Lighting tips to help make the most of your new Pro-series phone
“Pro” level phones can be pretty powerful tools, but they’re not the same as having a professional in your pocket. A common weakness you will run into, recording on your phone is getting the lighting right, so here are some pro- lighting tips to help you get the shot that you want, even on your phone.
Amature Rant:
“The idea that you can get shade at all on one side of my nose is not even an issue!”
Do you want to learn how to improve the lighting on videos that you record with your phone? These lighting tips will show you how. A lot of people put their phones on “Auto” and allow the phone to auto-focus or auto-expose and while that seems good, the camera will be constantly shifting if you’re moving around and the light is changing. Your phone also won’t know what you want it to focus on. It’s actually a better idea to manually set these things and to choose your focus manually as well.
A lot of phones don’t actually let you control these settings inside of their built-in apps, you’ll have to download a 3rd party app that lets you set exposure and the focus, but I definitely recommend doing that.
Finding the proper exposure is a little bit technical, so to make it a little easier to get the exposure on your subject. You might get what’s called a “blowout” behind your subject if there’s too much light, but that’s ok as long as your subject is well lit. You can also add lights to fill in the shadows if where you’re shooting is a little too dark. Having something behind you that’s underexposed isn’t really a problem.
A good rule of thumb for shooting outside is that you really don’t want direct sunlight on the face or even the side of the face, because you will get dark shadows on the side opposite the light source. What you really want is soft light. A good way to get soft light is to shoot on a cloudy day, because the clouds will naturally diffuse the sunlight which will produce a softer broader spread across the face, or whatever the subject may be.
Another good way to get soft light is to use bounced light. You can buy a bounce online or you can use a wall or object that reflects the light.
Another good way to balance the light outdoors is to put the subject in the shade. Be careful not to put the subject too deep into the shadows where there isn’t enough light going in. You want to get the shade over the subject but still get the residual light that’s bouncing off of everything else nearby.
These tricks for getting soft light will help you improve the look and quality of your overall video.
Yet Another Amature Rant:
“Real good. 3 inches from my face and I’m not even allowed to hold my own phone. Everybody on Instagram is going to be able to see this video and know that it looked fine [shooting in the sunlight]”
Thank you for watching, if there’s anything else that we didn’t cover, that you would like to learn about, please leave a comment below.
To avoid the trouble of shooting your own videos altogether, we can handle that for you.