Starter kit for a young Youtuber

[8IKERDAVE]

My 7 year old lad has decided he wants to start recording YouTube videos. His passion is lego building and he wants to start filming himself building / talking about lego.

Quite possibly a fad but I thought it would be a nice hobby to encourage so considering getting him a little setup for Christmas. I don't want to spend a fortune because....fad, but on the other hand don't want to buy some nasty Chinese kit that will just be frustrating to use. We have a Mac for editing so it would just be a camera and mic presumably. Any advice welcome!

[sgtBerbatov]

Personally audio is the biggest thing when watching a video. Even if it's shot in 4K, if the audio is crap or quiet then it's hard to enjoy the video.

Buy a good microphone and use a smart phone to film it.

[petemurphy]

build an iphone camera stand out of lego!

[jonobigblind]

My 7 year old likes using a £30 Veho camera to mess round with and has uploaded a couple of 1080p videos to my channel.

She’s also used my DJI Osmo Action with some bike mounts when cycling and I’ve got a plug in microphone for some better audio.

I wouldn’t spend any real wedge on a camera for them just yet. All videos are pretty poor to begin with (just look back at any YouTubers initial efforts from their catalogue) and let them hone their technique and develop a style before deciding which set up would work best.

Smart phones are fine for limited movement and vlogging style uploads. I just filmed a quick video on the new Mini digital dash on my 3 year old iPhone and and stuck it on YouTube. Seemed to be good enough for that quiet environment. Would that work for you in the interim until you know it’s going to last?

Oh and IMovie is awesome for these easy edits. I use my iPad to trim and reorganise my vids - couldn’t be easier.

[sgtBerbatov]

jonobigblind said:

Oh and IMovie is awesome for these easy edits. I use my iPad to trim and reorganise my vids - couldn’t be easier.

iMovie is fantastic, given that it's free. I use it for my own YouTube stuff and the only thing I want to be able to do on it is annotate the screen. Like draw an arrow to a particular place. Can't do it on iMovie, but the con doesn't outweight the main pros of the software.

[SCEtoAUX]

Zoom H1 for the audio with a twenty quid lapel mic to use to supplement the brilliant onboard mics. Sync it up afterwards. (easy) You'll never regret buying a Zoom H1.