Small Gear Changes That Quietly Fix Messy Photo Shoots

If you shoot in tight spaces, the difference between a smooth session and a frustrating one often comes down to small gear choices. This video frames those choices as practical fixes for the stuff that quietly wastes time on set.

Coming to you from Kayleigh June, this pragmatic video walks through a short list of tools and habits June leans on now that her schedule is tighter and her workspace has more moving parts. The most surprising pick is how much she gets out of a monopod, specifically the iFootage A400 monopod, after years of not owning one. The pitch is not “monopods are cool,” it’s about floor clutter, speed, and avoiding the reality of tripod legs in small studios. June talks about the way a single pole changes how you move around lights and how quickly you can adjust height when you’re bouncing between shots. If you’ve ever rented a small room and felt like the stands were running the session, you’ll recognize the problem she’s solving.

June also gets specific about what the A400-style setup is good for beyond a camera, including mounting lights and other small add-ons, which is where people usually start arguing about stability. That’s a real question if you’ve only trusted three legs and sandbags, especially when you’re working close to talent and you can’t afford a tip-over. She describes the tradeoff as less footprint and faster changes, which matters more than you might expect when you’re trying to keep a set clean and safe. There’s also an honest angle here: she didn’t think she needed one until she used it, and that’s a useful nudge if you’ve dismissed monopods as “video gear.” The part worth watching is how she explains where it fits in a studio workflow without turning into another stand you never reach for.

The video doesn’t stick to supports, though, and the most actionable parts are about avoiding tiny failures that wreck your week. June starts with a simple organization fix: keeping SD cards, CF cards, and microSD cards corralled in a portable tech case so they don’t end up loose in a bag next to random cables and hard drives. She mentions an older case as an example, but the point is the habit it forces: cards go back to one place, then files get dumped to the computer before you forget what’s still sitting on the card. From there she shifts into file organization on your computer, including a date-first naming approach that keeps folders sorting cleanly, which is the kind of thing you only care about after you’ve tried to find one shoot from two years ago at 1:00 AM.

Then she pivots into behind-the-scenes capture with a small camera that doesn’t take over your bag, which is where the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 Creator Combo comes in. She talks about upgrading from the DJI Pocket 2 and using the Pocket-style camera as a “set sidecar” instead of dragging a second full camera body just to grab quick clips. Vertical capture comes up, but not as a trend pitch, more as a practical setting that saves time when you need social-ready footage. She also mentions a desk lighting change that helped her edit at night without working in a cave, which is easy to ignore until your eyes start fighting you at the end of a long day with a bright monitor and a dark room, especially with a desktop light aimed where you actually need it. Check out the video above for the full rundown from June.