Lighting! For someone who knows nothing about it...

beko1987

beko1987

Member
So I've had my new camera for a few days now. Outside, in sunlight it's pin sharp and utterly fine. However, inside, when it's dark outside with the main lights on, it goes grainy and dark.

I've fiddled with the camera settings, which improves things a bit, but not much... I think I need lighting!

Are those LED panel lights any good? Amazon are doing a cheap one for £15 at the moment, although it runs off AA batteries (or some bojack camera battery pack I can buy...)

I've also seen 2 20w LED floodlight jobs on ebay, would 2 of those mounted on a cheap tripod each flood enough light onto the proceedings to improve matters?

Does anyone have any tips for cheap and cheerful lighting rigs? As it stands my phone produces clearer video in the same circumstances...
 
Did you adjust your ISO correctly? Grain usually comes down to ISO. All cameras have a native ISO and its multiplicative "preference" that will reduce grain. Typically, it's ISO 800, with preferences for 100, 1600, 3200. Adjust your f-stop and shutter length for better lighting.

Other than that, yes, you can get lights.I recommend against buying cheap lights from Amazon if you really want to be serious. I suggest looking at sites like bhphotovideo.com . If price is an issue, then honestly, any type of lighting can be fine and fixes can be done during post.
 
I don't think I can adjust the ISO on my camera... No setting for it nor mention of it in the manual (PDF version, ctrl+f...)

Was looking at these to get started, I have a £30 amazon voucher to use and £7 on my account already...

Can't paste links, this is the description for some copy and paste action...
SLOJP 2PCS 50x70cm(20"x27") Softbox Lights+ 2PCS 125W 5500K Continuous Bulb Lamp Light Lighting Kit, Photo Studio Quick Set Soft Box With E27 Socket, 210cm(83") Fully Adjustable Aluminum alloy Light Stand Set
 
Moved to the recording / editing / production / software / hardware forum. :)

Maybe you could mention what camera you're using? In addition to PictureFit's advice above, also, look for and adjust the "white balance" settings on your camera, to match the actual lighting conditions you use. If you google "white balance", then you'll get a good explanation of what it is. :)
 
Thank you! Not found all of the sub sections yet!

My camera is a Panasonic HDC-SD10. Did spend half an hour with it hooked up to the TV via hdmi having a fiddle and didn't get a crystal clear image. Maybe our asda 110w energy efficient rubbish light bulbs aren't up to the job!

Will persevere and do some more research on things before buying more kit!
 
I'm using a softbox kit. I bought a $500 kit with 4 softboxes, but I really only use one for videos. The bigger the light source, the softer the shadows.
 
Right, seems I'm more of an idiot than I first thought...

I'm used to my phone making nice AVI files and that's it... This camera produces AVCHD files. What I was doing was plucking the video files out of the SD card and running them through movie maker, and leaving all the related data files... (I can hear you all hitting your heads on your desks now...)

I worked from home this morning as my girlfriend had a hospital appointment, so armed with this info, installed the software that came with the camera. Once I got it to run on Windows 10 64 bit, I ingested some test footage and it looked 100% better! Still a bit dark and gloomy, but crisp! Sadly this glee stopped when said camera software would either burn the 1080p files to a blu-ray or convert them to 720p mp4... Scrap that...

So after some googling, I now own Sony Vegas Pro 14... I re-recorded a vacuum cleaner first look demo I did last night the 'old' way, let Vegas ingest the footage natively from the SD card, and my god it's so much better! Granted the lighting was better as it's a sunny day, but it's amazing!

So, I'm probably still going to buy a cheap 'my first lighting rig' kit, mainly because I have birthday vouchers to spend, and do do a fair bit of filming in the evenings. But I'll work with natural lighting first, and delve into the murky world of learning how to use Sony Vegas! Not too fussed about that tbh as Windows Movie Maker was just about too basic for me now. I recorded a picture in picture unboxing a few months ago (I have a 720p action cam that I stuck to the ceiling above where I was unboxing, and filmed a birds eye view as well as a detailed look), and had to use DaVinci to create that, which was amazing but my laptop struggled, and my decent PC sits headless in the loft, and the software would not run over remote connection... And I can't afford a new laptop or PC (Laptop is an i3 with 8gb ram and an SSD, PC is an early gen i5 with 16gb ram... Both free!)

So thanks for all the replies, but I think I was missing the basics of how AVCHD works, it needs all the related files it creates to complete the data. Without that it looks awful. The learning curve will be greater than I first thought!
 
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