Lighting

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Lighting is very important

As long as your camera isn’t terrible lighting can actually have more of an impact on your video quality than the camera itself. You can see huge gains just by investing a small amount of money on some basics and also spending some time to just understand how lighting works. I recommend to start cheap and learn and then upgrade when you know you’re committed to making videos consistently and when you actually know what you’re doing.

Lighting Basics

• Color temperature: Use daylight spectrum (5000K) colors, this is different than the more orange tinged 2700K lights. Daylight light provides the most accurate color reproduction making your shots look more realistic.
• Get bright lights and dim them as needed.
• Understand what lights you need
  • (required) Key light: Your “primary” light to light the subject. Typically placed at a 45 degree angle in front of and slightly elevated to the subject. This light should be as large as possible and should be softened by shining the light through some kind of diffuse material (like a softbox). Or bounced off another surface like a sheet of foam board.
  • (recommended) Fill light: Secondary light, this light goes on the opposite side as the subject and also at a 45 degree angle. The purpose of this light is to fill in the shadows and evenly light the face of the subject. It should be slightly less powerful than the key light. A dim or non-existent key light will give a “moody” or dramatic look if that’s more what you’re going for.
  • (optional) Hair Light: A hair light is a small light that shines on the subject from behind and from above. This light adds brightness to the back of the subject’s hair as well as the back of the shoulders. This helps to visually separate the subject from the background. It’s subtle but does make a noticeable difference that will make your shots look more professional.
  • (optional) Background Light: A separate light can light the background behind you. This helps balance the lighting. If you use a bright colored light this also allows you to add a color tint to your background while not coloring your subject since they are lighted separately. This can allow for some pretty cool effects that are easily customized.
  • (optional) “Practical” Light: The term “practicals” is what lighting geeks refer to “normal” lights as. You can think of these as accent lights that are part of the “scene.” They are visible in the shot. Small lamps and even Christmas light or neon signs could fit into this category. This can add a nice ambiance to your shot but I’d recommend you put them on a dimmer so you can control them and ensure they don’t overpower your shot.

Get Control

One of the best ways to tweak your lights is to have as much control as possible of the lights in your room. I you can, turn off or block out all lights except those you are using you light your scene. This gives you total control of how your lighting looks. It’s also a great way to learn if you’re a beginner and want to play with light positions and easily see the impact of your changes.

If you’re outside or have a good source of sunlight consider using a “modifier” to either diffuse the light of the sun to make it softer or bounce it off something reflective. This gives you the ability to direct nature light to where you want it. You could also consider using mirrors to redirect light, an interesting technique that I recently discovered from another creator I follow.

My Lighting Setup

Links

Budget:

Neewer 2 Pack 33″/84cm White Translucent Soft Umbrella (cheap white umbrellas that you can shine a light through to make it more diffuse)

A clamp of some sort to hold or mount your umbrella
– Like this with a hole for the umbrella
– Or like there where the 1/4″ thread mounts on the tripod and the clamp holds the umbrella

Clamp light (super cheap way to get a light, you’ll need to buy a very bright daylight spectrum (5000K) light

NEEWER 160 LED – Cheap and bright LED light

Neewer 12×5 feet/3.6×1.5 meters Polyester White Seamless Diffusion Fabric (For your DIY diffusion building projects)

Leviton TBL03-10E Tabletop Slide Control Lamp Dimmer, 300-Watt, Black (for controlling the brightness of your cheap clamp lights or for controlling your background practical lights)

Higher end:

Amaran 100d (a much more affordable version of the popular but expensive Aputure 120d)

Aputure Light Dome II (The big softbox you see most big-named YouTubers using)

Boling BL-P1 (Bight & portable RBG light)