If you’ve got talent, all you need is the proper gear, and your content can shine on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or the web. Unfortunately, while most people have the prerequisite cellphone, they don’t have flattering lighting and quality audio.
That’s where IK Multimedia comes to the rescue with their new Creators Series of gear designed to make you look and sound your best. You’ll get a quality microphone, and camera phone tripod with remote control and an adjustable lighting ring to make you look your best.
Lighting
I had the chance to try out their iRig Video Creator Bundle and I’ve got to say, it’s a compact bundle of goodness like I’ve never seen before. Forget expensive lightboxes and studio booms to make you look good. This small, six-inch ring light will light up just you or a whole room if you need it to.
It comes with an inline control that adjusts color temperature and brightness of the light, so you can match it to the ambient light around you.
Use any USB battery pack or your computer to provide the power for the light. With its LED lights, it runs for hours on my battery pack.
Camera phone tripod
The camera phone holder, iKlip Grip Pro, expands to accept any current cellphone available and holds it securely in place. Mine works even with a rather bulky case surrounding it, so I don’t have to remove the phone from the case before I start filming.
The tripod is compact enough to fit in a standard camera bag, yet it can be twisted open to reveal four extensions enabling the camera to be elevated up to 24 inches above your desktop. Shoot standing up or sitting down, whichever works for your broadcasting style.
A Bluetooth remote clips on and off the tripod, so you can start or stop your recording from across the room.
The legs of the tripod also fold into a compact monopod that can be used as a selfie stick or a handhold extender to get the camera phone up above a crowd.
Microphone
The third component is a quality lavalier microphone, the iRig Mic Lav, that can be clipped to your shirt or jacket. Sound quality is excellent and you have more freedom to move with the lav clipped to your clothing.
An included inline attachment lets you plug in your microphone and a headphone to monitor recording OR you can plug in a second microphone and record both simultaneously, without losing the monitoring capability of the headphones. A foam windshield is also included to slip over the microphone.
Video creators agree that one of the biggest turn-offs in the video world is audio that is hard to hear. People will just click off and go elsewhere.
Putting it all together
For compactness sake, I chose the iRig Video Creator Bundle, but there’s a big brother if you need more light or prefer a handheld microphone (the Video Creator HD Bundle.) Whichever you choose, I’m sure you are going to appreciate the improvement in your video productions.
One caution: My only problem when testing this unit is that I needed to slightly tilt my eyeglasses to avoid reflections of the ring light in the glasses. Since the light is just slightly above your camera phone lense, the opportunity to see a reflection is a distinct possibility. Tilting your glasses removes the issue.
Disclosure: IK Multimedia provided a Video Creator bundle for me to test for this review. Opinions stated, however, are and always have been strictly my own.
