Cameracraft 3: Lighten Up


Without light there is no image, so it follows that in order to produce good images you need to give special consideration to the light that is, or should be, hitting the scene.


Image of battery light mounted on a camcorder's accessory shoe
It’s amazing what a difference good lighting can make to even the most ordinary video. Often, you can enhance a shot simply by moving yourself and the camcorder to a different position. It’s also good to break a few rules every so often, like the one about always ensuring that the sun is behind you when taking a portrait or still life shot. It’s only when you throw away the rule book that you start to enjoy the craft - and that’s as much the case for videomaking as it is for anything else. However, there are some basics that are worth getting to grips with.

Fear of the unknown


Sooner or later, the light of the sun alone isn't sufficient, and the videomaker needs to consider other ways of illuminating a scene - not just indoors, but outdoors as well. The trouble is that lots of novice camcorder users are afraid of lighting; it’s one thing to pick up a camcorder and use it to record an event or activity, but quite another to set up very bright lights and point them at people. Some folk are impressed at the apparent professionalism of the videomaker who uses lighting, whereas others can be distinctly put off by their presence.

Of course, many videomakers opt to use a camera-mounted battery light as a means of portable illumination, but these can often compromise creativity for the sake of ease of use. Better still is a good lighting kit and accessories that can be used to not only increase light levels but also add character and depth to your shots.

Shadowy secrets


Watch any movie with gothic or sinister overtones and you’ll find shadows being used to good effect. We've all seen shots in which a dark, featureless room is suddenly transformed by a stream of light coming through an opening doorway. Add to that the silhouette of a pair of feet and you already have the makings of a Hitchcock-style suspense movie. Anyone can set up a dramatic image - all that’s needed is a strong light (check out your local hardware or DIY store for a low-cost tungsten garden light), a doorway and a pair of legs. In a WW1-style trenches scene for a music video a few years ago, I used a low-cost lamp, a puff of stage smoke and a couple of fire-crackers to produce a set of really stunning action images. We took over a large community hall for the evening, and did everything at virtually no cost - which was just as well since the record company was being characteristically tight.

Shadows give an object its three-dimensionality - or “modelling”, as it’s sometimes called. Decorative masonry or wood grain benefits from light coming in at an obtuse angle, so the last thing you want to do is to set up a key light behind the camcorder and throw it directly at your subject. One of the main problems caused by camera-mounted lights is that they bash harsh light head-on, rendering the subject flat and characterless.

Scattered soft light


Image of white reflector being held under subject's face
There are situations when you might want to shoot in a high level of illumination but without any visible shadows. There are several examples of set-ups requiring a diffused light approach; shiny new motor cars in a studio are guaranteed to bounce light spots straight into the lens, so it's common to use one very powerful lamp (10Kw or more in a large studio) and bounce it off large polystyrene "flats" suspended from the studio ceiling. A studio with a full "infinity cyclorama" is useful for placing the subjects - cars, large machines or actors - in a completely white environment. Whilst you won’t necessarily be looking to achieve such complexity, the principle’s the same if you’re planning to shoot a table-top animation or see the intricate detail of a scale model.

Let there be light - for free


Using the lighting tips described here, it’s possible to illuminate objects that - in a studio - could actually create more problems that you might bargain for. Just as the early movie-makers discovered, the sun really is a free lighting resource to be readily tapped. Set up a table outside and place on it the object you wish to shoot. Then arrange a few sheets of poly to reflect and disperse the sun’s rays and you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to soft-light an object. A large greenhouse or conservatory are excellent indoor natural light studios for shooting table-top subjects, too!

There’s an art to taking control of light to a point where it directly influences the quality of your recorded images, but - strangely - it doesn’t take much to get to grips with the basics. Having done so, you’ll find that your shots will be transformed - and you’ll find yourself getting a real buzz out of shooting and editing video.

Digram to show basics of three-point lighting

Three-point lighting: Making your subject stand out


In the early days of the movies in America, silent Nickelodeon shorts were shot on outdoor sets using only the sun for illumination. After a wholesale move from the east coast to more conducive lighting conditions in southern California, the lighting conventions that exist to this very day evolved.

The most basic lighting arrangement uses a technique developed by photographers and cinematographers in those early times - the three-point lighting principle. This employs a KEY LIGHT (performing the job of the sun), the BACK KEY (as a counterpoint to the key) and, finally, a soft or FILL light. Let’s look at this arrangement in practice.

The key light is normally positioned to one or other side of the camera. As the word suggests, it provides the primary source of illumination of the subject. But a key light alone will generally produce a flattening of the image in that the subject (perhaps an actor or interviewee) will appear two-dimensional and merge with the background. To alleviate this, a balancing light - the back key - is used to provide back-rim illumination on the performer’s head, giving it a more three-dimensional feel.

These two lamps alone can give ample illumination in certain situations - according to the requirements of the scene. Normally, a third light - the fill - will be applied to the opposite side of the camera to the key light. It will normally be much softer than the key, and will serve primarily to bring up detail on that side of the subject.

There are no set rules for the lateral and vertical position of lamps, and you’ll need to experiment a lot with positions in order to achieve the desired effect. If it looks good on screen, it's okay.

One word of advice in this respect: if you’re shooting indoors, switch off all other lighting (especially strip lights) and build up the lighting arrangement from back to front. If you can view the results on a monitor, then it will help you to vary the intensity of the units and their relative position to the subject and the camera.

When only one lamp is required


Have a closer look at the third illustration above and you'll see that you don’t always need three lamps to apply the three-point principle to a single subject. Using only a back key light and a couple of foreground reflectors (a Lastolite reflector or, more simply, a sheet of polystyrene foam commonly available from a builder’s merchant), you can bounce the back light into the foreground to be used as a foreground fill. This way, you have two or more balancing light sources from a single lamp. The stippled surface of the poly or Lastolite will scatter the reflected light. If you want a harder reflection, place some kitchen foil on the surface of the poly sheet.

This principle can be applied quite effectively in outdoor shoots, too. Using the same reflector material, treat the sun’s light as a background key (with the subject in front of, but at an angle to, the sun), and then bounce the sun’s rays back into the foreground. Watch a feature film crew shooting out of doors, and you’ll see large reflector screens being used for this very purpose - a technique first devised on those outdoor sets back in the early days of cinema and photography.

Using correcting filters to adjust the light


Image showing blue-gel placed over lamp to balance to daylight
Remember that camcorders and film cameras see light in terms of its colour temperature, something that’s almost invisible to the human eye. The reason your camcorder has a White Balance facility is that it needs to apply filters to regulate the light coming in according to whether or not it is consistent with daylight.

The colour temperature of light varies according to its source and the time of day. Typically, the temperature of the light, which is measured in degrees Kelvin (K), will be at roughly 5,600K on a bright sunny day. At the beginning and end of a sunny day, the temperature will approach 3,200K. A bright, but greyish, day could produce colour temperatures of between 4,000K and 5,000K.

Artificial, electrically-generated tungsten light will be typically rated at 3,200K. To a camera expecting daylight, the image on a colour TV screen would appear a reddish/orange hue - and would therefore need to be "corrected" to daylight using a blue filter in front of the light element (as depicted in the image, above). Sheets of full, half or quarter daylight blue are available for this purpose.

For a camera set to record in tungsten (artificial) light conditions, incoming daylight will appear blue. In this case, you could either put blue gel on the lamps or place orange filter over the window in order to achieve a balance. Of course, you might wish to leave the incoming light blue for creative effect; the outside light would appear cold compared to, say, a warm crackling orange fire in the grate. This is a technique widely used in commercials - but you’ll need a well-set up monitor to check pictures. It’s also best to set the cam’s WB manually, too. (See Cameracraft 2: Balancing Act).

Manually setting White Balance


Most consumer camcorders automatically adjust colour temperature on the fly (as they’re being operated) and users are always aware of what the setting is at any given time. In situations where you’re mixing daylight (5,600K) and tungsten (3,200K), you can make sure the cam knows what you want by setting the White Balance manually. Using a piece of white paper positioned to take advantage of the primary light source (eg: key light), zoom in to fill the frame with white and then press the WB button. The setting will now be used until you tell the cam otherwise.

Safety first


If you’re the person setting up lamps and trailing electricity cables in places to which others have access (whether they’re involved in the production or not) then YOU are legally responsible for their health and safety. Tape down trailing cables - and make sure that lighting stands aren’t likely to fall over. If lamps aren’t covered with gel filters or scrim, make sure that they have protective glass or grilles in front of the bulbs. If you’ve seen a bulb pop violently, you’ll know why.


Words and pictures: Colin Barrett, SimplyDV. No unauthorised reproduction or distribution. Copyright 2002, 2005, 2008.

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