I am so tired of having Zoom conversations with people looking down here, or maybe over here, but not here, straight into your eyes, as a conversation is meant to be had. So, I'm going to show you how to fix it. I'm going to show you how to upgrade your Zoom calls.
I've been using a setup like this for years, and it's truly awesome. I always feel more engaged in the calls, and even if the person I'm meeting with doesn't have a similar setup, I feel good knowing that the people I'm talking to are getting the best possible experience from me. I'm going to walk you through the gear, but first let's take a step back and talk about what this is and why this works.
It all starts with a teleprompter. So, how does a teleprompter function? A teleprompter starts with a piece of semi-reflective, semi-transparent glass, sometimes called a beam splitter, that is positioned at an angle in front of the lens. Light goes through the special glass, and most of it gets into the lens like normal, although you do lose a little light, but usually only about 25%. Then, you position a teleprompter display under the reflective glass, and whatever is on the monitor reflects in the glass and becomes visible to whoever is in front of the camera. Traditionally, this is used to read a script, but in this case, we're going to use it to see the person we're talking to.
SmallRig reached out to me and asked if I'd like to try out their new Multifunctional Teleprompter. At first, I said no, because I already had one, and the setup that I was using worked perfectly fine. But I took a closer look at their product and realized how much more compact and elegant theirs was to what I was already using. And I've been wanting to do a video like this for a long time, so here we are. This is the SmallRig teleprompter. First, you'll notice that it's much more elegant and robust looking than my old one, which was quite flappy and had this big huge piece of cloth on it. This one, instead of cloth, uses a rubber collar that ensures a light-tight fit instead of using this faffy fabric that's always getting in the way. This is actually an evolution of their matte box system, which means you can even drop in a 95mm filter into this if you wanted to. The teleprompter is designed to mount on rails, so you'll need those too if you don't already have them. I'm using the SmallRig Universal 15mm Rail Support System Baseplate (that's a mouthful!), which has the added benefit of being able to raise or lower the camera to ensure a perfect fit. It also has a quick release plate, so if you don't intend to use whatever camera you put here exclusively for Zoom calls, then you can quickly remove it when you need the camera for something else.
The rig is really easy to build. We'll take the rails and attach them to the teleprompter, then remove the rubber collar, and attach this to the camera. The way you do it is simply slide the collar over the lens and then pull it forward again to ensure a nice seal. Then we'll just put this onto the quick release plate, attach the collar to the matte box, lock that in place, lock the quick release, and that's it. Now you're ready to go, and when you do want to remove the camera, simply release the plate and pull it out. Truth be told, you don't actually have to remove the collar to put it back in. If you're careful – just don't push too hard and bump the glass – but all you need to do is set the camera in, push it forward, pull it back, lock it into place, and you're ready to go. Another cool feature that is an evolution of the matte box is the flag. This will allow you to block any sun flares if you're using this outdoors, but odds are as a webcam teleprompter, you're probably not going to use it outdoors, but this does mean that you can use this as a privacy screen. I really like that so that if your webcam ever becomes activated unexpectedly, you know that nobody can see you.
The camera I'm using for this is the Lumix S5II. Yes, overkill for a webcam, but because of the quick release, it's not like this is the only place I'll use the camera. We'll talk about how the camera is connected to the computer once we're installing it back there, but for the most part, any camera with clean HDMI out or even a USB webcam mode will work for this.
For the teleprompter display, this rig will hold up to an 11-inch iPad on this expandable tray right here. If you're a Mac user and want to use an iPad, on macOS you can extend your desktop to the iPad and use it as an external display. Super convenient since you probably already have an iPad, but you may not want to leave the iPad there all the time or have to set it up for every call.
So another option is a dedicated portable monitor, which is an HDMI or USB-C display that looks like a tablet, but is actually just a monitor. For about a hundred bucks or a hundred euros, you can get a dedicated display that you can just leave in place.
The challenge with both of these though is that there's no native way to flip your image, meaning since you're looking at a reflection, everything will be backward, which really isn't a big deal until someone shares their screen or holds up something to read. Then it's just annoying. The good news is that at least on a Mac, there's a way to flip the image in software. It's kind of a pain to set up, but it works. I'll show you that when we do the installation.
A third option is an HDMI camera monitor. These higher-end monitors usually have a flip feature built in, but they're smaller; usually seven inches at the most and require external power, and are more expensive than a portable display. The iPad or USB-C monitor will get power and data from a single cable. Whatever you choose, you have options.
Next, let's talk about lighting. Odds are your desk isn't already lit in a way that benefits the camera you're about to set up there. When it comes to lighting, obviously there's a million ways to do this, but since we're already talking about SmallRig, they also sent over this little RC 60B. This light's been getting a lot of love online lately, and if you haven't already, you should watch Armando's video on his Mondobytes channel about it. He went into it pretty deeply. The tl;dr on this though is that it is a tiny internally-powered, or AC, or PD powered COB light that you can add a mini parabolic softbox to, and is color tunable from 2,700 degrees up to 6,500 degrees Kelvin. It weighs almost nothing and it's virtually silent. It's a great light for this setup or anywhere that you need something little that packs a punch. One feature that I don't like about it though is how you turn it on. It takes two steps. I'll turn it off and then to turn it on, you flip the switch, but then you have to rotate the dial here. It says “rotate the intensity button to turn the power on”. So you have to spin it a few times to get light back out of it again. Now, I already have a lighting setup that I like for my webcam, so I'll use this one as a field light, which it's awesome for, but if you need a new light for your teleprompter webcam setup, this is worth checking out.
Okay, that's the hardware, the camera, the teleprompter, the iPad. Let's set it up.
All right, here's where it's going to go and also check this out. I'm actually using that little SmallRig light that I showed you earlier. Here it is. It's perfect for setups like this. It's got its own little internal battery and the little mini softbox. It's just, it's just, <<chef's kiss>> just perfect. All right.
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All right, let's get this thing hooked up. So I'm going to mount this here onto this mini ball head, which means that I can position the camera wherever I want; get the angle just right and so on. So having a little ball head there is super, super useful. Now I've mounted this whole thing to my desk using this rig that Caleb Pike on his dSLR Video Shooter channel showed off years ago. This is a really flexible and really inexpensive mounting system and he's kind of updated his videos about these rigs with some other options since I set this up. So I'll link to his playlist below where you can watch all of his recommendations. There's tons of options and this is a really cool system. So this holds the camera in place and it has some mobility here. And then of course, with the ball head, I can position it exactly where I want.
Now you'll notice something a little bit odd about how I've mounted it – I have it quite low. It's actually being blocked by my monitor. It's behind this really huge monitor here, but I wanted the camera kind of above – just a little bit above – eye level. I don't want to be looking up above my monitor when I'm on a video call. So what I do is I simply lower my monitor when it's time for a call. This allows me to have the camera just right at my line of sight or a little bit over that, and then I just lower the monitor below that when I need to.
Now the camera is connected to the computer over USB, which allows me to control the camera using the LUMIX Tether app. This unfortunately doesn't provide a webcam output though. The LUMIX webcam software is Intel only. So unless you're on an older Mac, you'll need to convert the HDMI output to bring it into your video conference app as a webcam. Probably the best solution for that is an ATEM Mini. That would allow you to even incorporate other cameras into your desk setup. So for example, if you wanted to rig up a top down camera as well, then switch with the ATEM during the video call, you could do that. Now my setup is simpler though. I'm using the Flint D4P from Cloner Alliance, which is a 4K HDMI to USB converter. Not that you need 4K for Zoom, but it certainly gets the job done.
For audio, I'm using the Audio Technica AT875R XLR mic routed into an XLR1 on the S5II. Perhaps a bit overkill, but of course you can use any mic that you like connected to the 3.5mm mic input on your camera.
By the way, if you're wondering about all these excessive cables and wiring stuff and converters that I have here, my actual setup is a little more complex than I'm alluding to. It's routed into the rest of the network in the whole house here, but that's just my setup. I'm showing you the base setup. So now let's see how it all comes together on the other side.
I'll open Display Settings and as you can see, the iPad is already connected. Then I'll fire up Zoom and make sure that the Flint is my video source. Now if I drag the preview up to the iPad, you can see that it works and that it's not even reversed even though we're looking at it in a mirror. So how does that work? The actual display on the iPad is reversed so that the mirror reflects it back to normal. So how is this done? Well, there really aren't many solutions to this, but I found one that, while annoyingly complicated to set up, does do the job. The software is called BetterDisplay and there's a setup tutorial on a channel called Self-Employment Sidekick that I'll link to down below. It's a little fiddly to set up, but it does work and when you disconnect then reconnect the iPad, BetterDisplay remembers how it was set up and automatically flips the iPad screen again. Remember though, flipping isn't required. In general, it's not a problem to look at your video conference mirrored. This is just taking it to the next level.
I think we can all agree that this is much better than this. This is no way to have a conversation. If you decide to build a rig like this, let me know how it goes and if you made any changes to what I showed you here. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
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