Speaker 1: So you wanna be a YouTuber, you wanna shoot videos and make money. So you probably started shopping for a camera, but then you realize you're gonna need an SD card to record the videos onto, and you're gonna need a computer to edit the videos. And there's probably a whole lot more that you're gonna need that you probably just don't know about yet. Well, I've been shooting videos professionally for over eight years now, and so I'm gonna save you some time and give you the complete gear checklist that you're gonna need to start shooting YouTube videos. You gotta just press record. Hey everybody, I'm Nolan Molt with Think Media. Now let's get right into this video because we have a latte to talk about. That was bad. It was kind of good though. Now everything I'm gonna talk about in this list is gonna be broken down into two different sections. And the first section I call must-haves because these are things that you are absolutely going to need in order to start making YouTube videos. The second section that I'm gonna talk about is going to be the essentials. These are things that are gonna make your life so much easier. They're gonna improve your video quality and audio quality the most, but they're not necessarily a must-have because there are workarounds. So let's start with our must-haves. Now number one is the most obvious. It is going to be a camera. Of course, you need to actually film something in order to post it on YouTube. So having a camera is the number one top priority. You can definitely get started with your smartphone. You don't need to go out and buy a camera. Now there's a lot of great cameras underneath that $1,000 mark for shooting YouTube videos like the Sony a6400, the Canon M50. I even started on the Sony a5100. It didn't even have a mic jack, but it had the flip-out screen, had great autofocus. And so you definitely can get started under $1,000. Even under $500, you can pick up a pretty good camera. But most of us do have smartphones laying around and you can use your smartphone to start creating videos and still get really good quality just out of your phone. Now if you're totally lost when it comes to cameras, maybe you wanna buy one, but you're not sure which one, I'm gonna leave a link in the description called thinkgearguide.com. Make sure you check that out because it has some of our favorite cameras and lenses that we recommend to YouTubers and beginners that are just getting started on this journey. All right, number two, you're gonna need an SD card. If you're shooting on something like a camera and you're not shooting on your phone, then you are going to need something to record these videos onto. And so an SD card really is a must-have. My favorite SD card is by SanDisk and it's linked in the description down below. And this SD card is really affordable, but it's also fast enough to record 4K video. So if you are shooting in higher resolutions like 4K, this SD card is going to be perfect for you, even if you're shooting in 1080, I still recommend using this SD card because you can always level up and it's just very affordable and lasts a long time. Next up, you are gonna need something to edit your videos. And so you are going to need to pick up some sort of computer. Again, if you decide to shoot on your phone, there are some apps out there where you can just edit directly off of your phone. And so that is definitely an option, but if you do wanna get a camera and you wanna edit on a computer, I definitely recommend going with Apple and getting their new M1 chips. What I've been using back here is the MacBook Pro with the M1 chip. Now the M1 chip is important because that's what's gonna make your computer super fast. And what's awesome is these computers have been getting really affordable. So if you pick up something like the MacBook Air, it's still going to be great for you to edit videos. The Mac mini with the M1 chip is also a great, great option. You're just gonna need to get a monitor so that you can hook it up and start editing, as well as all the other options that Apple are starting to release like the iPad Pro with the M1 chip, as well as the iMacs. These are great computers. They're gonna be very fast. And the nice thing is, you're gonna be able to upgrade over time and this is not going to get slowed down by a better footage that you might shoot on in the future. So this is really a future-proof, very safe, very effective and fast computer lineup that you can use for your videos. Now when it comes to the must-haves, that's honestly it. That's really all you need. I guess you need internet. So if you don't have any internet, you can run to Starbucks and use their free internet to upload to YouTube. But really, to start creating content, you could just do it with your phone. But if you wanna use a camera, a computer, SD card, that's really the bare minimum bones, what you're going to need to upload to YouTube. So next up, we're gonna talk about the essentials. Now I'm not gonna try and sell you guys on stuff that you're not going to need. Seriously, if you're a beginner, these essentials are probably my top priority. So if I was looking to save up money and buy some gear, I definitely would look at this essential pack and just start getting these. Really not in any particular order. You can definitely see what's going to be best for you because it's gonna be different for everybody. But these really are essentials that you are going to use so much if you are creating YouTube content. So let's get into it. Number one is, of course, coffee. Okay, it's not actually coffee, but number one is a tripod. Now a tripod is that thing with the three legs that you put your camera on in order to set it down wherever you want to get a good steady shot. So the camera does not need to be held by somebody or placed on a table. You can set it up on a tripod like what I have right now and start shooting videos of yourself. If you're shooting videos just like this, where you're sitting down talking to a camera and the camera does not need to move at all, I kind of just recommend getting the cheapest like Amazon Basics tripod that you can find on Amazon. Now, depending on your YouTube channel, you might actually need more out of your tripod. You might want to stand up and shoot videos. And in that case, you are going to need a tripod that can raise high enough because the cheap tripods really are really short. So if you are six foot or even like five, eight, five, 10, sometimes they don't even bring the camera up to eye level and that's not going to cut it because then you get a really weird angle. You definitely want your camera to be high enough to be at eye level. On these cheap tripods, you can tilt and pan with your camera, but it is not smooth at all. And it's really frustrating when you're trying to pan and just like jerking and it's not smooth. So you do want to get a fluid head tripod. Again, that's going to get more expensive, but really it's just up to you and your content and what you're going to need. You can always start with a cheap tripod and invest in a better one over time. Number two is a microphone. You want to invest in your audio because I think it's sometimes even more important than the video quality because people want to hear what you're saying. And if it's hard to listen, then it's really hard to watch the video. The reason this is in the essentials list and not a must have is because cameras have built in microphones and so do our phones. So if you are shooting a video, it's going to pick up audio and you can use that just to get started, but picking up a microphone and upgrading to a lav mic or a shotgun mic really is going to make a huge difference for your videos. Again, to make this easy for you guys so you don't have to do a whole bunch of research, we've just listed our favorite microphones, our favorite tripods, everything down in the description below. So make sure you check that out. Here at Think Media, we've used and tested out so much camera gear, microphones, lights, tripods, cameras, lenses, so we really wanted to help save you a lot of time. So check those links. We're going to have our favorite lav mics, our favorite budget shotgun mics. Everything is going to be down below. Check that out. Number three is a light. Now, no matter what camera you have, whether you're starting on your phone or you have a camera like I'm using now, lighting is what's going to make your image look good. I recommend starting with a soft box light, putting that right next to your camera. It's going to give you a very nice soft light. It's not going to look harsh like someone is shining a flashlight on you. And so having a soft box with your light is going to be a major upgrade for you. Now, I tested a bunch of the $50 soft boxes on Amazon and I came to the conclusion and found a really, really nice light that has a remote. It's bi-color, so it can get warm. It can get cool, like daylight temperature. And I really recommend that people just get started with that $50 light and it's going to improve their videos so much. Number four is hard drives. Now, really there's two different types. If you're editing on your computer and your computer's built in storage gets full, it's going to slow down your computer. And so you want to delete stuff, but instead of just deleting it, what I recommend is getting an external hard drive and putting your old videos or whatever it is that you want to dump off that computer and put it onto a hard drive. And then you can delete it off of your computer, free up that space, continue editing YouTube videos and having a fast computer for you. So I do recommend picking up one of those hard drives and that is going to save you a whole lot of space from your computer. You can just dump stuff onto it and leave it there. And then I recommend getting a faster hard drive that you can edit right off of. This is called an SSD and I recommend the Samsung T5 hard drive. This basically is just going to expand the storage capacity on your computer. So when you plug it into your computer, you can have a bunch of videos on there and you can edit off that hard drive. Whereas with the other hard drives that are a bit slower, they're much cheaper and they can store a whole lot more, but they're not fast enough for you to edit off of. And so I recommend having one of each. And that's exactly what I do for these videos at Think Media. I'm shooting so many videos that I am editing off of my SSD. And then once I'm done with a few projects or stuff is starting to get full, I'll transfer a bunch of files from my SSD onto an external hard drive. And that's kind of goes into storage and saves everything for later. So if I ever do need to pick up some old videos, I can bring out that external hard drive and bring it back onto my computer. Number five is extra batteries. You are going to need a few extra batteries because in this price range, if you're looking for a camera under $1,000, the batteries just are not that good. I definitely recommend picking up at least one or two extra batteries. Now you can save a whole lot of money by going on Amazon and looking for a third party seller. So it's not going to be a Sony brand or Canon or Panasonic brand, but it's going to be the same type of battery made by someone else. And you can pick those up for very cheap on Amazon. So when you're filming, you have one battery in your camera. Now you want to have one or two extra like I was talking about. Make sure that they are already charged up before you start shooting your videos. And then when one dies, you can swap the other one in and then you instantly want to start charging your extra battery into the charger. So if the other battery dies, you're shooting a lot of videos, maybe you're shooting all day long, you can just continue to swap these out. And that's going to make sure that you never have to stop filming. If you have extra batteries, you can just keep on going. Now that's it for the essentials. Really, it's going to matter based on your work. If you need to pick up extra monitors or gimbals or ND filters, you might not even know what any of this stuff means, but there is a lot of stuff that you can get into with this whole video creation process. And so that's just going to depend on your needs and what you need it for. But when it comes down to it, you really just need a phone to get started. Don't let any of the equipment get in the way of you creating YouTube videos. If you want to get started making videos on your phone, then click on the screen right now to watch our free course on how you can shoot and edit videos entirely on your phone. ♪♪♪