Let’s talk about what you should look for when choosing a camera to livestream with. What’s the best camera for your livestream needs? I cover important things you need to look out for to help you decide.
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Best cameras for livestreaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIcz1FupjY4
My livestream setup: https://youtu.be/QSJ0xfkz0Ec
Timestamps
00:00 Start
2:05 Video capability
2:52 Clean HDMI out
4:24 Good autofocus
6:05 Interchangeable lenses
8:04 Dummy battery for continuous power
12:19 Capture cards
“Cheaper” priced
•Canon EOS RP
•Sony a6400
Mid-range
•Canon 90D
•Canon RP
•Sony A7III
•Panasonic GH5
•Fuji X-T4
High end
•Canon R5
•Canon R6
Choosing the best camera for live streaming on Facebook Live and YouTube – Video Transcripts
Hello, and welcome to the live stream, whether you are joining live with us now, or if you’re catching me on the replay. I get a lot of questions about what camera should I get, particularly if you’re looking at a DSLR or mirrorless camera for live streaming?
And I get lots of questions about how do I get, you know, how do I personally get the video quality that I get? What do I need to look for in a camera? And so I thought, instead of specifically telling you, you need to get a Canon, you need to get a Sony, you need to get an Olympus, I thought what I would do instead is I would break down the things that you need to look for in a camera.
You can then choose and research the best camera for you, because there’s a lots of cameras on the option that I’m not about pushing you into one brand or another, but more about giving you the information so that you can decide for yourself.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help you build your business using video on social media, with ease. Now, whether you are joining live with us now, or if you’re catching us on the replay, if you have any questions, please drop them in the chat.
And I will answer them as soon as I can at the end of the live stream or after the live stream. And as usual with all of my videos, make sure that you check out the links in the description because that’s where I’ll kind of put everything. I’m super excited, really excited.
Let’s get right into the content because that’s what everyone came here for. When it comes to choosing a DSLR camera, in my view, there are some non-negotiables that you need to have if you are going to get a mirrorless or a DSLR camera. I’ve got a video on the channel and I’ll put it in the description where I talk about the different cameras you can have.
You can have like a webcam, you can use your phone, you can get like a DSLR camera, mirrorless camera, but this is specifically looking at, if you are going to choose a mirrorless or a DSLR camera or a larger camera, what do you need to look for?
Now, one non-negotiable that you need to have is that the camera needs to have the ability to do video. If it’s a really old one and it doesn’t have video capability, it’s not going to work because when you plug it into your live stream software, it’s not going to be able to detect the signal, the video signal, and it’s just not going to work.
Non-negotiable, the camera needs to have video recording capability. I know that seems a little straightforward, but you’d be surprised. I didn’t know. I plugged an old camera and that didn’t have video capability.
And it didn’t work because there’s no signal. It really needs to have video capability. Make sure you check the camera can record video. Otherwise you won’t be able to use it for live streaming.
Now, with that said, if your camera, if you’ve got a camera and you, you know, it does have video capability, you need to make sure that it has clean HDMI out. And what, what is clean HDMI out? Why do people keep talking about this?
The camera that I’m currently using right now is the Canon 90d. And one of the reasons I chose it is because it did have clean HDMI out. The previous camera that I was using the Canon 80d, doesn’t have clean HDMI out.
I’m going to switch to it now. You can see what I mean. If it doesn’t have clean, HDMI out, you will see all of the information and the camera lines, and it will look a lot like this. You can see all the lines here, and you can see like it’s tracking my face and this is not a great looking video, right?
You don’t want all of this information. And sometimes you get more, you get all of the camera information, the ISO information, the lens information, this doesn’t look good, right? You need to have a camera that has clean HDMI out.
Now let’s get rid of that. I know that in terms of, if your camera doesn’t have clean HDMI out, you can get software that kind of is a work around.
However, I feel like if you are going to buy a camera for live streaming, it’s easier to get one with clean HDMI out, than to have to get software, to kind of do a work around because that kind of compromises the quality of the video, right?
If you can get clean HDMI out, we don’t want the weird tracking stuff all over your face. That’s not cool. Okay, the other thing that we want is good autofocus.
With your live streams, you probably don’t realise how much you move around or how animated you are, right? And you want a camera with good autofocus. And you don’t, in my view, you don’t want to leave it on manual focus in case you move.
And then you’re out of focus and you’re not quite aware of it. On our live stream, it’s really easy to lose track of what’s going on because you’re trying to deliver content. You’re trying to monitor all of the comments that are coming through.
You’re trying to, you know, make sure that you don’t throw up ’cause you’re so nervous. And then if you, you know, it’s really easy to miss the feed. If you go out of focus and go blurry. Having good autofocus will help mitigate, you know, if you move around and stuff like that. The camera will be able to keep you in focus.
The other thing that having good autofocus does is it allows you to kind of, if you have products or if you have things to demonstrate, bring them in and out of the shot really easily. For example, I do it quite often on my live streams, I will demonstrate a product and I will bring it up close so you can see it.
And with good autofocus, like I get on the Canon 90d, this is what happens, right? I’ve got my little Wonder Woman Funko pop, and I can bring her in. And as you can see for the most part it’s autofocusing so that you can see all the product detail on her and I can spin it around and you can, you know, it goes really well. And then once I bring it out of shot, it brings the focus back on me.
Good autofocus allows you to, you know, have a better experience and allows for you not to go blurry, which we don’t want you blurry during the livestream. Okay. Let’s look at another thing. The option to change lenses.
I think when you’re choosing a camera, having the flexibility to change lenses helps you future proof your live streams a little bit. And let’s talk a little bit about why. When you’re live streaming, and especially in my case, you may change the location that you’re live streaming from.
If you have a camera where you can change the lenses to get either a wider view, or maybe you need to get like a more zoomed-in view, for want of a better word, having the ability to do that with your lenses gives you more flexibility as you continue to live stream.
I talk about it a lot. Live streaming is a journey. The setup that you have in the beginning will most likely not be the same setup that you have in the very end. The ability to change your lenses lets you kind of, you know, have create different looks.
And it also allows for you to kind of adapt as you know, you kind of evolve in your live streaming journey. And it’s a little bit of fun. For the most part, lens is a question I get a lot. I use my kit lens.
With the Canon 90d, I have the 18 to 55-millimetre lens, which I’ve used for like, you know, the whole year. It was only in the last few weeks that I purchased an additional lens and I did that because I wanted to kind of style and create a different look.
But for the most part, it’s fine. And I also don’t believe you need to spend a huge fortune on lenses. I know how seductive lenses are, particularly those high-end lenses. You know, they look beautiful, but they cost a lot.
You don’t really need an expensive lens in my view for live streaming, but the ability to be able to change out the lenses so that you can have, you know, wide-angle or tighter angle, that is something that is nice to have when it comes to live streaming.
Now, probably not in terms of the camera needs to have this, but something that you need to get your camera is a constant power source. When it comes to live streaming, video, in general, is very power-intensive.
And the last thing that I’d want to happen to you is for your camera battery to die and then the video feed to go out. If that happens, you’ll be okay. Just let people know that it’s happened, but you can avoid that by getting a power source.
If I go over to my computer now, this is an example of a dummy power adapter that I have. What that allows me to do is it allows me to put the battery part inside the camera and then the power part is plugged into the wall.
For the entire livestream I can, you know, I know that I’m actually plugged in and it’s not going to die on me because I have a constant source of power. That’s really important to kind of keep the flow of your actual, you know, livestream going.
Now let’s have a look. Okay. What do I use, in terms of my setup? I did a video a couple of days ago on my live streaming setup. I, I personally use a Canon 90d with my kit lens, for the most part.
And I also have an additional lens that I’ve purchased recently. I only had those two lenses. I’m not yet, I don’t have a massive family of lenses at the moment. And I think when it comes to live streaming and cameras, people can get really caught up on trying to get the best camera, the most high-end camera, you know, digital cameras, mirrorless cameras, they can, they can cost a lot.
And I think it’s more important that you kind of have the best one that you can afford that has these, these elements. And then I’m always saying it and I’ll say it again, progress over time. Like you don’t need a $5,000 camera to get you started.
But if you do want a DSLR, I’ve got a couple of options in the description for you so that you can kind of check out the different ones that you can get. And also, you know, use these guidelines that I have for you in terms of what you need to have with your camera in order to live stream smoothly.
I’m going to go over to the questions now. Let’s just see this. My comments are being a bit weird today. There must’ve been an update. Hey, Jason, good to see you. Thanks for making it on the live stream. Glad that you could make it.
Now let’s have a look. This is like depending on where you are watching it from, I found with live streams, it may come through at a different resolution, but it should be live streaming in 4K. In terms of the actual platform that I live stream with, at the moment I’m using Ecamm Live and I’m on the pro plan because it allows me to live stream in 4K.
And that’s probably one of the main reasons that I use it. I also like Ecamm Live because it allows me to have lots of flexibility in terms of the overlays and animations and a whole bunch of other things as well.
That’s what I actually use for my live streaming. I wanted to make this a really quick and concise wrap-up of what you need to live stream with so that, you know, if you are looking to get a digital camera, a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, you’ve got a checklist of, okay, when I go to do my research, I need to make sure that it has a video capability, clean HDMI out, good autofocus, I’ve got an option to change lenses so that I can scale, let’s say scale for one of a better word, I need a source of constant power, and then you’re on your way type of thing.
That essentially is a crash course in what you kind of need to live stream with in terms of looking what you need to look for in a camera. And that essentially wraps us up for this particular live stream now. Oh, okay. Jason says, “What about a capture card?” okay.
Capture cards are an interesting base. I feel that it depends on the camera that you have. If you want to get a 4k camera and you want to output in 4k, you will need a 4k capture card. The one that I’m currently using is the AVerMedia Ultra 4K.
It’s a higher-end capture card. It’s a gaming capture card, but I found it to be the most reliable in terms of all of the ones available in the market. I talk a lot about, there’s this generic capture card that’s floating around at the moment. Let me just bring it up. I can find it. Yep. Let me bring it up.
Back over to my computer. There’s this strange generic capture card that came out of nowhere and it’s this no brand, probably illegally using the HDMI logo here, and it’s around $20. I’ve seen it for $25, $30, but it’s about that cheap, you know, $15, $20 mark.
And it’s not 4K output, but it’s pretty good. Right? If you’re in a pinch and you need a capture card that just works, it works on PC, it works on Mac. I’ve been able to get it to work with all of my cameras.
And also if you are using your mobile device as a webcam, this also works for that connection as well. It’s one that works and it’s really, really effective. That’s one that I can vouch for.
I’ve got two of them because I had them as backups in case– I’ve had a bad experience with capture cards in the past, in case something goes wrong, I’ve got these backup capture cards, but yeah, capture cards. This is kind of the strange, go-to one that has just surfaced out of nowhere.
And no one knows who originally created it, but it’s here. And I have a feeling that once it’s all gone, it’ll be gone, but it’s yeah, this is the capture card that I would recommend.
With that said, I’m going to wrap up this live stream ’cause we’ve got another live stream coming shortly after this. Let’s make sure. Now if you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already, where I do lots of tutorials on live streaming, social media training, and I hope you get up and running with live streaming and growing your business with social with ease.
Now, if you haven’t already got it, also make sure you check out my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets. It’s a super simple guide to get you up and streaming even if you’ve never hit record before.
The links are in the description and I’ll put it on the screen as well. Thanks for joining me.
