Get Better Lighting for Your Videos on a Budget

lighting is one thing that can make a huge difference in your videos so today I want to show you very quickly the cheap and easy lighting setup that I use when I film videos in this room right here often times when you're filming a video it's easy to just take your camera or go into whatever environment and just start filming maybe try to get some good shots but you forget that the lighting makes a huge difference even something like this right here there's a window off to my side by closing the window I completely change the feel of the lighting by opening the window all the way up the lighting changes yet again it's taking me quite a few months but I finally found a lighting setup that I'm pretty happy with and when I film in this room I mainly only use two lights I use a Drake a silk ray 400 and a Drake cast small on-camera light both of these lights are bicolor so that means they can be adjusted to be warm or cooler depending on whatever color temperature you need and I like this because they're both portable they can be battery-operated they can be operated with an AC adapter and because they're bicolor no matter where you take them you know that you're gonna be able to adjust the color to suit the mood that you want specifically now even though I'm using lights that are designed specifically for video and everything that I'm talking about today you can do a lot of the same stuff just using what you might already have like a desk lamp or a floor light or something that's already around your house I was able to get both of these lights for pretty cheap to still pray 400 which is the bigger one I got for $99 on a Black Friday deal I think normally its price is about $200 and the smaller light I got for $80 I think normally it's about 80 to 100 dollars I've seen it on sale even as low as 50 sometimes now as I was developing the look that I wanted for my videos one thing that hit me was I wanted it to kind of look like an overcast day you know like when you go outside and the sun is shining through the clouds and everything is kind of under this nice diffused lighting there are no really harsh shadows anywhere there's nothing that's really light or dark everything is very soft and evenly lit there are times when you might want to use harsh lighting you're filming like an interrogation scene or something and it would make sense to have one overhead light casting these really dramatic shadows on your subject but for the most part if you're doing a YouTube video like this we're just talking to the camera it's really nice to just kind of have soft easy Pleasant lighting and one of the biggest mistakes that people make right away myself very much included is when they get a nice new light they just kind of pointed up themselves or at their subject and just start recording and the problem with doing that is the lighting is really unpleasant it's really Glary it's really harsh it's really bright people sometimes squint the shadows are really strong right now if I move my hand in front of me you can kind of see the shadow it's casting is very very soft if the light is pointed directly at me this shadow is gonna be very very harsh and it's going to make things look overall just kind of unpleasant let me show you exactly what I'm talking about so now I have both of the lights pointed directly at me I didn't do anything but go to them and turn them around and now you can see the lighting is much more harsh it is very dramatic there might be a time that I'd want to use this kind of lighting for a purpose but I can tell you for me it's actually really hard because I'm staring into these bright lights so filming is more difficult because my eyes that can barely see what's happening and then also if I were to raise my hands or move them a lot as I tend to do because I talk with my hands all the time you can see the harsh shadows that get cast over my face so how do you avoid that how do you use a light without shining it directly on someone the answer is you need to diffuse your lighting so that it goes from this to this and the way I'm diffusing my lights is really really simple it's actually really really simple I found that in my room where I film I like to sit in this corner because it pulls me far away from the background which means I can be nice and clear and in focus and the background is a little bit blurry I just like the way that looks behind the camera are just some white closet doors and so the lights are just shining at those white doors and the light is reflecting back at me that means it's really easy for me to look into the light I'm not like totally blinded or anything and it also means the light that's shining on me is really soft and diffused just like clouds on an overcast day so it gives me the exact look that I want it's really cheap really easy literally I just have two lights pointed at some closet doors that's how I'm lighting myself right now as for everything behind me it's pretty easy there's a warm light kind of coming from the back of my head that's literally just my desk lamp which is there all the time and it just kind of adds an extra bit of ambience to the scene which I like the way that looks it sort of highlights a little bit behind me and then on the sides right here I have two LED lights that can change colors I like keeping them on blue and kind of a pinkish color but you change them to any colors that you want those are like twenty twenty-five dollars on Amazon each they're pretty cheap but they work really really well for this purpose there are people whose entire career revolve around doing light for film and video and photo and there's so much science and experience that goes into creating really great lighting but if you don't have the time for that or the knowledge for that a couple quick little things just being aware that when you go into a room not to use the light that's just already there but to actually take charge and control your lighting maybe that means turning off overhead light turning on a desk lamp turning something to face a wall can really really make a huge difference so figure out wherever you're filming look at what you can utilize in that space to make your videos look as good as possible and then make sure you're in charge of the environment and you'll have videos that look much much better so thanks so much for watching this delightful tutorial please let me know what you think in the comments make sure to hit the like button and then most importantly make sure to subscribe if you haven't already so that you get new videos and livestreams every single week thank you so much for watching I will see you next time

Channel: Tom Buck

Views: 4,173

Keywords: enthusiasm project, tom buck, dracast lights, how to light video, cinematic lighting, youtube lighting, youtube lighting setup, dracast silkray 400, video lighting, home studio lighting, youtube video lighting tips, how to light youtube videos, 3 point lighting, sodarntom, video light, youtube setup, youtube studio, best video lighting, lighting for video, affordable lighting for videos, studio lighting, youtube studio lighting, DIY lights, filmmaking tips

Id: HU4toOXsLAU

Length: 5min 22sec (322 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 13 2018