- Hey everyone, it's me Hallease,
endeavoring to persevere as always.
So one of the subscribers asked how I light myself
and it's based on three things.
So let's go ahead and roll the intro.
(dramatic music)
The first thing is that I use a two point lighting setup
so there's two point lighting
and then there's three point lighting.
You have your two point lighting
which is your key and your fill
and if you want to add a third light,
you have to have a backlight
that separates you more from your background.
I do two point so I just have a key light
and a fill light.
I'm pointing to them right now
'cause they're right in front of me.
So my key light is the main light
that lights my face.
It's usually at about a 45 degree angle from me
and then my fill light, as the name suggests,
fills in the rest of the light on my face
and that's to my right.
It's usually not as intense as my key light
but it's still adding that little bit of extra.
And then if I so choose, I can add a backlight
which would be behind me
to separate me more from the background.
When I'm making videos on here in this setup,
I just have a key and a fill and that's kinda it.
Now the lighting kit I use is by Smith Victor.
It's a very affordable lighting kit
as far as getting started goes.
The light panels are built into little soft boxes
and what I really love about these lights is
that they're thin and they travel really well.
So in the kit, it gives you everything you need
to get going, a case to hold them in,
power adapters, just everything you need
to just start shooting yourself.
So I have two sets of the kit.
Another thing that's really cool about these lights is
that they are dimmable.
The only downside I would say to these lights,
as far as the cost for value of them,
is that they only have one color temperature.
They only do daylight.
They're also in my YouTube gear kit on kit.com,
so if you're interested, there you go.
That's just basic lighting when I'm here
and I have the time to set myself up
and all that kind of jazz.
The second thing I feel is important to mention
when discussing lighting deeper, darker,
richer skin tones like mine is the importance
of color spectrums within cameras.
If you're really interested to know
about the history of color spectrums
and how cameras actually pick up skin tones,
there's a really great Vox video
that goes into the Shirley cards
but something I think is very important to remember
when you're trying to light yourself,
whether you're fair skinned or deeper skinned like me,
is to know your undertone color.
That will help you decide which camera
you should maybe lean to when you're purchasing.
I use Sony.
I use a Sony a6500 and then my camera two is the Sony 5000,
I think is what they call this now,
but it's like an NEX camera.
And Sony's color spectrum in their cameras natively
tends to lean a little flat and little blue,
which is fine because my undertone is more
to the cooler side.
So I feel like the Sony camera color spectrum
just lends itself better to me.
Whereas with Canon, a lot of people talk
about loving Canon cameras because usually
when you're shooting on Canon,
the footage right out of the camera
you don't usually need to add a lot of saturation
or contrast to it.
It usually comes out already like that.
But I feel that Canon skews just a little
on the warm side, like it rewards you
if you have sort of a warmer undertone to your skin.
When I see myself on Canon, I feel like
I look like trash.
Or when I see myself on Canon,
I make sure that I'm wearing makeup
if I know the person is gonna use a Canon camera.
The Canon is just gonna really accentuate
the sections of my face that are warmer
and it just makes me look kinda splotchy
and the shine is in weird...
It just, ugh, you know.
So I tend to lean towards Sony
because I feel like when I look at the footage raw
in a Sony camera, it is more true to
how I feel like I look like in real life.
That being said though, I know how to light myself on Canon.
At the end of the day, buy a camera you can afford
and that you know you can get the most bang
for your buck out of and learn to master it.
The third thing I do is I use an ND filter,
no matter whether I'm inside or outside.
So ND filters are accessories that you add
on top of your lens to reduce the amount of light
coming into the lens.
This is very helpful when you're trying to have
lower F-stops, like F2.8 and all that kind of stuff,
so you can have that shallow depth of field.
So I use an ND filter inside because I feel like
my skin and people with deep rich melanin like myself,
we look the best outside in direct sun.
The melanin in our skin just works.
The sun comes on our skin and our skin can
just reflect it, but also absorb it just right.
I feel like I can go outside and shoot myself
and I just glow, like I'm just glowing.
You know what I'm saying?
Living my best melanated life when I'm outside.
These artificial lights, my skin is not made for them.
I feel like they shine, like my skin doesn't know
whether to absorb them or reflect them.
It just doesn't quite do it.
And if you watch shows like Insecure on HBO,
I'll try to link to a great article
about how they light everyone on that show.
They basically do the same thing
but on an HBO budget.
They use a combination of ND filters
and incredibly expensive LED light situations.
So using an ND filter on my skin inside helps to
sort of not have these crazy intense bright spots
on my skin and just balance out how these lights
are working on me.
So I'm gonna go ahead and take off the ND filter
so you can see what it looks like now without it.
I also know that my camera two doesn't have
an ND filter on right now,
but it also doesn't go as low as this lens does.
So here's what it looks like without the ND filter
and it's probably pretty blown out.
You can see it a little bit in my camera two as well.
You see that,
this,
you know,
and it's camera two, you know,
I could buy an ND filter but I don't feel like it.
So those are the three things to consider
when you're lighting.
ND filter, consider the camera brand,
and also what your own skin undertone is,
and then also two point lighting.
I hope that helps.
Thank you to the subscriber that asked this question.
I've been meaning to actually do a video
like this for a while.
Shout out to my Patreon producers for helping me
keep this channel going.
If you're interested in joining the production team,
hit me up, patreon.com/hallease.
It is because of y'all, I can say,
I'll see you on Friday.
(jazz music)