How To Choose the Best Lighting for Video Recording

Perfecting lighting for video recording is crucial for crafting professional-quality content. The right lighting can drastically enhance a video’s clarity and depth.

Video lighting isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different lighting equipment and techniques work better in some situations than others. Learning to manipulate lighting setups to fit the environment and scene helps you convey your video’s message, mood, and overall aesthetic.

Here are some lighting tips for video recording to immediately improve your content.

Why Is Lighting Important for Video Recording?

Given that videos are a visual art form, it’s clear that lighting plays an essential role in video recording. Here are a few less obvious benefits of improving your video lighting setup.

Cost Savings in Editing

Sometimes, you can’t avoid filming a shot with poor lighting. While video editing software allows you to fix some lighting mistakes, this doesn’t mean investing in lighting is unnecessary for video recording.

The proper lighting setup removes the need to balance shadows and adjust colors in post-production. Less effort spent fixing lighting errors saves you money in the long term, meaning you have more capital to invest in other areas.

The Right Mood

Lighting sets a mood, affecting how viewers feel as they watch. Bright, warm light typically conveys happiness, and low, cold lighting usually expresses suspense and sadness. Shadows can create a sense of mystery, lens flares a feeling of nostalgia. Let lighting help you tell your narrative.

Better Engagement

It’s hard to enjoy a video with poor lighting. Effective lighting leverages shadows, highlights, and contrast to enhance the visual narrative and draw the viewer’s attention to essential details. More precise and dynamic visuals transform simple videos into cinematic delights, enhancing the audience’s experience and increasing engagement.

Improved Quality

Poor lighting draws attention to visual flaws, making your content appear unnatural or unflattering. Avoid too much or too little light — either scenario leads to an unpleasant viewing experience. 

Just as poor lighting negatively impacts the viewer experience, the best lighting setups enhance video quality. Proper lighting is the difference between making run-of-the-mill content and professional-grade videos, allowing you to separate yourself from lower-quality competitors.

4 Tips To Get the Best Lighting for Video Recording

There are infinite ways to light a scene, but that doesn’t mean a setup works well in all situations. You usually have to optimize your set for each video to get the best lighting.

Here are four tips for achieving optimal lighting conditions in video recording.

1. Choose a Suitable Location

The best shooting locations give you maximum control over lighting. When recording inside, remove clutter from the scene that can interfere with your message or pull the viewer’s focus. When adding props like furniture, plants, and artwork to the scene, consider how lighting might capture these items. You might not want a mirror close to your primary light source, for instance, as this could create major glare. 

If you record outside, adjust your lighting setup to match the ambient light in the environment to avoid mixing non-complementary hues.

2. Use a 3-Point Lighting Setup

Most content creators recommend a three-point lighting setup containing a key, fill, and back-light. While you can use fewer or more lights, this three-light combination typically offers sufficient control over lighting in most situations without unnecessary equipment.

Here’s what each light does in the three-point setup:

• Key light — The main light in the setup used for illuminating the subject
• Fill light — Used to eliminate shadows created by the key light
• Backlight — Shines on the subject from behind to separate the subject from the background
  

3. Choose Your Light Color Temperature

The light color you use depends on the mood you want or whether you must match the ambient light in the environment. Bulbs between 1000K and 3000K emit warm yellow or orange light well suited for indoor scenes. In contrast, cooler lights (over 5000K) emit blue or white light suitable for simulating daylight or harsh industrial scenes.

Whichever color palette you choose, avoid mixing lights with different colors, as this can make your content appear unnatural. 

4. Eliminate Glare

Glare distracts viewers and ruins the video lighting’s texture and tone. You can usually fix glare by raising lights or moving them farther away from reflective surfaces. If that doesn’t work, try removing these surfaces altogether.

Types of Lights for Videos

Content creators use various lights to create videos. The right equipment depends on your storytelling style, video format, and filming environment. 

Here are a few of the most common types of lighting in film and video production. 

Ring Lights

A ring light is a circular lighting rig you use directly in front of you. Big ring lights often sit on a stand and have a large aperture that can fit most standard cameras. You can also purchase smaller models that mount directly on your camera lens.

Ring lights emit soft, diffused lighting. They excel at illuminating a single subject and eliminating shadows, making them popular for beauty and makeup content, portraits, and macro photography. Many vloggers use ring lights because they’re relatively inexpensive and portable. 

LED Light Panels

LED light panels are rectangular or square lights you can mount onto a camera or stand. They typically come with adjustable brightness and color settings, allowing you to tune lighting to your liking. Their durability, low cost, and energy efficiency make LED light panels popular with budget-conscious content creators.

Softbox Lights

A softbox is a light enclosed in a reflective case with a diffused cover. Softboxes excel at diffusing and redirecting light, allowing creators to light specific spots, cast or eliminate shadows, and soften light at will. They come in various shapes, sizes, and price points, making them one of the most versatile lighting types.

Umbrella Lights

This type looks like an umbrella, and depending on the kind you buy, you can either reflect light off or shoot light through it to illuminate a scene. 

Umbrella lights produce soft, broad lighting over a wide area, making them ideal for wide shots or scenes with multiple subjects.

Elevate Your Video Quality With Captions

Perfecting lighting techniques is a great way to quickly enhance video quality. To continue enhancing your content, consider Captions, an AI-powered content creation studio that streamlines the production process. Once you’ve perfected your lighting, reduce background noise, add captions, and automatically scale your video to the right dimensions for your chosen platform — all in the app. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Does Video Lighting Cost?

You can buy beginner ring lights for under $20, while expensive studio lights can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Your budget ultimately depends on your content type. Lighting for podcasts and home studio setups costs substantially less than lighting for cinematic-quality videos.

What Do YouTubers Use for Lighting?

YouTube content creators use various lighting equipment in their videos, including umbrella lighting kits, softbox lights, and LED panels. What’s used varies between creators, but ring lights are the hands-down favorite with most due to their affordability and efficacy at reducing shadows and enhancing the speaker’s features. 

How Do I Film in Low Light?

Filming in low light often results in grainy, low-contrast footage — unless you know the right techniques. If possible, add more light to the scene or move your subjects closer to your light sources. Some cameras let you change the setting to create a bigger aperture and let more light in. Other techniques include reducing the frame rate or shutter speed.