Don't Use Softboxes | Do This Instead

all right so today is little bit of a different video today I'm just going to show you guys a super quick simple setup of a book light a book light is definitely the way to go when it comes to getting the best possible uh natural luck and this is a reason why you shouldn't use a softbox let's get right into it so what's nice about softbox is the soft boxes are nice for a small room where you don't have any space for big book light like this so in this case you know this looks pretty good but we could definitely make it better right now all of the windows are kind of Overexposed and if you take a look at my false color as you can see the window and the light that's coming in from the windows are at 77 I which means it's definitely clipping so so what we need to do is use a ND filter on our camera if you want to shoot wide open and if you want to shoot at the base ISO of 800 so so we would need to use the ND filter to bring down the exposure to get the correct exposure for the windows and like every other great cinematographers is out there if you want the best possible footage you have to light for the space and not for the face this is what happens when you Bose for the face you kind of have all of this information in the highlights uh broke like there's no information in the highlights so that's the first thing that we got to do now that we got a proper exposure for the windows as you clearly can see everything else is underexposed so this is where we bring in the lights but before that I'm going to change the white balance to 5500 Kelvin because that is the light source of the aperture 120d and the daylight is 5600 so around the 5,500 kin to 5600 kin so this is a good start let's set up the lights so to use the book light I'll be using two light stands with a pole going across so that we can mount a so that we can mount a shower curtain the shower curtain is our budget option of a bleached muslin you could buy a bleached muslin at your local Michaels or your our department stores but in this case in our example we'll be using our just typical s stands with or shower curtains so first like any other you know films and lighting you're seeing you want to get your frame first so after you get your frame which we like I'm going to motivate the daylight coming in so I am going to set up a light stand and I'm going to set up our book light around around here and with any cinematography uh tips and tricks you always want your light source to be the biggest and the softest the bigger the light source and the closer to the to the subject that is the softer your lights going to look so that's what I'm doing right now I am setting up I am setting up my frames for for the diffusion that we're going to use so I'm going to make this tall as possible just so so that we can just so that we get the best possible result this video might be a long one so just grab your drinks grab your favorite snacks and we will get going so right now I am setting up my frames for my shower carton which will be a perfect perfect budget option for a diffusion so what I'm doing is I'm putting this light stand with this backdrop so this is just a backdrop kit from Amazon they go for like 40 bucks they're pretty affordable and they're great for book lights because these won't hold a lot of weight and the shower curtains are perfectly light enough to the point where they actually fall down and hurt your subject so imagine this setup as a interview setup where you're interviewing your subject or you're doing a candid shot of your actor in a short film or something and this is the type of frame that you want to go for so right now I can clearly see the frame is in the shot therefore I'm going to move this a bit further back and now this is probably the closest I can get with the frames without the frames being in the shot so right now as you can see we're still exposed for the windows there's no details it's probably super noisy so what I'm going to do is now I'm going to put the shower curtains this is pretty much a transparent translucent uh shower curtain that you can buy from Walmart for like 20 bucks and this is honestly a great budget option when it comes to getting the best possible soft light source using your aperture 120d or whatever lights that you have so now with a book light essentially you're bouncing off off of a balce board or a second diffusion and then you're and then you're bouncing that signal sorry you're bouncing that light onto the big shower carton so essentially it creates this giant soft box that gives a better result than anything else that you would use typically so if I bring this camera closer bring you guys along with the action different style what I'm doing right now is I'm setting up my shower curtains and my light so I'm using the aperture 12d as my key light and pretty much what I'm going to do is I'm going to use this to bounce off of a bounce board that I bought from Dollar Store you can use any foam board that's white and it acts as a bounce board and I am going to kind of angle this 45° out like this and I'm going to grab another light stand with a clamp on the end so I can clamp my bounce board and make sure that when you guys are doing this book light make sure that you have the space for it and again that's the advantages of a softbox soft boxes come in different sizes therefore you can you can light in smaller smaller scenes smaller locations however when the client has the budget and place for for a bigger set a book light is definitely the way to go it will definitely give more soft results giving you that more f filic look that W that wer deacons and allot of top cinematographers use so what so now that I have the light roughly in place now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a bounce board so just give me a sec so I have a 3in one reflector disc which which can be used as a reflector or a diffusion itself so if you guys don't have any space for a giant Buck light you could always always use a 3 in-1 kit like this to light your seam but in this case I'm using this to to balce the light that's coming out of my aperture and I'm going to clamp it on like this and I am going to kind of angle it so that it's shining the light back at the book light at the shower curtain so your shower curtain would be your typical softbox where it's 45° off of the camera angle and then whatever you want it to hit you using the aperture light and the bounce board to bounce that light onto the onto the booklet so now that I roughly have this in place I'm going to make this a bit taller so that we have that proper 45° angle down down and then I'm going to lower my lights just like so that's pretty St forward and then let's power the aperture lights so this setup would take over around 30 minutes depending on how much experience you have and if you're and if you have a gaffer with you on set however because I'm by myself today it will take me some time to edit and post this video however I'm hoping that this video will help you guys make better content so I'm connecting the aperture right now and what's nice about this is you don't need any fancy light STS to do this because you're using a book light system where you're bouncing the light off of the aperture you're going to create a very natural light source without having to rig your light to the ceiling or anything like that all right so now hopefully I have the light and the reflector in this position and I'm going to finish setting up my lights so connect the power cable and again if you're doing this in a studio make sure to Gaff tape your cables down so that people don't trip and fall and make your make your clients look embarrassed or anything like that all right so now that that's plugged in sparking and now if you take a look at the exposure levels we're starting to get a little bit of light onto her face but this is still underexposed therefore we got to increase the so therefore this is still kind of underexposed so what I'm going to do next is I'm going to change my C EI I'm going to change my C eii to 2500 and I'm going to bring this down to 1250 and now we have much more exposure to our skin tone however we still can underexposed therefore I'm going to use a shower curtain and increase the exposure [Music] and now that I have this here the exposure is pretty good and again with the skin tones lying around the 46 I this looks pretty [Music] good

Channel: Matthew Chung

Views: 20,732

Keywords: #cinematic, #cinema, #sony, #sonyalpha, #film, #filmmaking, #filmediting, #filmtips, #sonyfx3, #sonyfx30, #cameras, #tipsandtricks, #life, #lego, #change, #lighting

Id: q4_9JsjnQ8I

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024