The Video Gear List

The following video gear list will allow you to build a video studio that looks and sounds 95% as good as what you can see in my videos, such as:

I’ve picked gear to optimize for high quality on a realistic budget. This is an entire professional YouTube studio for less than $4,000. Some of these picks (including camera, lens, and mic) are “budget” alternatives to what I personally use – however, in most cases they are capable of producing results that are just as good for web/YouTube video.

If you’re curious, I film on a Canon C70 ($5,499) with a RF 28-70mm lens ($3,099), and use an Earthworks ICON Pro microphone for audio ($499). These are overkill for what I do, but I have no chill.

Do You Need All This Gear?

Before you go buying anything on this list, I want to be clear: This gear list is intended to help you build a studio setup that is similar to mine.

You do not need any of this gear in order to be a successful content creator. In fact, these days all you really need is your phone.

Here’s a 1 million-view video from Ichika Nito (2.38 million subscribers), clearly showing that he films everything on an iPhone:

Here are the main things that will help you succeed as a creator:

• Be interesting
• Tell great stories
• Be creative
• Make people feel good. That’s how they remember you.
• Have good audio. People will forgive less-than-stellar video quality, but bad audio is actually painful.

If you already have a smartphone, I would encourage you to try making a few videos using it – especially if you don’t currently have a budget for video gear.

I’m a gearhead, and I enjoy creating collections of gear recommendations. My intention in creating this page was to scratch that itch and help people get to that “next level” of production value.

But I want to emphasize that it’s not necessary, and it can easily become a distraction that leads you to believe you don’t need to invest in the points listed above.

The Gear List

You can see a whole breakdown of the gear I use, and how I produce videos, in this video: