Video Lighting for Novices?
July 2, 2010 7:25 PM Subscribe
My husband is trying to build a fairly basic at-home video studio, preferably one from which we can "greenscreen" or swap backgrounds.
We've just spent some time experimenting with a multitude of lamps against his homebrew greenscreen (a green sheet), and the light quality and shadows suck except at very specific camera distances (like his hand puppeting in front of the camera in his other hand). We know from his initial chromakey tests that we need really good background lighting to make it viable to add non-shadowy backgrounds in post-production.
If we're going to buy lighting supplies, I'd like them to be as portable as possible. He does video, I'd like to be able to do well-lit still photography for a food blog, and he also shoots a lot of stand-up and improv in our local comedy club (black walls, stage, everything) and is getting requests to shoot in unknown performance conditions.
How do we properly light from front and back in a way that we can also potentially take it on the road for on-site videography and "photo booth" photography? We're willing to spend a couple hundred on lights and reflectors. Assume a moderate level of craftiness for DIY solutions, but portability is also really important.
We've just spent some time experimenting with a multitude of lamps against his homebrew greenscreen (a green sheet), and the light quality and shadows suck except at very specific camera distances (like his hand puppeting in front of the camera in his other hand). We know from his initial chromakey tests that we need really good background lighting to make it viable to add non-shadowy backgrounds in post-production.
If we're going to buy lighting supplies, I'd like them to be as portable as possible. He does video, I'd like to be able to do well-lit still photography for a food blog, and he also shoots a lot of stand-up and improv in our local comedy club (black walls, stage, everything) and is getting requests to shoot in unknown performance conditions.
How do we properly light from front and back in a way that we can also potentially take it on the road for on-site videography and "photo booth" photography? We're willing to spend a couple hundred on lights and reflectors. Assume a moderate level of craftiness for DIY solutions, but portability is also really important.
And I just realized that my above tutorial was very greenscreen centric.. As for your normal lights, just get a cheap three point lighting kit (back, key, fill), which can be had for under $200.
posted by hanoixan at 10:01 PM on July 2, 2010
posted by hanoixan at 10:01 PM on July 2, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Shooting on greenscreen is difficult. For one, the lighting has to be as perfect as possible. A forest green bed sheet won't cut it. The fabric needs to be thick enough not to take any bounceback from the back wall. The color needs to be consistant and show up as close to pure green as possible.
You may wonder if that really matters, since you can chromakey to any color you want in post.. Well, it matters because of digital compression. The blue channel is usually more compressed coming off of digital video, and keying to that will cause rough edges on your alpha matte.
It really needs to be a smooth surface (no local shadows) so make sure it's ironed/stretched out as much as possible before the shoot. This may be challenging for a portable setup, so keep that in mind.
As for lighting, the cheapest solution is a couple sets of worklights from the hardware store. These are the dual-500W types that sit on a tripod, and they can be individually pointed. Set them up on either side of your greenscreen, and play with them a bit until you get even lighting on camera. Taking a light meter, or sampling frames from the camera, make sure the light isn't blooming, which will be very hard to key.
If your lights have too much of a weird shape to their bloom, consider getting diffusion scrim to place in front of the lights. If you use the cheap hardware lights, make sure you engineer a way to put the diffuser in front of the lights so that they stay cool enough -- don't just stick them to the front.
Place your subject several feet in front of the green screen. This will keep your subject out of the way of the greenscreen lights so you can light them with a normal setup.
Keep in mind any lights in the room will effect the consistency of the greenscreen lighting, so make sure you always test light levels before shooting.
posted by hanoixan at 9:53 PM on July 2, 2010