The gear you have or don’t have should never stop you from starting to record your family story. As a professional photographer I can tell you what even I learned quickly when I had kids – that THE BEST CAMERA IS THE ONE YOU HAVE ON YOU! And that’s from someone that has multiple camera kits, lighting, tripods – you name it!
The aim of this post is to stop you from thinking you don’t have what you need to start recording your family’s story. For today we’ll cover the gear we believe to be the most important to get started; camera, storage, sound, and stabilization. The first two being your basic starting point. The last two to make it just a wee bit better, and from there, there is no end to improving your story telling skills and gear collection!
So the first tip is…use what you have.
And nowadays for most people that’s a pretty dam good start! Most phones today have amazing photo and video quality right out of the box. With a few good tips, you’ll be set for all your recording needs. Any current smart phone is capable of HD video and most will do 4K as well. Although 4K takes up more space it is better quality and more of a modern day standard. On most phones you will need to select your default recording mode in settings. For recording people we suggest 30fps at 4K resolution. Some phones even have options for raw recording and this is where you can compromise. If your phone has an option between 4K compressed like H.264 and raw, the H.264 is fine. This will help minimize your storage needs and still give you good quality. Although the native camera apps do a good job, we actually recommend using an app called Black Magic Camera. This app is free and offers manual control over settings as well as the option to record to an external drive – which brings us to STORAGE.
The one thing that absolutely everyone runs into is a lack of storage on their phone. This often tempts people to dial down the quality of their photos and videos. This is not what you want to do! Setting yourself up with either cloud storage or physical storage is a must. Not only so you can keep shooting but also for keeping your files safe! In fact, keeping personal photos and videos in both spots is ideal. There is an inexplicable heart pain that happens when you lose all the photos and videos on your phone and the only way to avoid it is to BACK-THEM-UP! So step one, invest in cloud storage that is automatically backing up your photos such as ICloud, dropbox, google,(put a link to each of these) etc…I’ve actually doubled up on this. My phone is synced with ICloud and my photos and videos also get backed up to my dropbox account. If you plan on doing a lot of shooting, especially videos, you may also want an external storage device like an ssd. Our favourite and most convenient solution is the ACASIS 2230 SSD Enclosure. You install a mini ssd in it which is very simple, it is mag safe compliant, designed to dissipate heat, very fast read and write speeds, and is just well designed. If you have external ssd’s lying around like a Samsung T7 for example, you can easily use these as well. You just need to purchase the right cord to connect to your phone. I also use a mag safe 6-card holder to keep the drive tucked tight to the phone so you’re not trying to hold two devices. It is important to note that any of these devices work best with minimal data on them to begin with so I would not use them as your long term storage. That’s a discussion for another day:)
The next couple pieces of gear are optional but make a huge difference in your videos. Let’s talk sound and stabilization. A great video is crap without good sound and also hard to watch if it’s bouncing around all the time. There are tons of options to resolve both these issues but I’ve personally seen so many people buy the really cheap versions only to replace them every 6 months. So here are our top choices.
If you’re ready to invest a bit into sound then you can’t go wrong with the Rode Wireless GO II system or the DJI Mic 2 system. They are super easy to use, durable, and reliable, however, also a bit pricey. Another option that is half the price of Rode or DJI is the Holland LARK M2. I’ll be honest, I haven’t personally used this system yet but have heard good things about it and will be trying it in the future. At half the price it is a great deal, super compact with tons of features, and comes with receivers for camera AND phones which is super convenient. Will definitely let you know what we think of this system once we try it out!
Stabilization just means keeping your phone, well, stable. Sure you can set it against something and hope it doesn’t fall but then your angle and height is off and in the middle of recording it slides away from the book holding it up. There are a myriad of tripods and gadgets out there for super cheap. For short simple videos though I like something compact and multipurpose. For these reasons my go-to is a DJI Osmo Mobile 6. It’s keeps your phone steady with a 3 axis gimbal and has a built in extendable tripod so you can walk through the garden with Nonna and Nonno or sit on the floor or table and get in on the discussion with them!
There are many desirable features in the gear I mentioned above that you may not even need so a great way to save money is to look at second hand gear. Many people like to keep up with the newest gadgets out there and sell off the older versions for a fraction of the cost. As long as you’re not buying something old and outdated you’ll be fine. You can find all these pieces of equipment one model down for less than half the price!
Remember, a phone and storage is the starting point. Turn on your phone, download the black magic camera app, explore the settings, and away you go. If anyone wants a deeper look into the app let us know and we’ll be happy to go through it!
Watch and listen to your first couple videos to make sure you’re capturing decent sound. When you’re ready to take it up a notch look at the sound and stabilization options we’ve provided.
Start small. Just get used to setting up the phone and recording the conversations you’re probably already having! Once it becomes second nature you can start exploring how you want the story to unfold, what to ask, where to film different segments, and how to put it all together.
If you really don’t know where to start, take a look at our guidebook filled with questions to spark conversations about Nonna and Nonno’s life. If at anytime we inspire you to sit and record a session please feel free to share you story with us at Nonnasway!
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