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There's no camera kit to buy and nothing to learn. A phone, something steady to stand it on, power, and a connection that can carry it out of the building.
Whatever you already carry is almost certainly fine. Phones have been good enough for this for years — the parts that go wrong are rarely the camera.
What actually matters:
An incoming call is the most common way a stream gets interrupted — on many phones it takes over the camera. This is on the pre-stream checklist for exactly this reason.
This is where most streams are won or lost. The phone is fine; what it's sitting on is usually the problem.
The flexible-arm clamps sold for desks and beds creep downwards under the weight of a phone. Ten minutes in it looks fine; by the eulogy you're filming the carpet. If it's the only thing you have, check the framing again right before the service starts.
A tabletop tripod on a solid table works if the table is where you'd want the camera anyway — just make sure nobody will lean on it or need that table during the service.
Streaming and recording at the same time is the hardest thing you can ask a phone to do. It will drain faster than you expect, and on some phones faster than a weak charger can refill.
For a graveside or a park ceremony, a modest power bank will carry a 60-minute service comfortably. Plug it in before you start rather than partway through.
This is the one thing worth checking properly in advance. Everything else you can fix on the day; a connection that can't carry the stream you can't.
Upload speed is what matters — not download. Most speed tests lead with the download number, which is the one that's irrelevant here. You're sending video out of the building, not pulling it in.
| Upload speed | What you get |
|---|---|
| 6 Mbps or more | Excellent — full HD, 1080p |
| 4–6 Mbps | Good — 720p, perfectly sharp on a phone or tablet |
| 2.5–4 Mbps | Workable — we drop to a lighter setting, 540p |
| Under 2.5 Mbps | Not enough — try mobile data, or talk to us |
Your booking includes a speed test built into the pre-stream checklist. It measures upload specifically and records the result against your booking, so we can see it too.
A test at 9am in an empty chapel can look healthy and still struggle at 11am with a full congregation on the same network. If the number is marginal, mobile data is the safer choice.
If you only improve one thing, improve this. People will forgive a soft picture. They will not forgive not being able to hear the eulogy.
A phone microphone picks up the whole room rather than the person speaking — which means it captures the air conditioning, the traffic outside and the person coughing two rows back at roughly the same volume as the celebrant.
A small wireless lapel mic kit, with one transmitter placed near a venue speaker. These come as a pair of clip-on transmitters and a receiver that plugs into the phone. You don't have to clip anything to a person: put one transmitter close to one of the venue's speakers — taped to it, resting on it, or on a stand beside it — and you're recording whatever comes through the PA. Everything through the lectern microphone lands clean, and the room noise falls away.
It's the trick we use ourselves — ours is a DJI Mic Mini 2, as an example of the type rather than the only one worth having. Kits like it run to a couple of hundred dollars and are useful well beyond one service.
Because on a phone it's genuinely awkward. You need the venue to have a spare output, the right cable for that output, and an adapter for your phone's port — and you often can't confirm any of it until you're standing there on the morning. When it works it's excellent, and if you're comfortable with it, do it. For most people the wireless kit gets 90% of the benefit with none of the guesswork.
At a graveside, even a light breeze across a bare microphone can drown out the words entirely. A foam or fur cover is inexpensive and solves it. Positioning the phone with its back to the wind helps too, and a lapel transmitter tucked out of the breeze beats a phone mic in the open every time.
Tell us where it is and we'll tell you straight — including whether mobile data is the better call.
Ask us about your venue