- You might be using your lights all wrong and so here are the five most
common lighting mistakes. Number one is lighting positioning. A lot of people put
their lights at eye level but you really want
your camera at eye level and your lighting to be
just above the camera. This is gonna help shape
your face a bit better and add more dimension to the shot with extra shadows to give you a bit more definition in the face as well. And this isn't the only way to do it. This is just kind of the standard. So definitely experiment and see how this looks for you. But one of the things you can avoid by moving your lights up above the camera is those reflections in glasses. So definitely take this into consideration when you're placing your lights. Now you need to remember that every light has a
set color temperature. Some are set to daylight, like this and some are warmer, like this. Now the GVM SD600D can be set to a daylight temperature and it can also be changed to a warmer temperature like this, which is called a bi color light. For most YouTube setups, I recommend setting your
light to 5,600 kelvin, and this is gonna replicate daylight. So as you're outside,
this is gonna give you that same type of color that the sun will give you in midday. Or if you're buying a light, the chances are it's already gonna be set to 5,600 kelvin, right around there or set to a daylight temperature. Now, the most common mistake that I see people making is that they're not white
balancing their camera to their key light. Now the key light is the
main light that you're using and you wanna make sure that your camera settings match the color temperature of that light. This is what it can look like when your white balance
is off in your camera. And then this is what it can look like with the correct white balance. So don't blame your lights quite yet for making your skin color look all weird. Try setting the custom white balance in your camera first and we have a full
tutorial on how to do this in the link in the description. Now you can use the cameras
automatic white balance and that's gonna make
it really easy for you but you do risk the
colors slightly changing throughout your video when you're filming. And that's why I always recommend just setting the white balance manually inside your camera. The third mistake that I commonly see is not using diffusion on your lights and this is just gonna give you a really harsh lighting setup. Soft boxes are such an easy way to add a much more cinematic lighting to your shot. Here you can see what it looks like with no diffusion. And then here is what it looks like with a soft box added in. You can get soft boxes
for almost any light, even these LED panels. You can pop these open and stick them on the LED panels. And these really help
add a much softer light to these small light sources. But when it comes to using soft boxes, I really do prefer to
use a COB or a cob light. These lights were really made to be used with soft boxes and adding this soft box is gonna make your lighting
look so much better, but it's also gonna make your light a little bit darker, which is why cob lights
are so awesome to use is because they get much brighter, especially for the price
that you're paying. Keep in mind that these
lights get very bright but they're intended to
be used with soft boxes. So you definitely need
the space in your room or in your setup to be
using a light like this. On these cob lights, they have attachments made for these soft boxes so it's really easy to slide it in and snap in a soft box to that light. And on the SD600D light by GVM, you can use a large soft box and still get tons of light out of this because this light is so bright. If you're someone who is
shooting videos outside or you need something that is just extremely bright because maybe you need to place it a bit farther away in a podcast setup or something like that, I think this is a great
light for you to get. Now, there are lights similar to this like the Aputure 600D but those are going to
be a lot more expensive. So especially if you
can catch this on sale like it is right now, you can save a lot of money by going with this light and still have an incredibly bright and high quality light. Now, the fourth common mistake that I see a lot of people doing is using their lights at full brightness, especially when it's not needed. When you're using a bright light at full brightness, you have to darken the
image in your camera and this is going to darken kind of the natural
setting that you're in. And this makes the
lighting look very harsh and kind of spotlighty. Now, one easy tip that you can do is start by turning
your main key light off and then adjusting your camera until the setting around you looks good, and the background lights and the lamps that you have until those look good and then you're gonna bring
your key light in next and then you can adjust
that key light to your shot. Now, mistake number five that I commonly see people doing is using way too many lights. And truly, if you just have one soft box, you can get away with
lighting your YouTube setup with just one light. If
you click on the screen, I'll show you exactly how to place it and how to set it up to get a cinematic image.
