Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Since March, I’ve been basically working from home. I realized that on video calls, my camera looked like crap. I had to figure out how much money you have to spend to get a good looking video stream for streaming and or video calling. Is it 0 dollars, $600 dollars, or $4,000 dollars? Today, we’ll try to find that sweet spot with some gear I have laying around. Let’s get started with our little experiment.
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:34 The Cheapo $0 Fix Using Household Goods
4:03 How the Cheapo $0 Fix Looks and Sounds
5:26 The $600 Middle Ground Setup Gear
8:51 How the $600 Middle Ground Setup Looks and Sounds
9:23 The $4,000 Compensating for Something Setup Gear
10:28 How the $4,000 Compensating for Something Setup Looks and Sounds
11:22 Why You Probably Shouldn't Spend $4,000 on a Setup (Other than money)
12:54 Conclusion
$0 Setup:
Smartphone
Lamp
Water Bottles
Books
EpocCam Webcam:
Kinoni.com
AMAZON AFFILIATE LINKS (PAID)
$600 Setup:
Camera Capture Card: amzn.to/2DNhY6j
GorillaPod: amzn.to/3gxiFPP
Sony A5100: amzn.to/3idpHJO
Ring Light: amzn.to/2EURy3a
Blue Yeti: amzn.to/30DIAzY
$4000 Setup:
Sony A7iii: amzn.to/2tVF1rj
Sony G Master 24mm f1.4 Lens: amzn.to/33OKpft
Godox SL-60W: amzn.to/37LsdT0
Rode VideoMic NTG: amzn.to/2RKHVrL
Nanlite PavoTube II: amzn.to/2DlwW3W
Elgato Camlink 4K: amzn.to/3gDxdxs
Here's what we got for our $0 setup. We need a smartphone, a lamp, earbuds, water bottles and books. Your smartphone is a capable camera and can be used as a webcam. I don’t recommend using it as a webcam permanently. The camera puts a strain on your phone’s battery which could degrade it faster. The lamp is for lighting. Pointing it at your wall gets you softer light on your face, but less brightness overall since it loses strength after bouncing off the wall. On your phone, download EpocCam Webcam for Mac and PC. Then download drivers from Kinoni.com and install it. Now stack some books and boxes up until your phone is at around nose level. Then fill up water bottles at your sink and use those to hold up your smartphone. Now, connect earbuds to your phone or laptop.
Let’s talk about gear for our setup. This is the Sony a5100. It has good autofocus performance, and a flippy screen so we can see how we look. You can use any camera like an old dslr you own but make sure it has a clean hdmi output with no menus. You might need a special cable to get an hdmi signal out like a Micro HDMI to HDMI cable for the a5100. You’ll have to fiddle with the settings a bit to get a clean output. This is a dummy battery that lets you use the a5100 off a wall outlet. This is a gorilla pod, that can adjust the height of our camera and angle. Then there’s this guy. You can find it under different names but they generally do the same thing. It takes the HDMI signal from your camera and treats it as a webcam. It’s very similar to an elgato camlink, except it’s cheaper, and only does up to 1080p video. The Godox sl-60 it’s a great light that costs $130. There’s cheaper light boxes and even ring lights would get the job done, at a lower cost. You could still use your lamp if you don’t want to spend money on lighting. For the mic we’re using the Blue Yeti. Also, make sure the yeti is on cardioid mode, which makes the mic focus on what’s in front of it. And don’t lean the mic towards you, you want it sitting straight up. I’m still using earbuds but you can opt for headphones.
I’m taking everything you see in this shot and shoving it into a setup. This is the Sony a7iii a full frame mirrorless camera with 4k video recording, and G master 24mm f1.4 lens. The microphone is the Rode VideoMic NTG, and we’ll reuse the godox softbox and gorillapod, And I’m switching to the elgato camlink because the camlink can handle 4k video while this capture device can’t.
The gear I used for this expensive setup is not optimized for streaming or video calling. For video calling, popular video calling apps fail to recognize the 4K signal for a webcam and refuse to show an image. This is fixed if I change my camera’s settings to 1080p. Which makes using a 4k camera pointless for this use case. For streaming it functions as it should, but if you’re streaming and playing games, you’re likely going to be in a box in the corner, and 4K is overkill, even if you’re streaming the image in full screen. You’d need an amazing internet connection to stream good 4K anyway. Also, it’s nice to have a good mic, but don’t go crazy, it might make more sense on the streaming end, but on the video call end, these services seem to compress and butcher your audio and it just sounds worse than if you recorded it.
So in conclusion, I think the sweet spot is definitely the $600 setup, but with some configuration. But at the end of the day it’s really up to your use case and if you’re on a budget maybe you could even mix some stuff from the free setup with the $600 setup.
Since March, I’ve been basically working from home. I realized that on video calls, my camera looked like crap. I had to figure out how much money you have to spend to get a good looking video stream for streaming and or video calling. Is it 0 dollars, $600 dollars, or $4,000 dollars? Today, we’ll try to find that sweet spot with some gear I have laying around. Let’s get started with our little experiment.
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:34 The Cheapo $0 Fix Using Household Goods
4:03 How the Cheapo $0 Fix Looks and Sounds
5:26 The $600 Middle Ground Setup Gear
8:51 How the $600 Middle Ground Setup Looks and Sounds
9:23 The $4,000 Compensating for Something Setup Gear
10:28 How the $4,000 Compensating for Something Setup Looks and Sounds
11:22 Why You Probably Shouldn't Spend $4,000 on a Setup (Other than money)
12:54 Conclusion
$0 Setup:
Smartphone
Lamp
Water Bottles
Books
EpocCam Webcam:
Kinoni.com
AMAZON AFFILIATE LINKS (PAID)
$600 Setup:
Camera Capture Card: amzn.to/2DNhY6j
GorillaPod: amzn.to/3gxiFPP
Sony A5100: amzn.to/3idpHJO
Ring Light: amzn.to/2EURy3a
Blue Yeti: amzn.to/30DIAzY
$4000 Setup:
Sony A7iii: amzn.to/2tVF1rj
Sony G Master 24mm f1.4 Lens: amzn.to/33OKpft
Godox SL-60W: amzn.to/37LsdT0
Rode VideoMic NTG: amzn.to/2RKHVrL
Nanlite PavoTube II: amzn.to/2DlwW3W
Elgato Camlink 4K: amzn.to/3gDxdxs
Here's what we got for our $0 setup. We need a smartphone, a lamp, earbuds, water bottles and books. Your smartphone is a capable camera and can be used as a webcam. I don’t recommend using it as a webcam permanently. The camera puts a strain on your phone’s battery which could degrade it faster. The lamp is for lighting. Pointing it at your wall gets you softer light on your face, but less brightness overall since it loses strength after bouncing off the wall. On your phone, download EpocCam Webcam for Mac and PC. Then download drivers from Kinoni.com and install it. Now stack some books and boxes up until your phone is at around nose level. Then fill up water bottles at your sink and use those to hold up your smartphone. Now, connect earbuds to your phone or laptop.
Let’s talk about gear for our setup. This is the Sony a5100. It has good autofocus performance, and a flippy screen so we can see how we look. You can use any camera like an old dslr you own but make sure it has a clean hdmi output with no menus. You might need a special cable to get an hdmi signal out like a Micro HDMI to HDMI cable for the a5100. You’ll have to fiddle with the settings a bit to get a clean output. This is a dummy battery that lets you use the a5100 off a wall outlet. This is a gorilla pod, that can adjust the height of our camera and angle. Then there’s this guy. You can find it under different names but they generally do the same thing. It takes the HDMI signal from your camera and treats it as a webcam. It’s very similar to an elgato camlink, except it’s cheaper, and only does up to 1080p video. The Godox sl-60 it’s a great light that costs $130. There’s cheaper light boxes and even ring lights would get the job done, at a lower cost. You could still use your lamp if you don’t want to spend money on lighting. For the mic we’re using the Blue Yeti. Also, make sure the yeti is on cardioid mode, which makes the mic focus on what’s in front of it. And don’t lean the mic towards you, you want it sitting straight up. I’m still using earbuds but you can opt for headphones.
I’m taking everything you see in this shot and shoving it into a setup. This is the Sony a7iii a full frame mirrorless camera with 4k video recording, and G master 24mm f1.4 lens. The microphone is the Rode VideoMic NTG, and we’ll reuse the godox softbox and gorillapod, And I’m switching to the elgato camlink because the camlink can handle 4k video while this capture device can’t.
The gear I used for this expensive setup is not optimized for streaming or video calling. For video calling, popular video calling apps fail to recognize the 4K signal for a webcam and refuse to show an image. This is fixed if I change my camera’s settings to 1080p. Which makes using a 4k camera pointless for this use case. For streaming it functions as it should, but if you’re streaming and playing games, you’re likely going to be in a box in the corner, and 4K is overkill, even if you’re streaming the image in full screen. You’d need an amazing internet connection to stream good 4K anyway. Also, it’s nice to have a good mic, but don’t go crazy, it might make more sense on the streaming end, but on the video call end, these services seem to compress and butcher your audio and it just sounds worse than if you recorded it.
So in conclusion, I think the sweet spot is definitely the $600 setup, but with some configuration. But at the end of the day it’s really up to your use case and if you’re on a budget maybe you could even mix some stuff from the free setup with the $600 setup.
