Jay: We're gonna take an overhead kitchen light and turn into a key light.
Three DIY lighting setups for your home studio.
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Now, get on the lesson.
[00:00:38] [music]
[00:00:53]
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
I've got Cathy Nelson here with me.
She's got a great YouTube channel called...
Cathy: "Awnie's House," where I make children's stories come alive for your kids.
Jay: The problem she has is, is lighting.
Getting the right light to be able to see her in her home studio here.
So I went out to the home improvement store and I found some great LED solutions that'll
help light your home studios.
I've done this before with tungsten lights but today I want to do this with LED lights.
What's out there?
What's cheap?
What's inexpensive?
What's a great DIY solution to be able to light your home studio, your setup when you're
working out of your house?
The reason I've gone to LEDs is because, well, all the reasons they're pretty obvious.
One, they are low wattage.
They're not very expensive right now.
If you go to a home improvement center, you can buy some really inexpensive LEDs out there.
And, they have really pretty good color compared to where they were a while back.
So what's the challenge to you when you're doing this?
You're trying to YouTube channel, you've never lit anything before.
You've never done any of this before.
Cathy: I've never done anything before.
Jay: So what are the big challenges for you?
Cathy: Just to make sure there's enough light on my face.
To make sure there's not glare on my glasses.
To make sure there's not glare on the pages, and just to, you know, make sure my face is
lit all the way around so I don't look like, you know, a Halloween spooky character or
something.
Jay: So, if you give a mouse an LED, he's gonna want an extension cord.
Give him an extension cord, he's gonna wanna plug it in.
Then he plugs it in, he's gonna want a stand to put his light on.
Put your light on a stand, he's gonna want you to have a gaffer to be able to run the
light.
Pretty soon you've got an entire production on your hands.
So never give a mouse an LED.
So let's get started and see if the little mouse can help us set up three interesting
DIY lighting setups.
All right, so for our first set up, and I have three different kind of combinations
of LEDs.
They're not all completely separate but I'm gonna work on the key light first.
I want a soft source.
The biggest problem when you go to the hardware store and you grab a light off the rack is
you're gonna get something that's gonna be pretty hard.
Well, I was looking for a soft source.
So my first thing I got was basically, this is an overhead kitchen light.
This is a plastic globe.
It's got LEDs that work around all the way around it.
It's 4,000 degrees.
I've got a piece of PVC.
This is 3/4 inch PVC.
And the 3/4 inch PVC will go over the top of my light stand.
And now it becomes an easy way for me to hang this up as a key light.
So I'm gonna simply drill a couple holes in this pipe and attach it with a couple bolts
so that I will have a stable key light.
I'm using a 1/4"-20 bolt which I always have a million of around here because we do everything
in 1/4"-20 around here.
And so I'm just gonna draw a couple of holes on my pipe.
I'm now going to drill my pipe out all the way through.
So I'm gonna slide that bolt through and just put it onto my pipe right there.
Now I'm just gonna run a nut onto the back of it.
So I'm not gonna impede the way the light works or anything that's going on.
But now, I can put that right onto here.
And then we wire it into an extension cord.
Now, I know this is not OSHA-approved.
If we are doing this long term, we can get this onto it and have a ground with it as
well.
But we're not doing the long term, we're doing it quickly here.
So we've got our kitchen light, which is our key light, very soft light.
It's gonna wrap around Cathy here.
I'm gonna pan it just a little bit towards the camera so it doesn't light the back wall
too much.
But I want something to separate her from the back wall.
We've got the lamp in the background, which gives me a great excuse to have a rim light
on the camera right side because it looks like it'll be coming from that lamp.
So I've got this little guy here, the 1000-lumen LED.
It's just this Utilitech or whatever it is there.
I don't how you say it, oh, Utilitech.
Utilitech, of course, it is.
I'm gonna plug it in back here.
I don't have a stand for it but I've got a little corner of the bookcase here.
So I'm just gonna put it on here.
Now, we see that little rim light on the side of her head.
That looks really nice.
Yeah, that looks fabulous.
So now, I'm gonna add a reflector just to open up the light in her face.
Now, I brought my reflector off the truck.
I meant to grab a piece of beadboard at the Home Improvement Center.
And you can buy a beadboard just in the insulation section.
You pull the aluminum foil off from it and it's a great soft styrofoam kind of bounce.
It's a beautiful look.
If you want to check out how to make one of those, we've got a great lesson on that on
"How to DIY your own reflector."
But anyway, so I'm gonna shove this right in as close so I can get it, and just out
of my frame.
And I'm gonna come up, and that should open her face up, and should be a nice looking
light there.
So this whole setup here was under $100.
It was about $40 for each of the lights and we had to kind of do a little DIY action on
that globes but a pretty simple setup.
If you put a piece of beadboard or foam core here for your fill light and if you buy two
stands on Amazon or B&H, you're gonna end up with paying $150 at the most.
I've also, I'm on a Canon 5Ti, this is Kathy's camera.
This is what she's gonna be shooting her stuff for her YouTube channel on.
And that 5Ti goes at 400 or 800 ISO.
We want to stay at 400 ISO if we can.
So let's go onto our second set up here.
So this is like an ice light or it looks like it likes light to me, but it's a 3000 lumens
or 3500 lumens.
It's that long bar, it does have a bit of diffusion on it, but it's a lot harder on
her face.
It's just not near as pretty.
But in some situations, this could be really interesting as a light overhead to give you
a really kind of rim light on her would look great.
If you wanna put it in the other room, maybe to lighten up the other room, there's a $30
LED you can plug in.
Comes with a switch and you can plug it in and off you go.
I took my color meter out, check this light out, and it's just over 4,000.
Says 4,000, but it's about 4,150.
Actually, when you start mixing it with the other ambient in the room it gets to about
4,000 on her face, but this light in and of itself is about 4,150.
So interesting solution, interesting kind of light for under 50 bucks.
So also comes with a little loop up here, the hook's on your stand.
So you don't have to have a way to attach it to your stand.
So in this setup, it's kind of in the same price range.
You're gonna be about $150 with the stands and the lights by the time you're done.
Of course the last element I didn't put in yet, and I'm gonna keep pushing this in till
it gets into the frame, in right there.
That's gonna give me a nice...
Oh, so much nicer.
That actually softens that light out.
What that does do is this light, because it's hard and I've turned it away from her just
slightly, I've got it aiming...it's aimed more up me right now, then it's picking up
the edge of this light and it's bouncing all that light back into her face and it really
makes it a lot softer on her face, looks a lot nicer than by itself.
That actually looks nice.
Now I got what I think is the really an interesting solution.
And we're gonna see how it works because it comes with LEDs and stands.
So these lights I thought were fabulous because they are work lights, LED work lights.
They're about $60 each.
They come with a stand, which is fabulous.
They come with a stand.
They got a switch.
They don't dim.
They're about 4000 degrees.
They're about 3000 lumens.
I checked it with a color meter and it's just over 4000 degrees, like 4103.
So they're pretty darn close.
The light in the background is gonna be a little strong on her.
If you look at the light on Cathy's face right now, if you look at her again, it's just way
too hard.
But if I put a piece of diffusion material on it, and that's a few dollars.
When that diffusion lays flat against that light, it's a lot harder than I want to be.
If I can push this away from the light and tape it so you get a little bit of an arc
there, that's gonna fill this entire diffusion up with the light and make it into a much
larger, softer source.
I'm now gonna put the same kind of diffusion on the background, turns this all onto a globe
here.
It kind of gives us a softer light.
And we'll take a look at that and that should look really nice.
So there we have it, two lights, two stands, $120.
And then you get yourself a little cheap stand here with a reflector on it to push into kind
of open up the shadows, and you're good to go.
So the amazing thing about this one is that when I twist this off, it's 1/4"-20, which
means I can take this light and I can twist it on to the 1/4"-20 on top of my stand.
Every manufacturer in the entire world should make everything in 1/4"-20.
Okay, so that that is a very, very focused light.
So they've got a single LED.
And then we got a magnifier there.
A piece of glass, very rounded, it's gonna make it very focused, very hard.
I'm gonna put a piece of diffusion on it.
We turn our little rim light on, got the little 1000 lumen rim light back here, and we slide
this guy in.
You know it's not bad, not bad.
In the room like this, I think it really looks good when you have a light that's maybe cool
on her face and a little warmer light in the background with a lamp.
I think that gives the image a depth and looks good.
So I don't think there's any reason to shy away from that, like you got to match everything
exactly, you see it all the time.
Little cooler light on her face, little light in the background.
The tungsten light gives you a warmth and a depth.
All of these were working with main key light, a nice rim light, and then a fill light.
So we've looked at four different options for setting up LEDs to be able to light your
home studio.
I think there's some pretty interesting options here.
It was a little all over the place color wise.
So color is always an issue when you're using inexpensive LEDs, but I felt like this one
was pretty close, looked pretty good and also the ones on stands looked very good with that
piece of diffusion on it.
Those look very nice together.
So I think we've given you some options here without being...
Cathy: Absolutely.
Jay: Much better for you.
Cathy: Yes.
Jay: Once you get past those three things, I think you'll do really well.
Cathy: Well, you've helped me so much tonight.
I can't even tell you.
Thank you so much.
Jay: Very welcome.
Very, very welcome.
But I think we've got a lighting setup here that'll get her going and be able to help
her to be able to do this and have really decent light on her face so that you can see
her and enjoy the reading that she does and it looks fabulous.
So...
Cathy: I missed his ragged breathing.
His nose-whistling.
The scrabbling of his uncut claws.
How would I ever get to sleep without Gabe's familiar scary noises?
Jay: These are not perfect solutions.
These are DIY solutions which means color could be a little off and there's some compromises
you're gonna have to make to be able to make these work.
But they're very inexpensive solutions, which on a budget, will get you up and running and
give you a decent image so you can really make your channel, or your office, or whatever
you're working on really work.
So, leave some comments.
Tell us what you are using when you're setting up your lighting, what your challenges are,
things we can do, lessons on that will help you to kind of progress and do better as you're
setting up your home studios.
And also, join our Facebook group.
Join our different medias so you'll know the things that are going on all through The Slanted
Lens.
So there you have it.
Keep those cameras rolling.
Cathy: And keep on clicking.
Jay: If you love stop-motion, you want to learn how to do it, get over to that theslantedlens.com,
go to our store, we've got a great download there from Trisha Zemp.
A beginning download will teach you the basics of stop-motion, and an advanced download that
will help move your work to a professional level, or can bundle the two together at a
greatly reduced cost.
So get over to the theslantedlens.com, go to the store, get your stop-motion download.
Subscribe at The Slanted Lens, we got great things brewing over here.
Cathy: And be sure to check out on "Awnie's House" and I'll read you a story.