Lighting for Video

Lighting For Video Video lights are divided into two main categories: bare bulb or fresnel (pronounced "fruh-NEL"). The bare bulb light is pretty straightforward -- a light bulb surrounded by a reflector. Also referred to as open face or open light, these lights use the reflector to focus the light's rays. All open face lights have uneven lighting, though higher-end versions mitigate the effect somewhat. Fresnels, on the other hand, use a lens as the primary focus mechanism. They produce intense, focused light and usually have a longer reach than their open face cousins. Video lights are usually known by the types of bulbs they use, and there are quite a few different types, so be forewarned! Here's a quick rundown: Incandescent: Most household lamps contain this type of bulb. The home variety is usually very warm (around 2900K), but you can purchase professional incandescent bulbs at cooler temperatures. These types of bulbs are known as photoflood. When you use these lights, your initial investment is very low, but unfortunately, they rarely last very long. Tungsten-Halogen: These little bulbs are smaller & more efficient than incandescent, but they're also more expensive! Sometimes referred to as quartz bulbs, they're normally rated at 3200K. Lights in this category include Arri's Arrilite 600-Watt Focusing Flood or Smith-Victor's 600-Watt Open Faced Tungsten. Fluorescent: Regular fluorescent bulbs, such as those found in an office, produce greenish light and are hard to match with daylight or tungsten. But professional fluorescents do exist. Fluorescents have a very long life, produce soft light & generate virtually no heat. HMI (Hydrargyrum Medium-arc Iodide): If you're willing to shell out some dough, these lights are daylight-balanced and extremely efficient. HMIs produce almost three times the amount of light as Tungsten-Halogen for the same amount of power. You can look at the 1.2KW Fresnel or the 400-Watt soft light for examples of lower cost HMI lighting fixture options. Carbon Arc Lamps: You might best recognize these lights by their marketing application -- spotlights outside a car dealership making light circles in the sky! Large productions often use them for simulating daylight or for lighting large areas. But inexperienced users need not apply! Carbon Arc lamps have unique power requirements and a trained electrician is usually required for operation. Lighting Accessories Barn doors, adjustable flaps that can be fastened to light's rim, are used to control light rays & block unwanted spill. Scrims, also used for light control, are circular wire mesh screens that are placed in front of the light. They effectively cut down a light's intensity while retaining its color temperature. Softbox is a white-faced box which fits over the front of your lights. You use a softbox to both diffuse & soften light striking your subject. This "soft light" produces gentle shadows and smooths out wrinkles or textures. You can also use an umbrella to get that soft light look. The light shines into the umbrella, and the umbrella's white or silver interior reflects and diffuses the light rays back onto the subject you are shooting. Gels are an indispensable part of any videographer's light kit. These dyed plastic sheets mount in front of a light or clip on to barn doors. You can change a light's intensity and/or color by the type of gel you use. Some of the most common gels include neutral density, which cut down a light's output; CT Blue, which balances your lights to daylight or HMIs; & Orange, which balances your light to tungsten. Controlling the Light’s Colour Color Temperature All light sources have a distinct color that is rated using the Kelvin temperature scale. When we talk about color temperature, we are not talking about heat, but the color of the light that we see. Simply stated, indoor light is around 3200K, outdoor light is 5600K and fluorescents around 4200K. We use these numbers as starting points because in reality the color temperatures can vary quite a bit depending on the light source. For instance, outdoor color temperatures can range from 5000K to 12000K depending on cloud cover and time of day. The human eye is capable of seeing many color temperatures of light at one time and interpreting the colors correctly so that when you are indoors, looking out a window, you see the grass as green and the sky as blue. You will also see white & colors correctly under the indoor light. Cameras however can only see one color temperature at a time. If your camera is set for daylight, it will see indoor lighting as very orange. This is why the photos you take in your living room without flash with daylight film look orange (or set to indoor on your digital camera). If your camera is set for indoors, the scene out your window will look very blue. When you white balance your camera, you are setting your camera to see white as white under the light in which you are shooting. The real trouble comes when you have multiple sources of light, each with a different color temperature. Turning Indoor into Outdoor If the interior location you are shooting in has a lot of windows and bright sunlight streaming in, don't close the curtains, use it. The light coming through the windows will make a great back light or fill light for your scene. However, what do you do about the video light you are going to use as your key light? It is rated at 3200K -- the indoor light setting. Simply attach a Blue gel to the front of the light and it converts the light to 5600K and becomes an outdoor light! White balance your camera using the outdoor setting & you will have a beautifully lit scene. Turning Outdoor Light into Indoor light If your interior setting has a few windows and you want to use the light as a fill light but your main light source will be video lights, you can also change outdoor light into indoor light. Get a sheet of Orange gel and place it over the window. While to your eye it will look a little strange, to the camera, it will look as if it is seeing through a clear window and the sky will be blue, the leaves green and the school busses bright yellow. Fluorescents If you shoot video in offices, fluorescent light fixtures can cause a myriad of problems. When you white balance your camera to match the video lights you set up for your shoot, the fluorescent lights in the office will give surfaces a nasty green tint. You could turn out the office lights and just use your video lights, but that creates other problems such as a need for more fill light. Having enough fill makes the scene look more natural. What you can do is counter balance: either place an aqua colored filter in front of your video lights to convert them to the same color temperature of the fluorescents, or place reddish orange sleeves over the fluorescent tubes to convert them to the same color temperature as your video light kit. The next time you go to a movie and see an office scene with the city shining outside the window, you can be assured that they have used color correcting gels. Final Correction While correcting the light from your lighting instruments or the windows is important, your hard work will only pay dividends if you remember to white balance every time you change positions. Even when shooting outdoors you can have a variety of color temperatures. Take the time to white balance every time you change camera positions or directions. Remember, when your camera sees white as white, the other colors in your scene will be right. Tips and Tricks on Video Lighting Lighting Indoors: 1. Don't place your subject in front of a bright window. Move the subject to a place where the light source (window) falls on the front. If that is impossible, frame the shot tighter so most of the window is not visible. 2. Turn on as many lights as possible to offset the stronger sunlight behind the subject. Use the manual aperture setting to counteract the camera's desire to over compensate. 3. In situations where you have a choice to use sun light or incandescent, use the former. Sunlight is more colorful than the house lights. Remember to white balance for the dominant light source. 4. At night with incandescent light sources, you'll have more freedom to move both the subject and the light. Again, it's a good idea to keep the light source out of the frame, but this time you don't have to compromise framing, just move the light. Another reason to remove the light from the frame is because table and floor lamps (practicles) sometimes leave a halo around the subject when placed in the frame. 5. Try to mold the light across from one side of the subject to the other so the difference between lighter and darker helps create the illusion of three dimensions. Lighting Outdoors: Nighttime: Most of us come across the difficulties in lighting outdoors at night. 1. Don't place subject directly below light, this will cause harsh shadows under the eyes, nose & chin. Headlights from a car can work but they are hard & will act like spots: try bouncing them also to diffuse the light. I've seen flashlights bounced off clothing work, but this is really tricky. 2. Moonlight is unlikely to work well, no matter how bright it looks to your eyes.

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