab it? Oh!
She's like playing the crane game.
Gotta get back to the video, Jay.
So this is the full setup with nothing on it.
You have the four arms, the column, and the base.
Now at the top you have two arms
that are connected on the same level,
and this can basically be used for, one is your light,
and the other is for audio,
and this goes on the top.
Now, all of these can change how high
or how low you wanna make them,
so you can just unscrew a little knob,
and then you can push down
or you could bring it up.
Now, going down the column here,
you have these two other arms,
and basically there's a track.
Now these arms move freely.
So these, you could pop off, but you have these locks.
And these locks basically go in a track,
and you can set them at whatever height you want.
So you put these down in the track,
you put your arm on,
set it at the height that you want.
Then if you want it lower,
you just have to adjust this, bring it down,
and now you can have the arm lower.
So these two bottom arms,
you can adjust them at any height, up and down
to make sense for your setup.
Now, last, we have to talk about the base.
So down at the bottom, there's a circular base,
and on the circular base, there's four wheels.
Now those wheels make it so that you can slide this around
especially if you have a hardwood floor.
I have carpet so it's a little bit harder to roll;
they're smaller wheels.
But it's a circular base and it's heavy,
so it could actually hold a decent amount of weight
on top of this whole setup.
The issue is I have a heavier light.
I have a little bit heavier gear
so that when I put everything on there
and extend the arms in one direction, it does start to tilt.
So I have to use two 35-pound sandbags
to be able to make this setup work for me.
I just realized I've ripped apart my whole stand
for this video
and now I have to put it all back together.
But basically that is the entire setup,
and that's how I built out my one-stand design.
Now I'll put a link down below in the description
to a kit that has every piece that is on this,
every piece of gear, every piece of hardware, everything,
just so that you could see all the components
that I use to build out my stand,
and then you could figure out
if there's different components that will work for you.
But for $200, the stand isn't perfect
but it does get you in the right direction
to have a one-stand setup.
And, you know, before this,
I had four or five stands floating around,
and it just became a jungle of stands and cables,
and it was just a big mess.
So having this one-stand system makes it a lot more minimal
in my office.
And if you haven't seen the full breakdown of my office,
I'll put a link to that right here,
and you could see how this one-stand design is incorporated
into my full editing suite.
All right, guys. That's it.
I'll see you over there.