Three Point Lighting For Non-Zombies

Three point lighting is a simple technique that still photographers and videographers alike use to set their subject off from a background and remove any unwanted shadows often caused by direct lighting.

As you can see from the snapshots below, lighting makes all the difference:

Often, when you’re shooting video in the office you don’t have access to multiple lights or a high-dollar light kit. What follows are some tricks that you can use to create pleasant lighting when you’re grabbing video of your cube-mates and executives.

Definitions

Key Light
The key light is your main source of light. It sits in front of the subject and illuminates your subject directly.

Fill Light

The fill light does just what it says. It fills in shadows from the key light. Normally, it sits to the side of the subject a little lower than the key light and is a softer light. Often you can use a reflector to bounce light off of the key if you’re looking for something softer.

Back Light

The back light sits opposite the fill light and a little behind your subject. Its purpose is to set your subject off from the background by providing highlights or a “rim” along your subjects contours.

Shooting In The Office

You always want to light your subject and you want to get your lighting right the first time. But without a light kit, what do you do?

It bears repeating that there are a couple of good rules of thumb about light:
• Fluorescent lights are bad.
• Sunlight is good.
• In the daytime, always be on the lookout for a window next to which you can shoot your subject.

Before you get shooting, do yourself a favor and take note of the lighting in your office. Do you have fluorescents? Have a window handy? Do you have direct inset lights in the ceiling?

Ideally, look for a window and use that as your key light. For a fill, use something reflective to bounce light back onto your subject. This can be foam core, aluminum foil, a reflective car sun visor…

For a back light grab whatever’s handy around you. Clamp-on work lights make great hair lights–but just about anything will work. The trick is to just get a nice little glint of light off the top of their head to give it a little more depth. But don’t waste time on it. All you really need is a key and a fill in a pinch.

Always use whatever natural light is available whenever possible. Don’t believe people when they say there is no natural light at their office. Look around for that window with the boring view that everyone’s forgotten about because they’ve got too many fluorescent lights blaring down at them.

Turn off the lights and practice unpacking your gear in the dark while your eyes adjust.

If the light’s too low, see if you can kick it up a little with a light of your own to keep your ISO from going too high.

Those clamp-on lights do come in handy though.

@BigManWeston used one as a key for an interview where the only natural light was straining its way in through a small 1.5′ x 2′ window near the ceiling. That ended up being the fill. It looked great.

Some caveats to all this:
Don’t be such a sun worshiper that your ISO creeps up and your footage ends up a grainy mess.
Buy good light bulbs for that clamp-on work light. They need to have at least a 90 CRI (color rendering index–to give you vibrant color) and a color temperature around 5000-6000K (to match the tone of natural light).

You can get them here:
http://www.naturallighting.com/web/shop.php?crn=565&start=1

These kind of lights cost between 4 and 10 times as much as the ones you pick-up at 7-11 on a whim–more than that clamp light cost you. They are worth every penny. If you don’t want to spend that much on light bulbs, leave the clamp on light at home.

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Images thanks to Wikipedia, FromTheNorth, and Sheba_Also.