Transcription
This is the Vison Desktop Live Set Kit. In short, it allows you to mount an entire video set onto a single desk. It comes with four arms, a ring light, microphone mount, and a ton of other accessories for mounting a monitor, laptop, camera, or phone. And the best thing about this insane contraption is the price. I bought this thing for 130 dollars, and in this video, we're gonna see what this kit can do. And then we'll also add some accessories to improve it, and we'll throw in a lighting tutorial while we're at it.
Building this desk rig was surprisingly easy. I was really impressed with the build quality for the price. Most of the parts are metal, and overall, this thing is really well thought out. Everything is mounted to a super strong center column with two clamps, and there are four arms included. One of the arms has an attachment for either a laptop or VESA mount compatible monitor. The next two arms have quarter-20 threads for mounting a camera, light, or really anything you need. Finally, there is an attachment point for the microphone arm, which is also included. All of the arms have built-in cable management, which is really sweet, and there are also a ton of other accessories like a phone and tablet holder, two mini ball heads, cable management clips and straps, and a mini riser post for raising your camera or light.
Now let's sit down and see what this desk rig can do, and how we can improve it with a few accessories and lights. And this is what everything looks like when you build this desk mount and use all the included accessories. I have a second camera angle here, so I'm going to go ahead and turn on a background light so we can see what all is going on here. We have the mount itself, the center post. We've got the laptop mount setup, which I don't currently have a laptop on, but you could put one here or a, you know, monitor with the VESA adapter. We are using the ring light that comes with the kit. Again, I'll turn off the background light so you can see what the quality of light is like.
Now, normally, I don't really like ring lights. Uh, this one's not bad considering it's coming in a kit for 130 bucks or whatever, but I just don't like the way they look. I don't like the alien look in your eyes. It's just not for me. So we're going to be replacing this light with a much better one. It's going to look amazing compared to this ring light. I'll turn the background light back on so I can show you the microphone setup, because this kit does not come with a microphone. And what's hilarious is it comes with this little clip adapter for kind of like a singing microphone, which, you know, isn't necessarily the best for this kind of filming. Also, in all the marketing material for this thing, you see a lot of gamer setups where they're using large diaphragm microphones super far away from the person, and those are really designed to be right up against your mouth. So not really the best setup for audio.
So what I've done here is I've used a shotgun microphone. In my case, the Rode VideoMicro, which is much better for this style of filming. You can see it's just up here out of the frame, so you can't see it in the shot, and it's able to directionally pick up my audio. I'm kind of aiming it right here at my chest, and it's around 60 bucks. You could also get the Movo VXR 10, I believe it is, and that's around 40 bucks. Both are going to do a great job. So to rig this up and use this microphone with the included mic arm, I removed that little microphone clip adapter, which reveals a 3/8 thread on the Rode VideoMicro. There's also a 3/8 thread, so I was able just to throw the microphone on the arm and then extend that 3.5 millimeter cable to my camera with a simple extension cable.
We've got our camera, which is the A6600 and the Sigma 16 millimeter f/1.4. You could, of course, use a longer lens and then just push the camera back because, as you can see with the background light turned on, this arm is kind of coiled up, but you could easily push the camera much further back and use a longer lens.
Now we're going to start tweaking this gear, adding a couple accessories. So we're going to take this stock setup and we're going to transform it into something like this, which I think looks much better. So let's get started and start making some tweaks to this desk rig.
So our first upgrade to this setup, aside from the microphone, is going to be a new light. We're going to be using the Falcon Eyes 12T, which is, as you can see, a much larger light, but it's also super lightweight. It is an LED mat that has a softbox that velcros onto the back of it. It's dimmable, all that good stuff. So let's go ahead and swap out this little, kind of nasty-looking ring light with a much larger light.
And here we are with the new light. So again, this is the Falcon Eyes 12T. I've been using this thing for live stream setups like this for years, and it's awesome. It's a super lightweight light, which is perfect for this arm setup. I'm going to go ahead and turn on these secondary lights so you can see what's going on with this thing. And I haven't done any cable management, but you can see if I just grab the arm here, I can swing this light around to any position. So if I wanted to, I could bring the light out and do more of a side lighting setup, which would look something like this. A lot more shadow on this side of my face, but a lot more, you know, shape because we're now adding more shadows, and it's just more interesting.
Alternatively, I could go back to where I was before. Let me turn on the other light here, and I just grab the light, move it closer to the camera, and that looks like this. So more frontal, but still off to one side a little bit, so there's still a little bit of shadow on this side. So you have some flexibility.
Alternatively, you could add a little bit of fill using something like a foam board. So what I can do is, you know, in a real room, you might have something like white walls. Right now, I'm just kind of facing into the abyss. There's just nothing but blackness out in front of me. But if you're in a typical office, you probably have, you know, this desk up against a white wall or something like that. So I'm going to simulate that with this foam board, and I'm just going to bring it in a little bit off to one side. And as you can see, it's filling in this side of my face. So there's without, and there's with. Makes a pretty big difference. So you have a lot of flexibility with something like this. We have a much larger light source, which is giving us that softer light, and if we compare it to the original lighting that comes with this kit, it's really no contest.
To mount this light to the desk rig, I took a small light stand spigot adapter, screwed it onto the arm, and then used a female-to-female light stand mount to attach the light to the arm.
Okay, so now that we have our main key light set up, let's go ahead and address the rest of the lighting. Again, I've got everything blacked out in here, so the only light source you see is this little light that we set up. What we can do, however, is address the background, which is rather dark. In my case, I have a gray wall painted behind me, and what I'm going to actually do to brighten it up is use the light that comes with this kit, that little ring light. Now, earlier, I talked about how I don't really like ring lights. That's mainly as a key source. I just don't like the shape, and they're not as friendly to use as a larger, soft, nice source. So we're going to use this guy as a background light, and I have it on this tiny, itty-bitty stand here, which I'll have down in the description. So let's go ahead and put this right behind me and hit it up against the wall.
Okay, I've got the light just behind me. I'll go ahead and turn it on, and there you go. Pretty fantastic little background light, and it came with this kit, so why not use it? Now, I can make adjustments to the light, so I can actually cycle through the different brightness options. I'll go ahead and just dim it all the way down and brighten it all the way back up to its max output, which is right there. We can also change the color temperature real quick. So right now, we're using the cooler mode, but I can switch over. There's the warm, which actually looks pretty sweet. It's like an orange. It's very, very warm. And then I'll go ahead and cycle through. That's kind of the medium, so we're getting kind of a warmer tan, and then back to the cool. So several different options. Really like that orange one, so I'm going to leave it right there.
We could, however, make things even more interesting by bringing in an RGB light. So this is the Aputure MC. I've talked about them a million times, I love them. So I can go ahead and fire this light up. Maybe we'll do kind of a Gerald Undone purple. Something like that looks pretty good to me. It's not as bright as the light that comes with the kit, and it costs about 100 bucks, but color, man, can't beat RGB.
And since we just replaced our ring light with the Aputure light, I can now put this thing back to work. And I'm thinking of using it as kind of a hair or kicker light, so you can see what's happening on the side of my face. So I'm going to put this just out of frame, or I guess because it looks so cool, you could just put it in the background, and that would be sweet too. And now I have the ring light just out of frame, dimmed down. You can see it's just giving me a little bit of light on the side of my face, which is helpful because it's pretty dark over there. So here's what it looks like with the ring light turned on, and there is with the ring light turned off.
So you guys have it. An amazing desk rig or arm system for your camera, lighting, and even a computer or laptop. I think this product is amazing for the money, under 150 bucks, and comes with a ton of stuff. And as you've seen in this video, with a couple slight upgrades, you can get a lot out of this kit, adding a microphone, switching out the light, and then using the ring light that comes with the kit as another light to use to make your videos better. So hopefully you've enjoyed this. I'll link to everything mentioned down in the description. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and we will see you in the next video.