Lighting Streaming Tech ·

How to DIY your own Elgato Key Light (Budget friendly alternative)

As you might know, Elgato products have been pretty hard to get recently, with most of them being completely out…

As you might know, Elgato products have been pretty hard to get recently, with most of them being completely out of stock. So today I want to show you my DIY solution to make your own Key lights as an alternative to the Elgato Key Light.

Let’s get started

As part of my new series about Streaming, this setup you can easily make your Twitch streams and YouTube videos look so much more professional.

Before and After

Let’s have a look at what we can achieve with just a webcam and using two of these lights. You can go from something that looks dreadful. To this. As you can see the video quality drastically improves, and this is still using the same Logitech StreamCam.

This is what you’ll need.

I’ll also provide links in the description below for each part.

Now that we have all our parts, this is how I built my DIY Elgato Key Light.

First you want to attach the microphone stand to the back of your desk. Then insert the arm into the holder. Continue with unscrewing the golden adapter screw and also removing the smaller adapter screw from the ball head, now you can simply attach the ball head to the arm.

Next, you simply want to attach the video light to the ball head. The ball head helps you adjust and fine tune the positioning afterwards.

If you would like to mount the light to your monitor arm like so, you want to use the super clamp and magic arm together to clamp on to the back of your arm.

Pros and Cons of the Elgato Key Light

Before we finish I just wanted to give a short list of pros and cons for each of these light panels. They both come quite close for specs, but the Elgato Light outperforms in the connectivity area, allowing for full smart control via WiFi, App or through a macro pad such as the Elgato Stream Deck.

Elgato Key LightDIY Key Light
Brightness2800 lm650 lux/1m
LEDs160192
Colour temperature2.900k – 7.000k3.200k – 5.600k
CRI> 92%> 95%
Brightness range0-100%0-100%
Battery8000mAh
ConnectivityWiFi
Stream DeckYes
App controlledYes
Price200€85€

Conclusion

And this concludes my tutorial how I built my own Elgato replacement! I haven’t had the chance to personally test the Key Light from Elgato, but what I can say is that with this setup you’ll be also getting a high quality lighting system, that will drastically improve your videos or live streams.

My only downside is that you can’t control these lights from your computer or using a stream deck, but I think once you’ve set the brightness and colour temperature it is not that big of a deal.

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