Whether you are driven by necessity or by choosing an online audience, short videos and streaming are the trends now. To get the best virtual interaction with people, you should have the right gear. With the many varieties of items, including mobile phone lenses, filters, tripods, and microphones, knowing just what your video work requires will help you budget accordingly.
Over the past year, online video has improved tremendously, which has made it easier to create high-quality content with superior video cuts, editing, and camera angles. In addition, the numerous editing apps, tools, and improved technologies have made vlogging and video streaming much more appealing and engaging. In this article, we`ll introduce you to online video and streaming gear essentials. Let`s begin!
Best Camera Lens for YouTube Videos & Live Streaming
If you are looking to start a vlog or live stream videos, then the most important thing you need is a camera. Quality content is crucial if you want to get good reviews and more subscribers to your YouTube channel or on other platforms. Not only will a clean video and audio make your work or brand have a more professional look, but it will also differentiate you from others in your niche.
If you can’t shell out thousands on high-end gear for vlogging and video streaming equipment, then get started with your smartphone. However, while you may be using a high-grade smartphone for this, it is important to boost your camera lenses if you want to get superior results. Whether for sharp quality, consistent focus, a wide viewing angle, or well captured fast action, mobile lens kit can help you out.
So you are asking, what kind of mobile phone lens would be best for your YouTube and live streaming videos? The quality of the lens you use will determine:
- The closeness of your camera to the subject
- The quality of the image
- How much background can be captured
- How much of the picture will appear in focus.
Types of Mobile Phone Lens
Anamorphic Lens
If a truly cinematic look to your smart videos is what you are looking to achieve, you need to get an anamorphic lens. This lens will stretch your aspect ratio image and also give you great cinematic lens flares from lights. A good example of the anamorphic lens is the Apexel 1.33x Wide Screen Mobile Anamorphic Lens that lets you capture a 2:40:1 widescreen aspect ration instead of your phone’s 16:9 normal aspect ratio and can be used with the 37mm filters or other filter types for special artistic effects.
Wide-angle Lens
A wide-angle lens fits more into your photos and covers a much larger depth of field. Their expansive angle of view makes them great for taking sprawling landscapes, as well as tight interiors. The idea behind the wide-angle lens is to decrease the aperture so that the depth of field of the image increases. The result is making an image grow wider or ‘pop’ as you move further into the wide-angle territory. Our portable and detachable 110° Wide Angle Lens can be combined with a CPL filter, which removes unwanted reflections from surfaces like glass or water for color saturation enhancement.
Fish-eye lens
Also called the ultra-wide lens, a fish-eye lens gives a dynamic and abstract feeling to shots, which creates a highly distorted image. There are two types of fish-eye lenses: a circular and a full-frame fish-eye lens. The full-frame fish-eye is more useful compared to the circular. Apexel Fish-eye lens such as the 195° Super Fisheye Lens for Mobile Phone allows you to get shots that would normally be very difficult if not almost impossible on normal wide-angle lenses.
Telephoto Lenses
Telephotos are the opposite of wide-angle lenses because they shorten the depth of field, which enables isolation of subjects from the background with shallow focus. A telephoto lens works superbly for a far away subject, especially if it is for convenience or safety. If you want to magnify your frame's content without having to zoom, then what you need is a telephoto lens. Apexel elegant solution offers the 60x Mobile Telephoto Lens Kit. With its high quality, the 60x telescope lens can shoot HD videos and come with an extendable tripod.
Macro Lenses
The macro lens has a high level of magnification, which allows it to pick out even the minutest detail and enhance them to be large enough to see with our normal eyes. In macro photography, the magnification ratio tells us how much of an image that has been projected on the sensor of the camera compares with the actual size of the object.
To explain better, a lens with a 1:2 ratio can project up to half the subject’s size on its sensor, while a lens that has a 5:1 ratio can project an image five times the object’s size. At Apexel, we have developed the new Universal Clip 100mm Macro Lens as the pinnacle of Macro photography. With this kind of equipment, you can capture life-sized images of objects an inch away.
Tripods
A tripod provides an easy way to keep your mobile camera in a secure, sturdy position. You can get the proper angle, framing, and focus for your video with a tripod. Since your set up will be for a lightweight mobile camera, the best tripod for you would be a sturdy tabletop tripod. Besides, for greater flexibility, you can go with an octopus tripod that can be easily twisted or wrap around any surface, allowing you to capture different video angles anywhere. To put the icing on the cake, the Apexel Octopus Tripod comes with integrated light and a microphone for achieving the most professional result.
Lighting
The difference between a good and an average video is lighting. With one or more continuous lights, you can ensure that there is always sufficient lighting wherever you shoot.
If you want to illuminate a subject for a video, you’ll need continuous light. If you cannot access natural daylight, get an alternative light source with continuous LED or mounted on a light stand.
For your lighting setup, angle the main light towards one side of your subject. At this point, set some fill light (usually dimmer LED or reflector) towards the other side to eliminate shadows. The larger the space or group of people being filmed, the more the lights needed.
Microphone
Audio quality matters to viewers just as much as video quality. While an audience might be willing to forgive the odd picture glitch or lack quality, they won’t be so kind with distorted, faint, or echoey audio. While your phone’s internal microphone can do a basic job, you want more than that.
Shotgun Microphones
If you want high-quality audio in your vlogging or live streaming, then you can’t go wrong with a shotgun microphone. These mics are susceptible to sound in front of them and don’t pick up much from behind or side, thus ensuring ambient sounds don’t fall in. If your subject is within arm’s length of the camera, then mount your microphone on the smartphone. If it is further away from the camera, then mount it on a boom stand.
Lavalier Microphones
Lavalier microphones or lav mics are designed to clip onto a shirt discreetly and work well to capture speech at close range without blocking out any useful sounds. The best wireless lav mics can allow the receiver to pick up transmitted audio from a significant distance. This allows the subject free movement and flexibility even when they move away from the camera.
Conclusion
Whether you are looking to become an influencer, movie director, or have fun, you now understand what it takes to create awesome content! These tools will ensure that you can produce an unforgettable video experience for your viewers.
Ultimately, make sure to know which spec is best for your gear and need. At Apexel, we strive to make everyone's creative ideas come true. Check out our latest solutions for vlogging and streaming!