So do a cheap, mobile, home video studio
It doesn't take a lot of investment to make higher quality videos.
contents show
Introductory
More and more people are launching vlogs, their own YouTube channel. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to spend crazy money to do this, if you have a mobile phone with a usable camera, you can take quality shots with some accessories.
It is often said that content is the key to successful channels, and there is a lot of truth in that. However, nowadays it doesn't really matter how demanding these recordings are.
Pros use a lot of tools. Camera tripods, big lights, gimbal, serious cameras. However, it may not be worthwhile to invest many hundreds of thousands of forints to get started.
Plenty of a cell phone and some accessories are enough to get you started. If the channel starts, if you also feel that you want to take the topic more seriously, you will have plenty of money to spend.
In this article, I’ll show you four tools I use myself, they won’t cost much, yet, they’ll be enough to cut you into videoing. Look through the tools, then read the last chapter, which I’m just going to call magic, I think you’ll find out why!
Lamp
Lighting is important. The sun does not always shine, and it is better not to rely only on natural light, because it changes. A cloud comes and obscures the sun, slowly darkens, a storm arrives, and the light conditions have already changed.
I chose a Blitzwolf lamp for local lighting, and there were several reasons for my choice.
The BlitzWolf BW-SL3 is specifically designed for telephone video. We get a tripod, i.e. a tripod, a phone holder and a Bluetooth remote control to start or stop recording.
The lamp itself knows quite a lot. You can switch between warm and cold light in 3 stages (2300-6000 Kelvin) and you can also change the light intensity (1500-2800 lumens). The lamp is 5 watts and works from USB, so a powerbank, a phone charger or even a USB port on your computer may be enough to operate.
These are all good things, and while the lamp itself is good, I chose it primarily because of the accessories, tripod, and phone holder, but why, I’ll describe it in the last chapter!
This lamp is the largest item in the price package, but it's worth the price you'll find at the end of the article.
With the coupon code BGAFF10OFF we have to pay HUF 10 from the Czech warehouse
BlitzWolf BW-SL3 lamp
Dolly
The four-wheel structure, called a dolly, is used to make shake-free videos of various objects. We mount the phone on it and we can drive around the various objects on the table while we take the material.
We can get closer to it, move away from it, and turn the wheel to walk around circles of fixed radius. It’s not a very complicated thing, it’s really nothing more than a simple camera platform with which we can take great cropping images.
The reason I chose this car was the accessories that came with it. We get something called a magic arm, and a handle that we can use to push it.
The latter does not need to be explained, although I will return to it at the end of the article. However, magic arm is worth a few sentences!
This is a really magical tool. By loosening the scroll wheel in the middle, you can release all the pivot points, and the camera or phone mounted on the end can be rotated to essentially any position. If you pull the dial, all the pivot points will be “stuck” and recording may start. It’s an awfully useful thing, but not just on the car, but I’ll only write about it again at the end of the article!
Unfortunately, we can only buy this from a Chinese warehouse, but the price is below customs, so we don’t have to expect an extra cost!
The price is 9000 forints.
Dolly + Magic Arm
Swivel base
The third tool is the one I use for essentially any video where I need to do some product testing. This is nothing more than a relatively small turntable with a circular diameter of about 140 millimeters.
Power is supplied via a USB port. With the three buttons on the structure, you can switch it on and off, adjust the speed of rotation in three steps, and choose between unidirectional or reciprocating rotation.
The load capacity of the swivel base is 3 kilograms, so we can put quite large things on it. By using it, we will be able to take beautiful shakes without shaking, as we do not have to move around the subject, it rotates us at a steady speed.
If you want to do video tests, I think it’s an essential piece. Fortunately, it doesn't cost much, we can have ours from a Chinese warehouse for 4500 forints.
Swivel base in white or black
Tripod
Honestly, I’m not using this, but a more expensive one because I’m not videotaping by phone, but it will serve the purpose.
The bottom line is that this 60-foot stand, which can be adjusted to a height of 3 inches, is surprisingly cheap. You can rotate, tilt, and of course you can put a camera on it if you want. This is also a piece that does not need to be over-explained, and the good news is that we can buy it from an EU warehouse for only 1950 forints.
Tripod, 60 inches high
Magic
This chapter will be exciting, as on the one hand it will reveal why I say the magic will be here, on the other hand it will reveal what idea I put together the above package!
My basic idea was to buy things that are, so to speak, compatible with each other. What does this mean in practice? In essence, I use the stuff I buy as a building toy to put together what I just need.
In the case of the lamp, this specifically means that I didn’t smoothly buy a lamp, but a tripod, for example, on which I will be able to attach all sorts of things. Now I mainly use the phone or the magic arm, but later I can use it for a camera, microphone, sports camera, anything.
We also get the phone holder with the lamp. Again, this is such that we can screw it on anything, like Dolly, so we’ll also use it to make our cropping images.
Let's continue with Dolly! It’s no accident I chose this piece as I wrote it was the accessories that makes it get in the cart!
The magic arm is an awfully good thing. It is also compatible with other devices, i.e. it can be used for the Blitzwolf lamp, for example, if the height of the base is not enough. On the table tripod that came with the lamp, we wrapped the lever on top of the lamp, and the whole thing was already a good twenty inches higher. But we can use it for the larger tripod in the same way, as we can easily extend its height with it.
As I wrote, this cheap, portable tripod can only be adjusted to a height of 60 inches, but if we put the magic arm on it and the phone holder of the Blitzwolf lamp on top of it, we are already close to 1 meter.
But there’s also the lever we can use to push the car. Not only is this good, we can mount the lamp phone holder on it and we already have a selfie stick. As I wrote, we also get the Bluetooth remote control for the lamp, so we will have a Bluetooth selfie stick right away!
The Blitzwolf lamp is also fully compatible with Dolly, so we can screw the lights onto the car, put the phone on it, and we can already take pictures so that the lamp illuminates the subject as it moves with the car and the phone.
Moreover, if we take the wheels off the Dolly, we can screw a phone holder to the rest of the plate, if we buy a microphone later, we can put its holder, the whole thing on the bigger tripod.
We can't combine the turntable with anything, but the 60-centimeter tripod can be used for one more thing, because using it we can save the price of a gimbal!
Okay, it won't be so perfect, but almost.
With a handheld phone, especially if we don’t get vibration damping for your camera, we can only take nice shots if we put it down somewhere. On the street, everything will shake as you move. We can remedy this with the tripod.
The point is to keep the center of gravity as low as possible, thus dampening the movement of our hands. If you place the phone holder of the Blitzwolf lamp on the tripod, insert the phone, and hold the tripod with a loose wrist around your neck, the center of gravity will be low due to the legs. If we start videoing like this, our hands won’t be so “squeaky” because of the low center of gravity, we can make pretty smooth, air-floating movies with a little practice.
So why is magic magic?
I think you already understand! In this package, essentially everything is related to everything. We can combine different accessories so we won’t have 3 (4) different video devices, but up to dozens, depending on what we’re screwing together.
If you add up the above amounts, you can see that you can put together a complete starter kit for home video for only 25 thousand forints. And no, it may not only be necessary for an amateur YouTube channel, as you could create high-quality product videos for your company, enterprise, combined with a little music.
I hope this article has made you want to test your video skills. In the video below, you can see in the first roughly a minute and a half what videos I usually make with these devices.
