Lighting Guide for Live Streamers (CHEAP)

hey guys girl level here and today we're gonna be talking about lighting alright so my goal in this video is to teach you about lighting without being over complicated and talking about some crazy stuff that you need to know if you're gonna be a filmmaker most of my audience are live streamers so gonna try to keep it like lighting for live streamers now of course important note is to get good audio before you get good lighting obviously audio is more important than video in most cases it's so impossible to watch something with bad audio but the opposite is actually okay so of course I'm using a DSLR as my webcam you're probably going to be using a webcam but do not think that oh you're not gonna have the same results of course the image will not be the same but I just try I'm just trying to give you a general idea on how to make your streams look good even if you're using a webcam even if you're using a bad webcam a cheap webcam those lighting techniques will actually help you just make it look better more interesting now there are several points I want you guys to understand usually your house lights will not cut it okay like normal apartment our house lights are made for that purpose they're made to light a room so that when you get in it you can see whatever is happening in the room and you can look around they're not made for the purpose of having a camera and lighting a subject for a show on top of that apartment and house lighting usually is overhead you have like one small source of light overhead and this is pretty much the worst type of lighting for a human face it is literally used in movies to portray a bad guy someone evil with with with ill intentions unless that's the effect you're going for I don't think you really want that and if you're thinking oh what do you mean it's the worst lighting possible it is because it creates shadows under your eyes and under your nose and it makes your face look evil pretty much it makes you look bad now as a live stream or something that you need to understand is that light is all lights are not the same light is usually colored is usually a spectrum between red ish and Blue Ensign if so we can call it the color temperature the white balance it has many names basically it's the color of your light the Sun is usually blue ish our eyes are very good at adapting our cameras are stupid so the Sun is very bluish for your camera and your normal typical light bulb will be yellowish I'm talking incandescent light bulbs probably have an example like this type of light bulb so if you're live streaming during the day everything that is affected by the light bulb will be yellowish and everything that's affected by the sunlight if it gets in your room will be bluish so the camera needs to adapt if the camera needs to adapt to the sunlight everything that's affected by this will be very very yellow and if it adapts that that then everything that's affected might will be blue and this is like the best way to have a very very amateur looking video so if you're streaming during the day and the Sun is going down your life strip is just gonna look like a message is gonna look more and more yellow so there are two solutions to this problem first solution is to close your blind do not let sunlight in your streaming room at all that way with your lighting setup everything is gonna look the same no matter what time you're streaming second solution do not use incandescent light bulbs not only the color is not really good but on top of that they actually consume more energy than most other types of light bulbs so right now my setup is daylight balance that means if the Sun were to come in it would be the exact same color let me show you what this would look like very so what I suggest using would be CFL light bulbs and try to get white or a daylight balanced basically when you have them even if there's sunlight they're the same color as the sunlight so you won't have any problems either that or you can also use LED light bulbs I don't really have a LED I mean I guess this is an LED light bulb but right now my LED is way too blue cool thing with CFL light bulbs is that they don't get really hot either kind of like LEDs okay so we solved that color balance problem that you were having now let's talk about something else let's talk about harsh light and soft light so depending on your style you can actually achieve different looks as long as you understand soft light harsh light and positioning of course now if you were asking me to describe my lighting setup right now it's some sort of three-point lighting so my main light which is lighting my face right now is coming from here and it's a very big light source with a sheet in front of it to diffuse the light so it spreads more so I can have very soft shadows on top of that it's kind of tilted towards my white wall to give it even more surface to bounce around before it hits my face this is why you can see how the shadows will softly diffuse so now I'm gonna show you an example of if I had a small light source with no diffusion at all and a little bit close to my face I guess so here you can see how okay of course the white balance is not set for this particular light bulb but you can see how the shadows are very very defined this is what we call harsh lighting remember when I told you that your light bulb is gonna be behind you like that the problem with this is that everything else is illuminated except for you if it's in front of you then you get those weird shadows that really don't look so good so this is really used in beauty shots soft light you will see an in glamour photography and portraits are usually done with soft light as the main light because it's the more flattering way to light a human face above just flew in there so if we're still following the principle of three-point lighting because this light source that isn't directly hitting me from the front is casting a little bit of shadows as you can see like all this part is completely dark we will need what they call a fill light something to kind of counter those shadows because we don't want half of the face to be completely dark usually and three-point lighting the fill light will be less powerful than the key light to give the face a little bit of death like the other side of the face is so still supposed to be a little bit darker than the side that the main light is hitting usually like for interviews and stuff like that it's another big soft light source but in my case I wanted to go a little bit dramatic and use some harsh light and this is why I use my LED 50 watt LED RGB projector which I can control with this little remote there you go so that still creates a contrast and you can still see some of the shadow but I get this light coming in this is my own setup you can play around with yours of course now of course now I'm playing with the fact that the human brain kind of likes to see oversaturated colors so this is why I use this particular LED projector because it makes it more interesting I could use it on on just white even though my white balance would probably make it look blue so this is what it would kind of look like if I had pretty much the same color temperature from this light and this light it would still look a little bit dramatic but a bit boring if you're live-streaming the goal is to entertain people by any means possible to keep their brains looking at your stream thinking I don't know what's going on but I like it alright the final point of the three point lighting would be the backlight now it's not a light for your background it's a light for your back pretty much it's also called a rim light or a hair light because its purpose is to separate you from the background for example right now my hair is pretty much almost the same color as my dark curtains and if you want to really really separate your subject from the background you will need a backlight that will kind of add some sort of rim light right there I was usually placed at an angle behind you so we can hit your shoulders in your hair and there you go this is what my hair like mine is particularly high above me so my hair the top of my hair is real really lit but it's also lighting my shoulders and really separating me from this background and of course in the background that has nothing to do with three-point lighting I have current lights wedding lights fairy lights Christmas lights whatever you want to call them so if you would want to do something completely Beauty if you really want to play on that beauty factor I would suggest having a big light source if your light source cannot be big then just diffuse the heck out of it if you're using CFL light bulbs they don't get hot if you're using LED light bulbs they don't get hot you can even put paper parchment paper is better because it will resist the eventual heat or it can just bounce it at a white wall that will bounce it back to your face so you can get that soft light so if you really want to go for that beauty I would suggest your second light source could also be a soft light that will give you only soft light in the front and then for the back light or the hair light the rim light you don't really want that to be soft because you really need that harsh light to really separate you from the background I just realized by talking about harsh light and soft light I also talk to you about light positioning so I guess that's done now let's talk about money I know you guys are already thinking oh my god he has this crazy light setup he probably spent thousands of dollars I'm a professional photographer and filmmaker so I have kind of professional gear but I do not like to spend money on gear so if you think you need professional lighting for your stream to look good you're wrong and let me show you if you're watching this from the United States where most of my viewers are you probably heard about clamp lights we don't really have those here in France clamp lights are kind of like this but on top of that you get this little aluminum ball that will project all the light in one direction which is awesome this little contraption thing probably cost about I don't know seven euros seven bucks and it comes with the cable if you put an LED light bulb in here or or let's say you only have this type of side bulb you don't want to spend any money okay that means you have one source of small and harsh light right since I'm using harsh light for my colored light we can just replace it right so it would look something like that I put it off screen so this is look like if I have this light bulb replace my 50 watt LED RGB light and if you're thinking what about the fruit light you're probably using one of those soft boxes that is already diffused and on top of that it's bouncing off the wall well you can also bounce those off the wall now keep in mind and I'm just holding this with my hands I'm not even positioning it right this is me pointing it at the wall look at that very very soft light right of course we still have that yellow I can actually adjust my white balance to match this except every other light is gonna look super blue but let's try adjusting my white balance so it matches this color and it takes this light bulb as if it was white there you go now my camera thinks that this is white I'll place it kind of up front like that and here I have a light source that is bouncing off the wall and it's producing soft shadows if I pointing it straight at my face I'm gonna have harsh shadows of course you lose some light intensity but it doesn't really matter let me put my RGB light back on so if I had this kind of a front like that I would still have a soft source now those types of light bulbs are not good because they get hot like it's really really hot right now so to diffuse it I would need something that would not catch on fire and that could stay a little bit away from it on those things you can put like those umbrella diffuser take but you don't you don't need to know about this is like professional photographer stuff oh great now everything is blue and we're back so technically if you get one of those clamp lights you put an LED light bulb in it and then you put a piece of parchment paper or just regular paper if it really doesn't get hot then you will actually have the fused light that you can even point at your face and you will still get those soft shadows another look that you can achieve is the double-sided harsh light those are mostly used in sports because it gives you that raw that really harsh that gritty and mysterious look so you only need two harsh light bulbs that means if you have to clamp lights you can actually achieve this look we just need to have on each side behind you but if we're really talking about being on a budget and trying to make things look as as interesting as possible this is what I would recommend I would recommend one light source that you can bounce off a wall or you can put some sheets in front of to get that really really soft light source as your main light so one clamp light that's probably less than ten dollars with some parchment paper that you can probably get for two dollars and then what I recommend is getting those LED RGB projectors you can find small ones that are about 10 watts and do the exact same effect that I'm having right now so with only two light sources let's say those LED lights cost about 15 so for about 30 dollars you can have the exact same lighting that I have right now now let's say that you have an extra fifteen dollars you can throw in the wedding lights so we're at about forty five fifty dollars it's pretty much the same thing in Euros and of course you're gonna think about the price of tripods of course I have my main light on a tripod I have my backlight on a tripod my LED projector is sitting on my bed right now you can just put your main light on a shelf or on your desk near your face and then put your colored light on a table down behind you or something or even on the ground if you have to something that I've seen other streamers do is actually have that colored light pointing at the back wall making the whole background light up in colors so depending on the setup you have you don't necessarily need tripods at all and of course if you have even extra money you can even buy another clamp light to use as your backlight so one little tip I have is trying not to show harsh light sources on camera except for practical lights of course those wedding lights can be distracting but when you're watching the video feed you know that I am the main subject I'm separated from the background I have all the lighting hitting my face plus the human brain really likes to find other human faces this would be the focus point of the human eye because it's the brightest thing on camera right now you don't want that it's very very distracting and it can it's kind of an eyesore for some people so can you imagine if if my lighting setup was like that of course there are so many different types of lighting setups that you could use I know you guys are probably thinking about ring lights those are very popular within the YouTube twitch community ring ring lights are great because of the way the light is distributed around your face it makes it kind of appealing it is still harsh light though but most of the time they're overpriced I think the basic Amazon ring light is like 150 dollars for one single light on a tripod also if you use them as your main light this is all they're going to do basically your backgrounds gonna be dark and you're gonna be lit you're gonna be well lit but if you really want to use a ring light I suggest watching my other video oh my god but if you really want to use a ring light I actually made one myself and I have a video tutorial on it on this channel and it cost me about $20 for real on top of everything it's remote controlled and it has every single color of this spectrum which the 150 dollar one doesn't have ok now this has nothing to do with the tutorial but the fact that I had to manually shut down all those lights every time I stop streaming or I had to turn them on when I'm going live was kind of exhausting and I recently got in Amazon Alexa so I have it responding to my lights or I can just turn them off with my smartphone so I can go echo turn off stream lights and my main lights go down I can also use my phone I could teach you how to do that but that's for a whole other tutorial if you guys would like to see a tutorial on how to do that I can make one just leave it in a comment section below if you guys would like to see more light setup if you want me to expand and show more if you really want something in-depth on hey this is a cheap lighting setup I can do that just let me know in the meantime you can ask me some questions on my Twitter that is at a level underscore photo you can follow my twitch channel that's twitch.tv slash level Gayle no it's twitch.tv slash Gayle level if you're looking for overlays for your twitch channel mixer channel YouTube gaming channel go to Gumroad comm slash get level I have a bunch of them there they're either very cheap or even free and I will see you guys next time get level out [Music]

Channel: Gael LEVEL

Views: 41,980

Keywords: lighting techniques, lighting for youtube, lighting, lighting tutorial, cinematography, cinematic lighting, how to light video, lighting tips, lighting for live streaming, webcam lighting, lighting setup, twitch, youtube gaming, lighting on a budget, budget lighting for youtube, budget lighting, cheap lighting, look good on camera, lighting 101, livestream tips, twitch tips, mixer streaming, streaming tips, guide, tutorial, light tips and tricks, twitch tv

Id: mhIKPl-2aRw

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 30 2018