In today’s live stream, we’re going to be talking about the best cameras for live streaming. I’m going to talk through some options in terms of cameras that you can use for live streaming and I’m also going to demo these options as well
🔴Get your free Facebook Live Cheat Sheets🔴: https://saranguyenonline.com/special/facebook-live-cheat_sheets/
⏰ Timestamps ⏰
2:01 Live Streaming with your Mobile/Smartphone camera
6:26 Live Streaming with a webcam
9:19 Live Streaming with a DSLR or Mirrorless Camera
🎦 Camera links mentioned in the video 🎦
Logitech BRIO 4K: https://amzn.to/2FrhNgE
Logitech Brio 4k Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN8eFuHyqo8
Logitech c920: http://amzn.to/2ncXZke
Logitech c920 Review: https://youtu.be/aGde3FlM8Mo
Canon 90D: https://amzn.to/2R7KlQV
Best Cameras for Live Streaming on Facebook Live or YouTube – Video Transcription
We’re in a really weird time and I know everyone’s kind of sick of everyone saying that it’s a weird time, but it is. At the moment live streaming is quite popular because it’s a way that people can engage with their audience and it’s a way that people can connect with others online.
I’m going to talk through some options in terms of cameras that you can use for live streaming and I’m also going to demo these options as well. I’ve got a couple of options and I’m also going to show you the different options, different camera options so that you can kind of make a decision for yourself on what kind of what’s best. So thank you so much for being here.
Now, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help awesome entrepreneurs build their business impact and income using video on social media. Make sure that you check out the links in the description because I’ll put all of the timestamps and links to everything that I mentioned in this video, in the description after the broadcast. All of the goodness is there. I’m really excited to be here. So let’s get right into it.
Now, there are a couple of options for live streaming with a camera. Whether that you choose to live stream on YouTube, whether you choose to live stream on Facebook or some other social media live streaming platform. At the moment, you’re watching me through the Canon 90d, so a DSLR camera, but we’re going to get to that option last.
But let’s go through some of the options for live streaming. The first one that I recommend that people start with, particularly if you’re new to live streaming, is to use what you’ve got. Most of the time people have a mobile or a smartphone camera and it’s going to include a tablet as well if it has a camera.
I recommend if you’re just new and you are beginning with your live streaming journey, start with what you’ve got. There’s no need to spend a lot of money when you’re just getting started when you’re just getting the feel of things. Use what you’ve got and your smartphone camera is definitely a good option. Now, if you want to use your smartphone camera, there’s a couple of things that you need to have.
Firstly, you need to have a smart phone obviously with a camera and the ability to use the internet. You can’t use a Nokia 5110, you can’t use one of those burner phones that they use in the movies. It has to be a relatively modern phone that has a camera so that you can live stream and the ability to connect to the internet.
You’ll also need to have the relevant apps in stored, whether that’s Facebook pages manager or the Facebook app. If you want to live stream on Facebook, on Facebook live or the YouTube app, if YouTube is where you want to live stream or Instagram if that’s where you want to live stream there.
The optional accessories that you can have that I typically recommend people invest in if they, you know, after a little bit of time is a microphone and a tripod if you are live streaming a lot so that you can use your hands to do other things to demo or to talk and you’re not holding the phone which can sometimes cause the video took a bit shaky and, yeah, some lighting as well.
Lighting always helps, just improve the quality of your video. Lighting doesn’t have to be expensive ring lights or expensive softbox lights. It could just be you using natural lighting or lamps around the house. Any of those will actually work. Now I wanted to be, wanted to show you how easy it is to livestream on Facebook.
We’re going over to my mobile device right now and I’m going to show you how easy it is to live stream from my phone on Facebook. I’m on the phone. I’m going to go via the Facebook pages app and we’re going to live stream on Facebook right now. It’s a live stream within a live stream. It’s major inception right now. From the phone I’m going to select the pages app and then now I’m in my Facebook page and then I’m going to select publish.
I’m going to write, hello, let everyone know that I’m going live and some emerges because emerges are the thing right now. Then I’m going to select the red camera with an eye on it, then I’m going to select live video. Now you can see me and I can see you and to go live, I can do a couple of things.
I can choose some of these options at the bottom or I can just start going live by hitting that live button. Now there you go. I’m live. I’m live on the page. It was as easy as that, opening the app, typing with a text and then going live and then that’s it. That’s how you go live. It’s pretty easy and you don’t, most people have a phone and that’s all you have to do. I’ve just finished the live stream there, so that’s, that’s it.
That’s how easy it is to live stream from your phone. I definitely recommend this as an option. Particularly if you want to live to Facebook. It works really well. It’s very, very stable. They’ve improved it. You should use what you’ve got.
That’s the first option when it comes to live streaming that I recommend. Use your mobile phone, your smartphone. You can install the apps on your iPad or on your tablet as well. You can definitely use that as an option for live streaming as well. Use what you’ve got and your smartphone is definitely a good option if you’re just getting started.
Now, the second option that I love and use is using an external webcam. Now a lot of laptops and computers come with a inbuilt webcam, but I found that the quality that you get from the inbuilt webcam is typically not very good. The video output that you get is very pixelated and the colour on it is horrible. I don’t really recommend using that.
I recommend you getting an external webcam because if you want to use your computer to livestream, whether on Facebook, it’s on Facebook or YouTube an external webcam is a good option to give you some decent video quality. We are actually going to do another demo. There’s a couple of webcams which I use and personally recommend.
I really love the Logitech Brio ’cause that gives you really good quality, they say it’s 4K video output and it’s a little bit on the more expensive side, but it’s a good one if you want to invest in a webcam to do your live streams.
The second one is the Logitech C920. All of the links to these are in the description. Plus I’ve got reviews on them so you can see for yourself but I’m going to show you the quality that you can get from a webcam.
You’re currently watching me on my Canon DSLR but I’m going to switch over to my Logitech Brio. This is the webcam. So let’s switch over now. This is now, there you are, the Logitech Brio. So you see? The quality is pretty good. I like the colour. I think I’m coming through pretty clearly from what I can see and it’s a decent experience, right? This is much, much better than what you would get using your inbuilt camera. Like I was going to demo it, but I was so offended by how horrible I looked using the inbuilt camera that I was like, no, I can’t possibly let anyone endure that as well.
I definitely recommend a webcam. The Brio is a little bit more high end, but there are other affordable price points for webcams. As I said, the Logitech C920 has been around for a little bit now, but the quality that you get from that, you can still get 1080p which is a decent quality for you to be live streaming at.
That’s the second or the second option that I definitely love and recommend using a Logitech or using a webcam to live stream from. And yes! I’m going to, as patron says, Logitech do make excellent webcams. I am a big fan of their webcams and I think they’ve definitely improved, continue to improve, particularly with the Logitech Brio. It’s one of my favourites, which is what I’m using right now.
The fourth and final option that I personally love is live streaming from a DSLR camera. You’re currently watching me via a Canon 90d. It is a 4K DSLR. It is an expensive camera, but it was a gift that I got for myself for Christmas last year and I was really excited for many reasons.
I love tech and it was, it was a gift that I was like, oh, just take my money. When I heard that Canon were coming out with 4k camera and it wasn’t one of the expensive, well it’s still expensive, but it wasn’t one of the mark cameras, the $5,000 cameras, the 90d was like, you know, they may as well just taken my money from the moment they announced it because I was so excited to get it.
I love live streaming from a DSLR camera because the quality that you can get from it. I get a lot of people also have DSLR cameras lying around, but they’re purchase for photography purposes and now you can really easily use it for live streaming as well.
So if you’ve got one, why don’t you use it? It doesn’t have to be 4K. So the 80d, Canon 80d is another great DSLR camera that I’ve used to live stream from that I can definitely recommend works really well. But you don’t have to just use Canon. The other cameras are fine as well.
The only catch that, well there’s a couple of catches that comes with live streaming from a DSLR. What’s going on today? When it comes to DSLRs, you can’t just turn on the camera and you need a couple of things to make it work. You do need a, I use anyway, a Elgato Cam Link 4K.
This device that you see at the top there, I can’t point to it cause I’m mirrored anyway, this device that you see there, that goes into your computer and there’s a cable unit, an HDMI cable that goes from the cam link to your camera. That’s how you hook it all up.
The camera has a cable that goes into the cam link that goes into your computer and then you get beautiful DSLR as a webcam option. I think like once I started, well, once I finally got my DSLR hooked up, I was like, oh man, I don’t think, sorry Brio, I don’t think I can ever go back to the Brio or the webcam after being able to get the quality that I get from the DSLR. So really, really, love this option.
There are a couple more catches that come with live streaming from a DSLR. It does take up, you do need to have a pretty I don’t know the technical word, but duffed up computer. I think that’s as technical as I’m going to get today. A computer that can handle all the processing power.
It was something that I stumbled across when I first purchased the cam link. I didn’t realise after I purchased it that my computer was a little bit old and I actually needed to upgrade because it couldn’t handle what was required. So just make sure that you check out the specs that Elgato or the cam link capture cards need in order to streaming 4K or 1080p because it does take a little bit of effort.
If you’ve got a bit of an ancient computer, it may not be able to handle it but I found that when I contacted Elgato and asked them, what do I need? They were really good with communicating with the specs with me and confirming that my new computer was able to do what I wanted to with live streaming.
That’s the recommendation that I have. Hello everyone, I’m just going to go through the questions now. Hi Wendy. So Pete Johns, hi, Pete Johns.
I’m gonna add you to the live stream, Pete. Says, “Nice DSLR recommendation. My DSLR doesn’t have clean video output mode, so need to upgrade”. What better reason to upgrade than “Hey, the audio doesn’t work. I need a new beautiful brand spanking new camera”. So any excuse to upgrade, the tech.
Now Wendy’s says, let’s see, it’s like you too did a live stream, Wendy. Does Facebook limit the quality or is it all in the camera? I’ve had some mixed experiences with this, Wendy. So when I first was live streaming probably late last year and I was trying to get all of the 4K to work, it wasn’t coming through 4K on Facebook ’cause I think Facebook do compress it but then recently in the last few weeks when I’ve been livestreaming more, I have noticed that the quality has increased.
It’s not 4K on Facebook but it is 4K on YouTube. I don’t know, I think that Facebook do limit it, but having a 4K camera is still beneficial if you want that quality ’cause it will still look better than not having a 4K camera. But I’m not saying you have to have a 4K camera. I’m saying that there is benefits. You’d definitely get that quality. Plus I liked being able to, after I live stream, use that footage that is saved locally to my computer to be able to repurpose that and have that in 4K. That’s pretty exciting. Yes. So Wendy said, are you live streaming directly now? Yes, I am live streaming directly now, Wendy.
I’m live streaming both to YouTube and Facebook at the moment, and yeah, I do that using a couple of things. I feel like live streaming is getting easier, but there’s still a bit to it. In order to live stream to two places at the same time, I use a combination of things.
I use Ecamm Live, which is a Mac only software then I also use Restream. Restream is, I guess middle software that pushes it out to YouTube and Facebook at the same time. Ecamm Live allows me to do all of the overlays that you’ve seen and put everyone, all the comments on the screen and all of that. So there’s, I think there’s still a little bit of duct taping that happens with live streaming, but that’s just kind of, I guess the nature of the technology in my view.
It’s really hard to have one piece of software that does everything, we’ve got a couple of pieces of software that we kind of pieced together. I’m really, really excited to do this live stream because I’ve seen a lot of people taking up live streaming in the last month or so.
Wendy says “Your quality is amazing. I’m sure you mentioned what you were currently doing at the stop, but I missed it”. Rest, so the software that I use, I use a few things to get this quality, I use a Canon 90d, a Canon DSLR plus I use Ecamm live the Pro version, I can stream in 4K and I use Restream.io so I can multistream. A lot of duct taping of things, but, I’ve got it all to work in the end.
That essentially wraps it up. I’ve talked about my favourite cameras. We went through live streaming using your mobile and why that’s a great option because everyone’s got a mobile. If you’re just getting used to live streaming, it’s a great way to kind of work that livestream muscle, get used to going live because it’s a little bit, you know, different being on camera as opposed to not being on camera. It’s a low investment.
Most people already have mobiles and smart phones. Some people have multiple mobiles and smartphones, so if you want to live stream, pick one. The other one that we talked about was using a webcam, so definitely love using webcams.
There are affordable option these days, particularly the Canon, not the Canon, the Logitech series. They’ve got some really, really good webcams. They’ve got the higher end 4K ones like the Logitech Brio, but they’ve also got the C920 and C922 which are quite affordable as well.
And then I talked about my favourite DSLR, I’m not talking properly today. I’m live streaming with a DSLR and I personally use the Canon90d. But you don’t have to use that and the pieces that you need with that in order to make that happen. There is a helicopter going over. I think a helicopter goes over us every day at about this time that I choose to live stream because you know, that’s how the universe likes to work sometimes.
That essentially wraps up today’s live stream and this was really fun to put together because I really wanted to just take you through what I use, what I recommend. There’s lots of options out there don’t feel that you’re limited to just what I’ve talked about today by all means. There’s heaps of stuff, but I thought I’d narrow it down for you and make it as easy as possible ’cause that’s what I do.
If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. If you’re looking to live stream, I’ve got some Facebook Live Cheat Sheets and it really is a simple way or super simple way of getting you up and streaming on Facebook live even if you have no experience, even if you’ve never hit record before.
The link to the cheat sheet should be in the description, and I’ll put it on the screen somewhere if you’re on YouTube. And, yeah, I really enjoyed this broadcast and putting this all together.
