Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers on youtube. Top Beauty bloggers have the Best Lighting and Video Equipment for filming youtube videos. This is all the lighting and video equipment I use disclosed in this post. Check out my mini studio!
I’m sharing everything I use in this post, “Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers.” I would like to mention that I purchased all of the lighting equipment, camera, camera lens, MacBook Pro, microphone, studio backdrop items myself and nothing was given to me from any companies! I researched and asked other successful beauty bloggers what they were using for their videos, these items were the most common answers of the blogger who had the nicest quality and that’s what I use to film and light my beauty videos. With all the items listed below, you can have the perfect lighting and video quality for your own beauty blog or youtube channel. I have been getting a lot of questions what I use for lighting and video equipment on my videos as comments, now I have this nice article to share with my subscribers!
Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers, let’s start with Beautiful Lighting!
I’ve been asked “what type of lighting do beauty gurus use?”
The lighting equipment that made my videos look professional and illuminated my skin to look flawless is this Stellar Photo/Video 18″ CFL Compact Fluorescent Ring Light This is the single most important lighting equipment for my beauty blogs. By far, this is the best quality lighting out there for beauty bloggers besides having the luck of having perfect natural lighting available. This lighting equipment makes everyone look radiant without casting any harsh shadows onto your face, a “soft focus” look. I went with the artificial lighting equipment, so I could blog in the comfort of my office. The unique benefit of this ring light is it’s perfect for up close up tight shots of makeup, especially eyemakeup because you place the camera in the middle of the ring and you have perfect soft lighting all pointing towards your face. You can always spot beauty bloggers that use this light by looking into their eyes, the light makes their eyes sparkle and look illuminated as well. This piece of lighting equipment by Stellar is also known as the “Diva Light.”
The next set of lighting equipment I use is called a “Hair light” and a “soft box set” it’s the Photo Video Studio 2400 Watt Softbox Kit by LimoStudio. These are for the sides of your face and hair. I use them with my Ring light as mentioned above. When all of these lights are used together, you get gorgeous soft white lighting all around you! The two soft boxes , one for each side of your face, ensure the perfect crystal clear lighting. I also want to mention this was easy to set up. I use this for many photo shoots too!
Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers, Camera
I’ve been asked “what type of cameras do beauty gurus use?”
I use my Canon Rebel T5i DSLR Camera. This is a great quality camera for photography and making youtube beauty videos. You get a nice crisp image and there’s a small flip screen so you can watch yourself while you’re filming! Pretty helpful when you’re filming a beauty video and you need to make sure you’re looking proper in the video!
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Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers, Camera Lens
I’ve been asked “what type of lens do beauty gurus use?”
The camera lens I use and prefer is the canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens. This keeps you in focus and gives the background a beautiful soft blur.
Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers – Product Photography – Makeup
I get some pretty amazing up close macro shots of lipstick, eyeshadow palettes, makeup brushes – you name it. The lens I use to achieve these high quality images you ask, Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens for Canon SLR Cameras
Here’s the Canon EF-S f2.8 Macro USM lens I used: Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens
Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers, Sound
I’ve been asked “what type of microphones do beauty gurus use?”
The Blue Microphones Snowball iCE Condenser Microphone, Cardioid is the best equipment to capture sound. This microphone can also use this for narrating your beauty makeup videos!
Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers, Backdrop
Notice my lavender/purple backdrop? This is my favorite color and I love having it for my backdrop for my youtube videos and photography. It’s a paper backdrop called Orchid Seamless Paper. I purchased from Backdrop Express.
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Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers, Video Production
I’ve been asked “Are beauty bloggers MAC or PC?” MAC wins the majority vote!
I prefer doing my video editing on my Apple MacBook Pro 15.4 inch with Retina Display. It’s not too big or too small. I comfortably sit on my couch and edit my videos. My MacBook Pro is very stable and a joy to edit my videos on! I also use iMovie 9.0.4. to edit them with!
Thanks for reading Best Lighting and Video Equipment for Beauty Bloggers.
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Cell Phone Ring Light
If you’re making lots of quick videos on snapchat, youtube, and instagram, this cell phone ring light is a quick fix. This one is the most popular. It makes your skin look smooth and flawless too.
Looking for more photography equipment for beauty bloggers?
From cell phones lights to ring-lights:
XO
Jen
Girl I just love my Diva light! I originally got my lights for photography and they dramatically changed the quality! I was so glad to have them when I started filming! Great article Jen!
I agree Heather. Originally mine were also for photography, then I wanted to try youtube ans grabbed the “Diva Light” Makes a huge difference! Thanks Heather.
Jen
what size is your backdrop?
I purchased the 53 in W X 36 ft
I purchased the ring light you recommed here and it works so good, my videos and photography finally look professional. I finally have good lighting for my youtube videos. I also shopped amazon and purchased the voice recorder snowball. My voice sounds clear too.Thanks!
Thanks so much for all this great info! It has helped me so much!
Glad I could help you find the right lighting for beauty bloggers and equipment.
I’m a pretty new Youtuber, and recently I’ve been using my iPhone 6 camera to film. It has a decent camera.. but do you think that using the camera you recommend would make a significant improvement, and be worth the cost? Also, how important is getting the lens you recommended? Could I just get the camera and be set? Thanks!!!
Hi Rosemary,
To go professional, I would invest in the dedicated camera. I do recommend the lens, if you’re going for quality buy once and cry once is better than buying cheap and then buying the good lens. Good luck!
I also finally purchased the 60mm lens you recommend, all I can say is that my close up shots now finally look crisp and amazing! OMG this has changed my whole world.
It’s amazing right? It’s probably my favorite lens, I love getting up close.
Last year for Christmas I got a Nikon D3200. Not what I asked for but whatever. I also just bought a MAC Book Pro. I will soon be purchasing a ring light. Do you think my camera will be ok with it for professional makeup photographs? Also, what program should I use for editing my makeup photos on my computer?
Thanks,
Dee
Hi Dee.
Personally, I prefer DSLR canon cameras.I don’t know how good the quality of that camera is. Good choice selecting the ring light. Photoshop is a great program for professionally editing makeup photos.
Thanks for your advice. Do you recommend that I get two light boxes? Is one sufficient?
Hi Pamela,
I recommend two light boxes, one on your left and right and the ring light for in front of you. If you use only one light box, one side of your face will have shadows.
Jen
Hi Jen,
This article was very helpful! In the process of setting up my makeup studio and definitely needed advice on which soft boxes to get! Can’t wait to try it out!
Thank you!
@izathelioness
You’re welcome!
XO
Jen
Hello i would like to know how you deal with overheating on ypur camera while filming makeup videos?
Hi Krissy,
My camera does not overheat, however the lighting does get warm if that’s what you mean! It helps to have an A/C running in the room. My mic does not pick up the sound of the A/C in the background. 🙂
Jen
Hello Jen, I have a beautiful 19 year old college student that is really passionate about getting into this beauty blogging. She is conflicted about if she needs to attend some sort of “beauty school”? She is not interested at all in hair or nails, she is simply wanting to do videos and posts and someday possibly get the notoriety to receive products from makeup mfg/companies for her business. Is it a must that she attend some sort of higher education with regard to makeup? She is such a natural when it comes to applying the makeup and all the brushes and different brands, etc. Everyone wants her to do their makeup and she has received countless comments on her instagram and other posts. I have written down all the items you suggest above in order to help her on her way to fulfilling this dream of hers. She has the camera and lenses but needs so much more as I see from your article which was very informative, straight forward and not at all looking like you were plugging any product that you didn’t actually use or wouldn’t recommend. Thank you for that. Anyway, any “first time pointers” would be very much appreciated for my daughter so that I can help her and guide her through this process. I’m 50 and have 5 daughters and not sure if she can really make any money out of this passion or not. But I will say you all are very beautiful women. Good luck in 2017!
Hi Jennifer,
That’s very cool. I think everyone should follow their passion.
It’s great to have all the proper equipment, quality counts.
I went to college for web design and SEO – search engine optimization (so people find my website and youtube videos online)
I do make a decent living from my websites. I work for a web design company myself.
If she could learn wordpress (blogging platform) manage website hosting, and write content, SEO do photography / video editing/ marketing – self promo/ learn google adsense and amazon affiliates, those are excellent first steps to doing it all on her own. Or she can stick to youtube videos and monetize those. I wish the best of luck to her. You’re such a wonderful mother supporting her dreams.
I hope that helps, I’m here for additional questions.
XO
Jen
I agree with everything Jen said about the production side- incredible advice! I would like to add that my daughter is also pursuing her esthetician’s license and we found a school that teaches only cosmetology and skin care, unlike the others that make you go through hair, nail training also. The school she attends is called Quest (San Antonio). Part 1 of the class prepares you for a general cosmetology license; Part 2, which is optional, prepares you for taking and passing the medical esthetician’s license which would enable you to work for plastic surgeons, doctors of dermatology etc. for pre- and post-procedure skin care. So NO your daughter does NOT have to go to a much longer and much more expensive training course to learn material she will never use! Best of luck, Stacy Z.
Thank you for providing helpful information Stacy!
<3 Jen
Oh wow, I didn’t realize there was so much that went into blog photos! My parents do own that Canon camera with the 50mm lens. Not sure I have the budget to buy a macro lens right now. Do you think a 50mm would work for product photography? Can’t be worse than the cellphone I’m using for photos right now!
Hi Lipstick,
You can use the 50mm, it will give the background a nice blurred soft focus. However, if you want close ups, the 60 mm lens is amazing.
I was wandering if you could tell me what you have your camera settings on? I have the canon t5i and the 50mm lens and the 40mm pancake lenses. I use the manual mode…i take my photos in front of the ringlight and they turn out horrible…they turn out yellow, or too bright, or blurry and are just horrible….i dont know what to set my settings to in manual mode while taking my pics in front of the ringlight. Everytime I ask a beauty guru they wont tell me what settings they have thiers set on lol. Its like they dont want anyone to know lolol but i was just wandering if you could help me on the settings in manual so my pics arent awful like what to set the iso, flash, aperture cause idk lol! Thank you!!!
Hi Jessie!
Thank you for asking! I should write a blog post on this! I’ll answer you here. Yay! Yes, for lighting, I like to use my 50mm lens on manual focus. I will flip the view screen so I can see myself in the shot. For lighting, I use the ring light in the front and soft box on left and right of me. Now, this is probably the most important step. Since it’s a canon camera, it comes with this awesome built in software EOS utility. This is KEY! This allows you to plug in your camera and adjust the lighting! If you have yellow lighting you can adjust it here live. You can also control the camera from your laptop or computer. I like to have my laptop in arms length and out of the shot as seen in my photo set up above. This way I can start recording and make adjustments including how bright or dark I want the video. My husband taught me all this. It made my lighting very heavenly. lol. Once you combine the ring light, soft boxes, 50mm lens, and the canon EOS utility software that it comes with, you’re set! I also like to keep it simple and edit the video in iMovie. I hope this helps you and anyone else reading. Good luck!
Jen