Streaming In Small Spaces: Get The Most Out Of Your Room
For a lot of us, having our own room dedicated to streaming is a dream. Get all that RBG everywhere, and have a ton of interesting stuff behind you. People coming into the room and hanging out while you play multiplayer games, the dream! However, many times we need to start in the corner of a room. Streaming in small spaces is the reality for a lot of us so today we’re going to discuss how to set up and maximize a small gaming space.
Camera for Streaming in Small Spaces
So one of the first things to consider is your Facecam. What you’ll want is a wide lens. Now, most webcams have a pretty wide angle so you don’t need to worry there, but if you’re buying a mirrorless camera and need to decide on a lens, you’ll want to opt for a 24mm lens. If you’re in a super tight space you may go for a 20 or even 16-mm lens. Basically, the wider the lens the closer the camera can be to you while keeping you in the frame.
Lighting
So if you want your camera to look good, you’ll need some lighting. Now if you’ve ever blasted a nearby light at your face, you’ll see that harsh light isn’t always a good look unless that’s what you’re going for. If you want to get nice soft lighting in a small space, the best way is to use bounce lighting. Just point your light at the wall to bounce the light back at you. This is especially useful if you have white walls.
Also if you don’t have space for light stands, you can opt for smaller LED panels that can get mounted on top of a camera or desk-mounted light stands. If you’re looking to put up RGB lighting, but don’t have the space for light stands, brands like Aputure offer lights that have magnets for mounting and some that will work with your lamps and other light fixtures.
Microphones for Streaming in Small Spaces
Alright, everyone loves a Shure SM7B, but these are fairly huge mics and you might not have the desk space for a big microphone arm. In this case, a lavalier mic can come in handy. Packages like the Sennheiser AVX system or if your camera is fairly close, you can attach shotgun microphones that attach to the top of your camera like Sony’s ECM series.
Things like keyboard sounds or computer noise you can minimize with noise gates and low pass filters.
Foot Pedals
Finally, if you’re running out of desk real estate but would like to be able to trigger things with hotkeys, I recommend grabbing some foot pedals. There’s a variety of pedals available, but if you’re already in the Elgato ecosystem, the Elgato Foot Pedal is quite a good deal. So yes, you can build a fairly nice set with limited space. If you have any questions about what we’ve discussed, be sure to let us know in the comments!