Everything You NEED to Start Recording YouTube Videos (Complete Gear Checklist)

- So you want to be a YouTuber,

you wanna shoot videos and make money.

So you probably started shopping for a camera

but then you realize you're going to need an SD card

to record the videos onto

and you 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 going to save you some time

and give you the complete gear checklist

that you're gonna need to start shooting YouTube videos.

You got to just press record.

Hey everybody, I'm Nolan Molt with Think Media,

now let's get right into this video

'cause we have a latte talk about that.

That was bad, it was kind of good though.

Everything I'm gonna talk about in this list

is going to 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 going to 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

but there's a lot of great cameras

underneath that $1,000 mark for shooting YouTube videos

like the Sony A6400, the Canon N50.

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, you know

under a thousand dollars,

even under $500 you can pick up a pretty good camera

but most of us do have smart phones 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 want to 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 description down below

and this is the 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 going to need something to edit your videos

until 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 want to get a camera

and you want to edit on a computer,

I definitely recommend going with Apple

and getting their new M 1 Chip.

What I've been using back here is the MacBook Pro

with the M 1 Chip.

Now the M 1 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 M 1 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 M 1 Chip, as well as the IMAX.

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.

So 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 up 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 want to 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 going to 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 going to be different for everybody

but these really are essential

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,

and 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 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 it 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 gonna 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 gonna 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, everything.

So we really want it to help save you a lot of time

so check those links,

we're gonna have our favorite lav mics,

our favorite budget shotgun mics,

everything is gonna 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 softbox light

putting that right next to your camera.

It's going to give you a very nice soft light,

it's not gonna look harsh

like someone is shining a flashlight on you

and so having a softbox

with your light is going to be a major upgrade for you.

Now, I tested a bunch of the $50 softboxes on Amazon

and I came to conclusion

and found a really, really nice light

that has a remote, it's by 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 gonna 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 gonna 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

in 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 a thousand dollars

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 gonna 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 Gimbels

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.

(upbeat music)