MindBite Insight #8 (Basic Lighting)

by Eric in General, Video Production and Publishing / 06.24.08

This information on basic lighting is for those out there who want to take your videos or MindBites to the next level. There are items you probably have around your house that can help the lighting in your video look better. If you don’t have these items around, a trip to the local hardware store will get you what you need for a reasonable price. Cheap is good. Even one 75 watt light from a hardware store can make a difference, especially, if you are showing a process or detail of an object. This is what you need:

Extension cord, power strip,
1-3 Lights with Clips (3 lights if you want to try 3 point lighting, however, 1 light is better than nothing!). These lights need bulbs with wattage ranging from 75 watts-150 watts
300 watt dimmer
hand clamp
white card board, white foam board or white poster board, 3′x4′ in size or there abouts
Colored gels-a transparent, colored sheet of think plastic-like material used to color light. This item is not at hardware stores, but can be purchased online for relatively cheap from any lighting manufacturer or equipment rental company.
Clothes pins for clipping gels to lights

Mounting the lights will depend on your area, and what is near your subject. For example, if you are near a door way, then clip the light on the door or door frame. A table or window sill works too. If there are no ledges or surfaces on which to clip the lights, then the back of a chair or (my favorite) a 5′-6′ ladder works well. The ladder has many purposes, it can be used as a light stand or for clamping a white board/bounce card.

Where to position your lights?

If you follow this basic 3 point lighting scheme, your video will look more on the pro side than ever before. This diagram below can give you a basic idea. It’s a good practice to get your subject, or yourself far away from the background as possible. This is important because it helps to separate what you are filming from the background, giving the shot more depth. Do your best, I know this can sometimes be impossible due to the limitation of shooting space.

White Balance?

White Balance (WB) can get pretty complex and I won’t go too deep into it because most cameras have a built in white balance. However, doing it manually usually gets better results. Basically, White Balancing is setting the way the camera processes the Red, Green and Blue (RGB) or primary colors in your scene so that all the different color tones between RGB are accurate. So blue looks blue and red looks red and all the other colors are adjusted to their true tone as what the naked eye would see. I suggest that you play around it until you are comfortable with doing it and even compare it to the camera’s auto white balance.

How to set the WB?

After your lights and camera are set up:

Turn off any light with a colored gel because the color will throw off your white balance and colors will not appear in their true value
Take a blank white paper or poster board and place it in front of your subject
Zoom in with the camera to where the white card fills up the entire frame, focus, then push your WB button (this may vary between cameras) usually, cameras have this WB icon that will flash then stop once it’s set: