Best Way to Light a Room for YouTube Videos

Noah Truth

Noah Truth

Active member
Hey everyone,

I plan on recording and releasing a series of YouTube videos on health and wellness. Unfortunately, I may have to do a lot of filming at night. I have decent lighting in the room but it's not nearly enough for proper exposure. I do own a Neewer CN-160, however, I used it for the first time last night to film a stop motion video and noticed the light gradually lost luminescence over time. It was quite evident during the stop motion as the exposure slowly went from slightly hot to slightly underexposed by the end. I was using regular AA batteries and had the light on full power.

Is there any way to avoid this gradual degradation? Should I be using a rechargeable battery instead? Should I not go full power? Should I consider purchasing a continuous softbox lighting kit that can simply plug into an outlet?

What's the best lighting solution for someone in my position?

Thanks.
 
For long-form recording, a high capacity battery or (preferably) a mains-powered continuous light is necessary.
 
Is the gradual loss in intensity the only thing you care about dealing with? If so, you could pretty easily feed 9vdc from a adapter you can buy at Radioshack directly into the light, with a little bit of tinkering. Batteries will wear down and cause the problems you're seeing no matter what, they're meant for situations where you need portability and are not the way to go for what you're doing.

Even if you do feed constant power into that light, it's no way to light a room. That light is a more-than-crude (since it's not exactly color accurate) approach to lighting a talking head like we're used to seeing in news clips. I would recommend some Kinos and/or smaller tungsten lights if you're shooting mainly at night indoors.
 
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Moseph said:
If so, you could pretty easily feed 9vdc from a adapter you can buy at Radioshack directly into the light, with a little bit of tinkering. Batteries will wear down and cause the problems you're seeing no matter what, they're meant for situations where you need portability and are not the way to go for what you're doing.
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That's exactly what I did with mine, it's super useful like that. However, I'm not happy with the light quality, I need to find the right kind of minus green filter to make it match my other lighting.
dc_power.jpg
 
 
AndrewGentle said:
However, I'm not happy with the light quality, I need to find the right kind of minus green filter to make it match my other lighting.
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LEE 108 and 152 are nice.
Noah Truth said:
Do you guys think a setup like this would be sufficient?
http://www.amazon.com/NEEWER-Strobe-Location-Portrait-Photography/dp/B0043GT9Y0/ref=pd_cp_p_0
http://www.amazon.com/NEEWER-Studio-Softbox-50x70cm-Universal/dp/B004KVJ3OE/ref=pd_bxgy_p_img_y


Or possibly some Kino-mimicking fluorescents like this?
http://www.amazon.com/ALZO-Video-Lu...F8&qid=1398879890&sr=8-5&keywords=kino+lights
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Well Kino Flo and Osram lamps look totally different so I wouldn't trust something that claims to match the color of BOTH brands. And besides which, a pack of bulbs alone isn't going to get you anywhere, you need some sort of fixture as well.

But regarding that NEEWER still photo oriented unit - you get what you pay for. Sounds like you're on a shoestring budget, if that's what you have to do to get by then go for it. I personally wouldn't consider something like that to be sufficient but it might be fine for what you're doing, and it'll probably be better than that little LED.
 
Yeah, if creative enough you can use home depot clip on work lights, use fluorescent bulbs with parchment paper (NOT WAX PAPER!!) for diffusion, and proper placement will give good results.
 
have you not tried an f970 battery? they'll power it for the better part of a day with no dimming, it's well known that any of those LED lights don't work very well with AAs, and you should only use those as a backup. grab some f970 batteries, i use the smaller medium size one (f750?) which i know powers the z96 for 4 hours solid, so with the cn160, probably around 3.
 
Darren Levine said:
have you not tried an f970 battery? they'll power it for the better part of a day with no dimming, it's well known that any of those LED lights don't work very well with AAs, and you should only use those as a backup. grab some f970 batteries, i use the smaller medium size one (f750?) which i know powers the z96 for 4 hours solid, so with the cn160, probably around 3.
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That actually may be the most practical solution for me ATM. Thanks for your input.
 
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