The Gear I Use - 2021

November 19, 2021 Chris Brandt

Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt, welcome back to another FUTRtech video.

I get asked about my gear all the time, so I thought as the year winds down, this would be a good time to give an update on what I am using. The list of stuff is long, but I wanted to highlight some of the things that really help me produce this channel. I will put a more comprehensive list in the notes for this show below.

I will also note that some of these links are affiliate links, which doesn’t cost you anything extra, but does give a little bit back to the channel.

Lighting

The first thing I want to talk about is lighting. I am working with limited space here in my studio, so my choices reflect that. The other thing that I am trying to do is create a pleasing soft natural looking light that takes some of these old man wrinkles away.

First off, there are a lot of different colors of white light, and they are referred to by their color temperatures. What we call daylight balanced usually falls in the 5600º Kelvin range while the light from a lamp would be in the 3200º Kelvin range, and have a more yellowish color.

I use daylight balanced lights for lighting the subject, me, and I use the 3200ºK lights in the background to warm things up and give separation.

There are 3 primary types of lights I use, COB lights, Panel Lights or ring lights. Ring lights are really simple to use and can give you a stylized look without a lot of effort. As the name implies, the light is in a ring and the camera usually sits in the middle. Because the light is directly in front of you, it flattens shadows and tends to give you a high key fashion look. You can tell when people are using these because they have ring highlights reflecting in their eyes.

Panel lights are great for tight spaces. They are panels that have rows of small LEDs to produce the light. They are great for tight spaces, but you need to put a lot of diffusion in front of them to get a soft look, or you need to move them far away from the subject. Diffusion or distance is the way to soften light.

The lights that I am currently using are COB, which stand for Chip on Board. It is a larger central light source that behaves more like traditional incandescent lights. The light I am using is the Aputure Amaran 100d, which produces great consistent light, while being compact and affordable. To soften the light, I am using an Aputure Lightdome Mini, which gives you great diffusion in a very small package. Aputure offers an incredible range of light products and they have recently been introducing lights like the 100d that are more affordable options of their more expensive professional lights.

Getting the lighting right is usually accounts for the biggest difference between people just starting out and the folks with a more professional look.

I am using a 3 point lighting setup with a key light, a side fill and a rim light to help create separation from the background.

Camera

Next, let’s talk about camera. People ask all the time how I achieve that blurry background that really sets me off from the background. That is what we mean by depth of field. When you have shallow depth of field, only a small area is in focus. Wide depth of field means more area is in focus. When you use a web cam or your computer’s camera, those lenses are designed to have a very wide depth of field, which keeps your background in focus. The same is true with phone cameras. Computational photography like they use on the iPhones, can identify the subject and put a blur on everything else, which is another way to achieve a blurred background.

Depth of field is usually influenced by three things, focal length, aperture and distance between the subject and the lens. Focal length is the difference between wide angle and telephoto. Typically the wider the angle lens, the greater the depth of field. With distance, typically the closer you get to the lens, the shorter the depth of field.

The last item is aperture, which is often referred to as the speed of the lens. This is the F value listed on the lens. The higher the number, the less depth of field you ae going to have. Unfortunately, the lower that value, the higher the price.

I am still shooting with the Canon EOS R camera, which remains a great value. I have a bunch of lenses for it, but when I am doing the podcasts, I use the RF 35mm f1.8 Macro. This works well in my space and gives me great depth of field. In fact it is sometimes too much and I have to stop down to 2.2 to keep my whole face in focus.

There are a lot of great cameras to choose from, but what I would say to someone who is looking to invest in a camera is to invest in the lenses and not the camera body. Lenses will last you a lot longer than the camera body and you often spend more money on them over time.

I will get a lot of hate for this, but I think there are only two camera systems I would invest in at this time, Canon or Sony. I have invested in Canon, but I think that Sony has probably more momentum in the market right now and has some great options with their e-series lenses.

Microphone

Last, I want to talk about my microphone, because it is big and draws a lot of attention. I am using the Shure SM7B, which is a legendary broadcast mic. It can be a bit expensive and you need to use a preamp and an audio interface to use it. Shure has another great option that is loosely based on the SM7B but is more affordable and comes in a USB option as well, and that is the Shure MV7. Another option that is even more affordable is the Shure SM58, which is one of the most common live vocal mics of all time. It doesn’t look fancy, but it sounds great.

There is obviously a whole lot more to it, but those are the basics of what I use. I will put a more comprehensive list below for you to look through, and I will probably do some more videos on some of the other details in the future.

Hopefully this was helpful, thanks for watching, if you liked what you saw, give us a like and think about subscribing, and I will see you in the next video.

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