What’s In The Bag? Vlogging Camera Kit.
In this video, we take a look at the vlogging camera kit, including the audio kit, that we use for a typical vlogging shoot in the great outdoors, or indeed the great indoors.
Hello and welcome to Something Vloggy.
I’m Ian and today I’m going to tell you all about the kit that we take out when we go to make our films.
This is what I carry in my backpack, which is why whenever you see is going out for long walks or anything like that you see me dragging this thing around which does look ridiculous considering quite a lot of the time we’re going on quite short walks, which you could just achieve by taking one of these.
The most important thing obviously is the camera.
We run Panasonic gh4.
These are amazing cameras for the price.
We tend to stick this lens on them which is the lens that we use most of the time.
A 9 to 18 millimetre lens.
This is a Micro Four Thirds lens mount on here.
This thing is, I mean, basically it’s a DSLR camera but it also has to shoot in 4K.
You’ve got a variety of options with regards to audio.
This is a rode Video Micro which… they are about 45 quid.
This is probably the most amazing microphone I think I’ve ever come across.
I spent 10 years working as a sound engineer in the music industry and for the amount of money that this thing costs the quality is astounding.
I’m talking to you on one of these now.
You’ll notice I’m not wearing a lapel mic like this.
I’m just talking directly to the camera and for pretty much everything that we do that is the microphone that we’ll be using.
The sound quality is astounding regardless of whether you’re in a whacking great big auditorium,
I’ve recorded string quartets with this thing…just out of curiosity to see what it was like and the sound was brilliant.
For 45 quid that is an absolute winner.
Lapel Mic
If you’re doing something that is a really long distance away obviously you’re going to need one of this sort of thing. Which is a radio mic kit.
That is a great system if, for example, the camera is a long way away from the microphone.
Occasionally you’ll see us do shots where it’ll be one or other of us walking along in the distance chatting away to the camera that’s how we do that.
Or if it’s a very noisy atmosphere; you know- if we’re in the middle of a High Street or something like that, we’ll use that sort of setup.
Headphones
If you’re going to be paying attention to your audio these things are vital, and to my mind the better quality headphones that you get, the better, because you’re leaving less to chance on the day.
These are Sennheiser hd25 – one mark II’s
They are astoundingly good headphones.
These things, I can use them to record sound in live situations, sort of out in the street.
Alternatively, I can use these quite happily in a recording situation in a recording studio when I’m doing mixdowns I will listen using these because they are astoundingly good.
I have to confess I’ve kind of got lazy in my old age and I tend to just rely on the fact that this is going to do a good job and if anything goes horribly wrong, I know that I can generally deal with it in post.
Tripod
One of the most important things, I think, if you’re going to make your stuff look good, I mean really good, then you need a tripod.
Now we take either one or other of these two.
This is a cheapy, I think I picked these things up for fourteen quid each.
They are largely rubbish.
I mean I know you shouldn’t really use rubbish but you can get away with them and they’re very very light.
They’re aluminium and a bit noisy.
They will be replaced at some point, but for the time being that’s ideal.
If we want to go a bit better then we take these things, which are a make called Safari.
Never heard of them before.
Was recommending them because of the fact that they’ve got a fluid head on them.
They are, at best I would describe them as okay.
These things, I think about 125 quid.
They’re not great. They’re a lot heavier. They’re made of carbon fiber.
They’re okay, but if you want to give a nice fluid tracking shot this is the one that we go to.
Lenses
We also carry with us a couple of different lenses.
This is an Olympus 75 to 300 millimeter lens.
It generally doesn’t come out of the bag.
It’s not brilliant in low-light.
Without a decent tripod it’s practically useless, because there’s no stabilisation built into the lens and there’s no stabilisation in the camera.
If you were using a camera that had stabilisation built into it, much better.
But, what I should have done was gone for something from the Lumix range which has got the stabilisation built into the lens rather than the camera.
This is a 14 to 140 and again, it very rarely comes out of the bag.
It’s quite a nice lens.
It’s a bit plasticky and cheap and it makes a rattling noise when you shake it, but it does the job rather nicely.
We also carry with us,and again this thing so infrequently comes out of the bag, that it’s ridiculous.
Filter
This is an ND filter, so if you’re filming in a really bright environment… whack that on the front of the lens.
Largely the camera will deal with it but if you are shooting in very very very bright light that’s the thing to play with.
Memory Cards
We also tend to carry a couple of spare SD cards.
These are 256 gigabytes each so that gives us plenty of recording time.
From time to time you’ll find yourself filming in an environment where… you need one of these.
Reflector
This basically is a reflector.
You’ve got two options.
You’ve got gold side and you’ve got the white side as you can see possibly, maybe, it allows me to reflect light up onto my face.
It folds up really small and goes into the backpack.
It’s one of those things that if you have it you generally don’t use it. If you don’t have it you’ll miss it.
Drone
The other thing that we always carry with us now is a drone. You can stick it up in the air, take your shot.
It’s really fast to get basically out of the bag.
It takes a couple of minutes to get it out of the bag and into the air.
It’s that quick.
It folds up really really small.
Extra Kit
The other thing that we take with us is one of these.
You can pick these up for, I mean practically pence.
They are generally under a fiver and this is a mini tripod.
Screw it into the bottom of the camera and hey presto you’ve got a camera that you can angle by just wobbling the legs around and it will stay there.
The other thing that is incredibly important when you’re going out to film.
Water. I know it sounds a bit daft in a bit obvious, but if you’re going out and it’s hot or you’re going to walk for a long distance to take water with you.
Chances are you’re not going to be in a coffee shop or near a coffee shop.
One of those attached to a clip on your belt and you’re not gonna get yourself too dehydrated.
Not forgetting your faithful lens cloth.
These things, very important, because if you’ve got rubbish on the front of your lens, which all it takes is a few raindrops, and without this you can’t get them off and not leave smears.
Batteries
Obviously we keep spare batteries for cameras.
You’re always going to use batteries.
So you want batteries that’ll fit into your radio mic kits.
Batteries for your drone and your camera well and truly charged up before you go out.
Because the last thing you want to have happen is for that little light to start flashing those little indicators to tell you, oh, your day is about to be ruined.
The bag.
It’s taken me years to find a camera bag that I really like.
And this thing is brilliant.
It’s largely kind of rainproof.
It’s actually got an extra bit in the thing that you can pull over to make it completely rainproof.
It is incredibly comfortable to wear.
You don’t notice that you’re carrying all this weight around with you. You really don’t.
It’s got room for clothes in there.
Your camera bag is quite often not cheap and it shouldn’t be.
You’ve got a bear in mind you’re putting all of your kit in there and you’re trusting this bag to look after it for you.
You’ve got a, I don’t really know what that’s for, probably keeping your skis in.
You’ve got a bit down here which is for keeping all of your clothes and junk and we’ve got all sorts of stuff in there.
We’ve got little sweetie things that give you lots of glucose, just to make sure that we don’t fall over through lack of nutrients.
We… In order to put your camera gear in…
A- You have to take the backpack off.
Now I know this kind of sounds a bit daft and you think
“Well that’s a bit of a pain in the neck, isn’t it? Surely it would be much easier if you could just easily get it off.”
However, if you’re somewhere busy and there’s somebody walking along behind you, they can quite easily open up the back of your backpack and take out your camera gear.
Now this way, you have to take the backpack off and then you open up your zips and there are all the compartments for keeping your camera gear in, as you can see.
The bag’s functions.
This bit actually comes, out so if you wanted to for some inexplicable reason not have the rest of the backpack, you can just use this inside bit.
Not entirely sure why you would, but you can take all of that out and just, I don’t know, stick it in the back of the car.
In fact we’ve got a space in the back of the Mini, there’s actually a false floor in there.
I could take that out and that bit would fit underneath the false floor and I would be able to keep all my camera gear in there without the backpack.
Don’t know why I’d wanna do that, but it would at least allow me to conceal the whole thing.
It’s not a busting great deal of kit.
Editing Software.
I mean admittedly you’ve got to add on to that the editing facilities that we use. Largely we edit in Premiere Pro, but we have over the years edited in all sorts of different things;
Final Cut Pro, er, going back a long time.
After that we moved over to Avid, which we liked but thought was overpriced, and then eventually, because of the fact we were using Photoshop and things like that so often, we moved over to Adobe Premiere Pro.
Which again, great piece of software.
Allows you to do an awful lot of stuff.
Blackmagic make a thing called Resolve, which started out as a colouring package and has slowly but surely turned into a complete editing suite, so that you’ve got editing, you’ve got audio facilities in there.
Its colouring facilities are brilliant, I will, I will say this, they are excellent. And even though it’s produced by Black Magic, whose cameras I’m not overly impressed with, this piece of software is brilliant and largely it’s free unless you want the really high-end tools that it offers which, most of the time, you’re not gonna want unless you’re making a feature film.
That I think covers everything that you need to know about the stuff that we drag around with us on a regular basis.
Conclusion.
I hope that you found this interesting.
I suspect that you probably thought it was incredibly boring and probably switched off, but if you’re still here, there are more films to come about all sorts of stuff.
We’re going to be out walking, we’re going to be doing more DIY around the house, we are going to be keeping you up to date on a Friday as to what’s coming, and slowly but surely our plan is to make more and more films; Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, you should be able to rely on us for Something Vloggy to watch.
See you soon.