5 Tips You Need To Improve Your Lighting
How you choose to light your room is an important part of setting the mood for your show. This doesn't mean you MUST have perfect professional lighting to achieve great results, only that you should avoid common lighting mistakes that can not only look unflattering on cam, but negatively affect the quality of your show. Apply these lighting techniques to any set-up to make you look great on cam, draw attention to your room from the home page, and help keep your viewers attention while they're in your show.
Reduce ‘light pollution’
Turn the brightness of your computer screen down! When it's at full brightness, the extra light bounces back into the webcam and can interfere with the stream quality. The extra light will also make you look washed out or even blue.
Whats the temperature?
Make sure ALL of your lightbulbs are the same color so you don't confuse your computer with competing white light. Having more than one color of white light will throw off your webcams 'white balance' and make all the colors in your broadcast look weird, including your skin color. To prevent this from happening all you need to do is get some energy saving (LED) bulbs in a soft white or natural white color. These bulbs will last for a LONG time, save on electricity bills, and most importantly be low heat so you dont over heat in your room.
NO BARE BULBS ON BARE BUTTS!
If you are unable to use a softbox (white cover for your lights) make sure that you position the light so that it bounces off the walls then back onto you, lights that are pointed directly at you are harsh and can make you look like a really bright washed out ghost. Bouncing the light off the walls first creates a soft, flattering effect and will reduce unflattering shadows.
Add A touch of white
Im sure you’ve noticed by now that your webcam is constantly trying to get the highest picture quality possible, and to do this it refocuses itself and color corrects the image (adjusts white balance). But did you know that your camera is color correcting using the lightest color in the camera view instead of white? This can lead to trippy color correcting in real time. So, to make life easier for your webcam its a great idea to include some white in the background of your room. It will help keep your colors poppin on cam.
Keep your source consistent - Avoid Sunlight
Whenever you can, avoid using sunlight. It varies throughout the day which can negatively impact the quality of your stream, offer to much light followed by to little which can make you look blown out, and worst of all possibly give away that you are not at your stated location. While the sun can be great if you are doing an outdoor show…keep it artificial when you’re in your home. Unless you are camming from a greenhouse or something. My recommendartion is to get an LED light panel to light up your shows. 1 will do but you can create a lot more depth by adding one or two smaller key lights to fill in shadows or dark spaces in the background. Just make sure all your light sources are behind your camera so you dont make your scene to dark and you are good. If you do want to add more light to your scene for decorative purposes just make sure the actual source of the light is covered to get the affect your looking for (think decorative lightshade or LED strip lighting for a halo effect)
You’re glowing bb XO
~Cam Coach Nikki Night
