I am sure that a lot of you have experienced dark lighting. We have all been there and we know how difficult it is to control lighting. So what do we do to prevent awful lighting? First off, if you have the budget to do so, buy the Sony A7S. This is the BEST low-light camera on the market and it will compensate for the darkest lighting! I use it and absolutely love it! But if you don’t want to break the bank, here are some tips on improving your lighting:
- Buy prime lenses that have an aperture rating of less than two stops
- Carry an on-board light with you (mounted on a rig or camera)
- Ask the client in advance how lighting conditions will be
- Adjust shutter value, the lower the shutter value the more light you will let in, but be careful because the lower the shutter, the more motion blur you will get
- ISO…if worst comes to worst, use the ISO setting on your camera to increase sensitivity of the sensor to light (but be aware that the higher the ISO, the more grain and noise you will see in your footage)
Event coverage videography is probably the most difficult type of shoot, because of lighting. You will never know exactly what the lighting conditions will be so it is extremely important to have on-board lighting with you and to know what settings you can set on your camera to compensate for bad lighting. In a future blog post, I will cover how to properly light for interviews. Thanks for reading and I am excited to see what you create!
