Having nice lighting can really up the quality of the look of your videos.
You could do a whole course on lighting so best we just focus on lighting to isolate and illuminate you in a pleasing way for your course.
The key to this is “soft light”. This is where the transition between light and shadow is smooth and not abrupt.
To do this you need a large diffused light source that is close to you. Let’s look at few possible ways you can achieve this.
Lighting Options to Consider While Filming
The cheapest option is natural lighting from the sun.
You can illuminate one side of your face by sitting close to a large window with the natural light diffused by the clouds on an overcast day or a diffuser like some white semi transparent material.
If the shadows are too harsh on the other side of your face you can use a reflector to fill them.
The only problem with natural light though is that you can’t control it so your exposure may shift during filming for example if clouds move across the sky.
For more control you can block out the natural light and use artificial lights. A variation on a 3 point light set up can work great for courses.
This is where you have one diffused light source called your “key light” about 45 degrees up to one side. This will produce triangle shadow on your face.
Then you have a second light or reflector that’s not as bright at about 45 degree on the other side called a “fill light” to fill in the shadows a little bit.
You can even have third light behind you called a “back light or rim light” that illuminates your back to give you some separation from the background.
This is just one look that work but you can vary to suit how you want to play with the light and shadow.
For example if you are doing a course on beauty or makeup then a having the diffused light or a glamour led ring light right in front of you can work well.
For this look I am using my one big round light softbox just here about 45 degrees to the side and up a bit.
Because it’s round it puts a nice little catch light in my eyes. To separate me just a little from the background I added a backlight.
Other Lighting Options
If you are going the natural light option then those all in one reflectors are handy because you can reflect the light to fill in shadows with the shiny sides, remove reflections called “negative fill” with the black side and use the diffuser to soften your light source.
If you are going with artificial lights then you’ll want to use LEDs. You can adjust their brightness by changing their distance or with dimmers.
You can get ones that change color temperature from tungsten yellow to a daylight white and some even change to any color so you can add some accent to match your brand or to set a mood.
You do not want to use normal indoor lights like fluorescents though because these are not
continuous and they may cause your video to flicker because they don’t play nice with your video frame rate.
Summary
Once you sort your lighting make sure you set your camera’s white balance to match. You want your whites to be white and not yellow or blue.
I shoot with daylight coloured lights so I just set the white balance to daylight.
Action For You
Set up the lighting that you will use and see if you can get nice soft transitions.
Let Us Know In The Comments
What lighting set up you will use?
Notes
If you are shooting outside consider an overcast day or shooting at golden hour (the time after sunrise and before sunset).
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