What's up guys?
It's Aileen.
Today I'm going to share my camera setup
and all the equipment that I use to film YouTube videos.
This is part of a Q&A series
on starting a channel or blog.
If you want to watch my other video on advice I have
for people starting out then you can watch that right here.
It has a lot of good information, but this video is purely technical.
I know a lot of you guys are just starting out so how I'm going to structure this video
is
I'm going to share the equipment that I use now.
Then I'm going to share equipment
that I recommend for people who are just starting out.
Alright let's start with the camera.
I literally just upgraded to a new camera
a couple months ago, so the camera I'm shooting with now is the Canon 80D.
This is a brand new camera.
I got it because of its autofocus ability.
It can autofocus really fast and really well, which is great for video.
Before the 80D, I was shooting with a Canon T4i for about four years.
The T4i is a great entry-level DSLR.
Honestly for those of you starting out,
I highly recommend you invest in a Canon Rebel series.
I think the new one is a T6i
but you can also get a used T3i, T4i, T5i, whatever.
If you want to invest in a DSLR,
this is a really good one to start with because it can do a lot for being small and compact.
But if you're looking to start with a point-and-shoot camera, which is the smaller ones,
then I recommend the Canon GX 7.
I think that one is super popular for vlogging.
A lot of people recommend that one.
Or if you don't have any budget,
you can definitely just use your phone to film your videos at the beginning.
Just starting using like an iPhone, it's great quality already,
better than the MacBook quality I started with a long time ago.
Next up, let's talk about lenses.
The lens that I use for vlogging, that's on the camera right now,
is the Sigma 30 mm f/1.4.
This is my favorite lens to shoot most things, honestly,
because f/1.4 is an aperture that lets you open it up real wide.
It lets in a lot of light
so it shoots well in darker areas and it allows for that blurry background effect.
The next lens that I'm really enjoying right now and just learning to use is
my new 18-135 lens that came with my 80D.
I got this because it has a huge zoom
and because this lens is made for this 80D camera, because the 80D is great at autofocus
and this lens is really quiet at autofocusing.
So if I'm filming a video where I need to
autofocus quietly, then I will use this lens.
I'm really, really, really loving it.
It's amazing.
Because with my Sigma lens, I just manually focus because the autofocus is too loud.
Those are my two main lenses right now.
I also have a Rokinon fisheye lens that's 8 mm.
That one I used for all my travel vlogs in the past, but it's just not a very practical
lens.
I haven't found many cases where I needed to use it.
So for anyone starting out
and who wants to find a good lens for YouTube, I highly recommend the Sigma 30 mm one.
And another one that's really popular is the Canon 50 mm one.
That one's really affordable and gives you that beautiful background blur effect.
Next up in my camera kit system are my tripods.
I also got a new tripod recently and it is amazing.
It's the Manfrotto, I don't even know what number it is-I'll put it down below.
It's a Manfrotto tripod that has a three-way pan, so it has a smooth video motion.
If you watched my closet tour video, that's the tripod that I used for that video
with all those smooth pannings.
But before that I had these other two, relatively cheap tripods.
One of them is this simple tripod that I didn't even buy.
It was at my house
because it was my uncle's old tripod for his camcorder.
Basically I found it
and I used it for many years in YouTube.
That one is similar to one that's on Amazon right now
and I'll link that below.
Another tripod that I started with was this tiny Sony one,
and it's because it's a table tripod.
It was very convenient for me to film at my old house
because I could just put this on a table or on my dresser in front of my bed to film my
old videos.
But now I have this giant Manfrotto tripod that I love.
But yeah, you guys don't really need
to start with much.
Sometimes I just stack books and put my camera on there.
Be creative.
If you're starting out, just stack things and make it work.
Also there's tons of cheap tripods that you can find on Amazon.
I'll link those below.
Next up in the system is this handy dandy remote.
I got this from Amazon.
It's pretty affordable.
Basically this remote is so essential to start and stop videos.
You can use it to take photos of yourself.
It's just so convenient to have a remote
so you don't always have to be going behind the camera, press start, and run back here.
Because once you've set that focus, like I said I do manual focus most of the time,
I sit here, make sure it's focused then I just press the button to start shooting
and to stop shooting.
It's so convenient.
Definitely invest in a remote.
For my videos, I record audio through this mic that sits on top of my camera.
It's called a shotgun mic.
It's the Rode Videomic shotgun and it's about two or three years old.
I didn't buy it, I got it from my job where I worked as a video producer,
so perks of working in video.
It gets the job done basically because it takes higher quality audio
than what your camera takes but this mic has been causing me problems recently
and I would upgrade to another one.
Basically I do enjoy having a shotgun mic
on top of your camera for vlogging but if you're shooting things
where you're really far from the camera then you have to have a lav mic
which is a mic that you wear on you.
I don't have those kinds of mics so I can't talk about it,
but you guys, if you're starting out, you can honestly use your phone to record audio.
Your iPhone's mic is actually really, really good.
So what you do: you take your iPhone,
you open that voice recording app and you put your phone as close to you as possible
but out of shot.
Then you just press record, press record on the camera, and you have to clap.
You basically clap so that later when you edit the video, you can sync up
the clap from the camera to the clap from the iPhone audio.
So after you're done
recording your video, you just stop recording on the phone, and you send that audio file
to yourself whether through email or whatever.
And when you edit your video,
you pull in that audio file, you match in that clap and then voila!
You have amazing audio
for your video.
If you guys ever watch movies where they have that slate,
that's what it's for: to sync up the video and the audio, because it's always recorded
separately.
Next let's talk about lighting.
Honestly, nowadays, I try to use natural light as often as I can.
I don't really like to use artificial lights, but I do have two umbrella lights
that I've used for my videos.
Especially in the past, you can go back to my old videos
in my old bedroom, I have two umbrella lights right here towards me.
And that did the job because I didn't have any natural light in that room.
But now that I have more natural light, I try to use it.
And naturally light is free,
so if you don't have a budget, just film right in front of a window.
That's the way to go.
If you're looking for another cheap alternative lighting, then you can get those paper lanterns.
I think they're like five or six dollars each.
Just hang those white paper lanterns
in front of your face and you have lighting.
Currently I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and I love it.
Previously, I started with iMovie,
that's free on the MacBook.
Then I upgraded to Final Cut Pro X that a lot of YouTubers use.
Honestly, Final Cut Pro is probably the most common program for YouTubers to use,
but I switched over and I wanted to learn Adobe Premiere because I learned
that's what filmmakers use to edit films and I kind of got into the film industry at one
point.
So I was like, "Oh, I should pick up that skill."
After I used Adobe,
I think I edit faster on Adobe than Final Cut so that's my program of choice.
But honestly, you can use any program and it doesn't matter as long as you have
somewhere you can edit your videos.
It really doesn't matter what you use, it's how you use it
because you still have to use your own creativity.
For editing graphics,
like making my thumbnail or graphics for my blog, I use Photoshop.
I basically use Photoshop for everything.
I know that not a lot of people can get Photoshop
so another really popular program that I've used in the past is PicMonkey.
You just go on PicMonkey [dot] com and you can upload your graphics
and create your thumbnail or whatever graphics from there.
It's pretty useful.
And I know that there's a ton of apps out there that make creating graphics really easy,
so go out there and do your research.
Lastly, someone asked what kind of laptop I have, so I thought I'd mention it.
I have a MacBook that I got in 2015 that is a 15-inch retina screen.
I don't really know the specs right now, but it's a good laptop.
I made sure that I upgraded
to this one last year because my old MacBook died out.
I think creating videos
takes up a lot of space and takes up a lot of memory
so you have to make sure you get the fastest laptop that you can afford to get.
I also can't forget to mention my external hard drives.
I have so many of these.
This is my main one right now.
It has two terabytes, Seagate.
Basically when I edit videos,
I edit it off my external hard drive because this has more space than my laptop.
You want to make sure that you edit your videos on something that has a lot of space
and is really fast, because you don’t want to have videos that get malfunctions.
That can happen: those green screens pop up.
Anyway I've learned my lesson
editing videos on my computer, so now I only edit videos off of a hard drive.
And as you can see I have a ton of hard drives.
I think I have four hard drives right now,
but this is my main one.
All the other ones just have my old stuff, my old videos on them.
When buying a hard drive, just buy the biggest size you can afford
because you don't want to get a smaller hard drive and then have to upgrade
to a bigger one and then a bigger one.
You just want to try to have everything
in one big hard drive, which is the lesson that I've learned in the past few years.
Alright that's it for this video.
Make sure you check out my other videos in the series,
such as advice for people starting out on YouTube and how to start a podcast, if you're
interested.
I'll see you next time.
Bye!