More on that video/ring light confunction

After reviewing ring lights, good ones (well, “well-reviewed” ones) I think the answer is going to be jury-rig something myself out of three different things and suck it up if it takes up the kind of space I think it will.

This is what I have now. It is almost functional….? It’s really short, so it’s hard to configure the phone in a good location for a good view. I kind of wish the light ring and the phone holder were switched. Also the power cord, if I want to use the light ring, is juuuuuust short enough that it works best if I run the cord under my paper towels there (visually works, I mean – if I don’t want the cord in the video).

It clamps, which I like, because it doesn’t take up real estate on the table. And it’s pretty positional, other than having such a short reach.

So let’s look at some of the questions I asked the other day when I first brought this up.

How do you take videos that are long without draining the battery on your phone? Do you also plug in your phone? What if you don’t have a plug nearby? I have a perfectly good camera I just bought last year that I could be taking amazing videos on. I bet the battery would last a lot longer than the battery on my phone, too, for taking longer videos. I’ve actually done that a couple of time for Patreon, a while ago, and it worked fine. So why am I not using my camera instead of my phone….?

Because of TikTok, and ratios of videos. Why can’t the ratio of videos be the same for both YouTube and TikTok? So I have to make a video for YouTube with that ratio, and a second video for TikTok with that ratio? That sounds… time consuming. Both in taking the video and then processing it for the different places. Unless I am shooting portrait with my phone and landscape with my camera. See need for ring light that attaches both yet is also strong enough to hold both. Not to mention that a lot of the things I would video, are things that happen once. I can’t shoot two different ratios at the same time. Unless I buy some super complicated, multi arm thingamajig that can hold both at the same time. And has a light. Or… do I give up on shooting either portrait, or landscape, and just do everything the same even though it’ll look fucked up on one or the other? Or do I go ahead and try it all one way and see if I can squish or fill the video screen? Also… can my camera shoot in portrait? Because I don’t think so. I think it’ll only shoot video in landscape. Which means I would still need to use my phone, if I wanted to shoot something in portrait.

Or I can get creative with editing. It seems like it would be easier to trim portrait to landscape than landscape to portrait. You know, cutting off the top and bottom, rather than cutting off the sides? Since when I’m taking a video, it’s usually pretty up close, and blank areas/dead space seems to be more on the top and bottom…?  And editing right now is a whole other thing, with my computer freezing about every seven minutes when I’m working on videos. That’s fun. And not frustrating at all if I haven’t saved in 90 seconds and lose everything I’ve done. Sigh.

I kind of have to stick with uploading Patreon videos to YouTube. If I want to upload videos directly to Patreon, I have to pay them more money, and I don’t know that that’s worth it, financially. I mean, right now I can upload the videos to YouTube, mark them as private and only viewable if you share the link, and then I only share the link on Patreon, and bam. There it is, for free.

It doesn’t appear that you can share TikTok videos to Patreon, not the way you do YouTube ones. So there’s another reason to keep making for both. Plus, I can do quick behind-the-scenes, two minute videos for TikTok, and then longer ones (like knitting tutorials, or handbuilding) for Patreon.

ANYWAY.

This lamp and phone holder would be perfect, if it was a clamp instead of a base (same as tripod, not interested in something that takes up that much table room). And if it would hold a camera as well as a phone. I’ve read reviews on this one since they do offer one with a clamp, and maybe in the future they’ll also do cameras, but meanwhile… people with larger iPhones say that the arm won’t stay up, so even if I thought I could balance a camera up there, it’d probably be too heavy.

Why can’t I find a more solid (not bendy, but still articulated) clampable ring light that is also a holder and will hold either a phone OR a camera? It’s unbelievably difficult to find a holder I like that does both. And also has a ring light. I can get a ring light that doesn’t hold anything, and just use it as a light and another thing to hold the phone or camera. I can get a clampable ring light that holds a phone. I can get a ring light with a base that will hold a camera. Or I can get a tripod and some of them do all three. But. I don’t want a tripod that stands on the table. I have one now that I don’t use (it’s just for the camera and is not also a light) because I generally don’t have that kind of table space free for the footprint of a tripod. I don’t want a tripod that stands on the floor, because there’s no way I could configure whatever phone or camera I was using to shoot the video in a place that would be both still on the tripod and at a place/angle good for viewing what I’m doing.

I feel like more and more I’m going to have to buy a larger ring light, and use a tripod to hold my camera, and just keep using the bendy thing I have now if I’m using my phone. Even though all of that is going to take up valuable table space.

Blargh. A thousand word blog post and I have pretty much figured out NOTHING. Yay! Good times! Thanks for reading!