- Today, I had the bright idea to enlighten others
with a delightful video about the lighting setup
for the room where I film my videos
and to do some streaming and stuff.
(upbeat music)
And right away, I just wanna point a few things out.
First, would be that it took me over three and a half years
to get to a point where I am happy
with the lighting setup in this room.
So it's not something that happens all at once.
And while I did start out
and pay for all the lights myself at full price,
more recently Nanlite and FalconEyes
sent me quite a few lights that are really nice.
They did not send them to me to make a video.
They didn't also send money or anything.
They just sent me some lights and I like them
so I'm using them,
but I'm pointing that out just so you know
that everything in here wasn't totally paid for by me
and then also that I'm very, very picky about free stuff
and sponsored content or anything like that.
So if you wonder how I handle it,
there's a link in the description to the Ethics Statement
on my website where you can see exactly my philosophy
and process for that.
And that's also why you might have noticed
the little paid promotion thing popping up
at the start of this video.
Also that leads me into the next point
which is I'm not making this video to tell you,
"Hey go buy all this stuff and load up your credit card
and go into debt to get these cool lights."
Rather, my goal is to just show you what I use
and you might get some cool ideas and you might see a light
or two that might work for your setup
that would be worth investing.
But I would never want anyone to buy stuff
that's not within their budget or anything like that.
And then the third thing is, this is the opposite
of like a minimalist lighting setup
where some people are like,
"here's my one light and how I make everything
look amazing with my one light."
There are 13 lights on in here right now.
So we're gonna go over all 13 lights.
As of about three months ago, every single light in here
whether it's one of the 13 that are on right now
or any of the other accent lights I can turn on
are dedicated video lights.
I was going crazy with lights flickering,
especially LED lights and RGB lights.
Dedicated video lights at any frame rates,
any shutter speed, any setting, no matter what
won't flicker and that completely saved the day.
Especially in this little cabinet over here
if there are no lights on in there,
it's just this big black empty void.
And so you can probably go back over the past six months
to a year of videos and you can see things changing.
I used to just set battery-operated lights in there
but then they would die sometimes during the video.
And then I tried LED light strips
and then those would flicker like crazy.
So I finally found a solution that works.
And of course the first lights we're gonna start with
are the main lighting setup,
which would be the key, fill and backlight for me
because let's face it,
I'm the most important thing in this room right now.
Sorry drum set.
Just to show you what that looks like,
I will turn them all off right now.
So this is the room with just the accent lights turned on.
And then if I turn on my key light,
that brightens things up quite a bit,
but I do have a fill light.
The fill light is pretty subtle
but if I turn off the key light,
you can see that it's just adding a little bit of shine
on my face here.
And then the backlight just does the same
but also adds glow on the hair,
separates my hair from the background,
separates me from the background.
And then when they're all combined,
that's what creates this really high key setup
that I enjoy quite a bit.
In addition to having this little glowing with here,
this little glow behind me,
this little practical light back here,
behind the drum set over here I've got lights going.
And of course then there's other lights
that I can use when I'm filming B-roll shots
and things like that.
So let's jump in and look at
what all these different lights do.
Let's start with the key light
which is the Nanlite Forza 200
and Nanlite did send this to me.
And it is a Forza to be reckoned with.
I really like the control panel which can mount directly
to the C-Stand and this light is so ridiculously bright
when I have it on as my key light, it's only at 25%.
The only thing I don't like about this light
is that it has a fan which can be noisy.
You can turn the fan off if the light is under 15%
but if it's over 15%, the fan has to be on.
It's not super loud. Here's what it sounds like.
(very subtle fan noise)
So it never gets picked up in videos or anything,
but it's just loud enough to annoy me,
especially because I just got that Mac Mini,
which is dead silent
and then now there's fan noise over here.
But this is a really awesome light,
I'll do a full review on this light specifically.
And since I am short on space over here,
I have it in the Light Dome Mini,
which is very, very small and compact
and then it's just bouncing off of the wall and onto me.
So the light itself is going through a diffuser
and then bouncing off a wall and hitting me.
So it's ultra soft and ultra diffused.
My fill light has actually never changed.
And this was the first dedicated video light I ever bought.
It's a Dracast Silkray
Little Round LED.
It's a Bi-Color light.
I don't think they even make this exact one anymore
but they do make flat panel lights.
Originally I bought it, expecting it to be a key light
but it's just not bright enough for that.
So I have it as a fill light,
again bouncing off of this roll down paper over here.
If I turned it around and had it pointing at me
it would just be so bright that I would go crazy.
And now let's talk about the backlight or the hair light
which you might remember I did a video
about the FalconEyes Flexible LED Panel
which used to be over here as my key light.
Well, it turns out Falcon Eyes saw that video
and then they sent me an updated version of that light
which is very, very cool.
And it is the RX-818 which is almost the same light
except that it has this much improved control panel
which can also easily mounted to a C-stand
or a lighting stand.
And it's full RGB so would you RGB-lieve
that just with the press of a button
I can go through and add in all kinds of different effects
or colors, then I can switch the hue very easily.
(soft beat music)
The reason that I'm using this as my backlight
and not my key light is because it's very bright
and very soft, especially in that soft box.
So that means when it shines on me, it lights me up
but it doesn't cause harsh shadows to be cast on the desk
which some other lights have done in the past.
And because it does have that RGB functionality
it also means that I can change the color
and use it as an accent light,
either for mood lighting like during streams and stuff
or as accent lighting on product photography
so it's super versatile.
And it's mounted into the ceiling using one of these,
which is a baby plate.
They're super affordable and super strong.
Just make sure you actually drill them directly into a stud
or that you use anchors to make it very, very strong.
And then just for safety
I do have this little safety chain right here,
so if the light were to fall
it wouldn't fall all the way down and land on anybody.
It would get caught. It's a pretty good idea.
This is a little bit of a janky setup, but it works.
So well that covers the key light, the fill light
and the backlight.
Let's talk about all of these other accent lights.
Most of them are Nanlite PavoTube 30C's
which are the four foot lights.
And these are pretty amazing.
I wanted better accent lighting back here.
So I saved up for a while cause the PavoTubes
are pretty expensive and I bought two of them.
So back here behind the drums,
there's one on the floor and then another on the floor.
And they come with this little wire
which you can use to connect them together.
And then they actually sync up,
so if I turn that one off,
now this one is set to its own settings,
but if I turn this on, they will match
and all of the settings will match.
That makes it very easy to get the same effect
from multiple lights.
But after I saved up and bought these two
which was a pretty big investment,
Nanlite reached out to me and then offered me four more
which is just about the coolest thing ever.
So I have another one in this corner as an accent light
and a background light.
I've got another one behind my guitars over here
to bring these to life a little bit
although it does interfere with the amp
so if I actually wanna play
I need to turn that off because it makes weird noises.
And then I have another one
that's not actually connected to anything
and it can be easily used as an accent light
in videos and stuff like that.
And then another one actually went
into Heather's office and studio.
And if you're wondering
where my original FalconEyes light went,
that also became Heather's key light too.
So we ended up being able to light
both our studios, which was very, very cool.
And then aside from this little PavoTube over here
which I made a video about.
This is basically Aputure corner.
This little cabinet has been here forever
but when it doesn't have light in it,
it's just a big dark empty spot in the background.
So here's what I've done with two Aputure MC's,
the little PavoTubes come with these metal plates
so I just stuck them to some gaff tape on the top.
And then because the back of the MC is magnetic.
(light click sound)
It can just stick right there and light up the cabinet
and then I have it connected to USB-C
same thing down here on this layer
and both of them are always charging,
both of them are easy to take out and use for other things.
But now they're also here with unlimited power
to be in the background of videos.
And the same thing is true with this little PavoTube,
it's running into USB-C which just goes
into this power adapter over here.
So I've got all three lights plugged in and I unplug them
and plug them in every day when I'm ready to use them.
And then this desk lamp
along with these two little flood lights that I have
went here and went here, they all have Aputure B7c's.
Which as you can see looks like a regular light bulb,
but they're full RGB and then you can also
take them out because they're battery-operated
but I have them plugged into the lights, just like normal.
I used to use Philips Hue bulbs in these lights,
but they flickered.
And so I wanted to go with dedicated video lights.
The only thing that flickers is my little desk clock here
but I'm not replacing it.
It's a Nixie tube clock from a company called Millclock.
And even though it flicker sometimes, I don't care.
Watch if I turn up the frame rate, there we go.
Lots of flicker.
But I'm not going to nix the Nixies because it's super cool.
And those are my main lights
but I do have a few little extra lights that I use
for other things like this little Dracast On-Camera light.
This is a little Bi-Color light
that can be battery-operated.
It's great for accents and things like that.
But my favorite small accent light is this guy right here
which is the Intellytech Pocket Cannon Mini.
I love this light. It's all metal.
It comes with these barn doors.
It's super bright. It's great as a rim light.
It's great directional light, great accent light.
In fact, I actually have another one over here
that's in a soft box that I can use sometimes
for other accent lights or fill lights for top-down shots
and things like that.
And then Heather and I each have one of these
which Nanlite sent to us.
It's the LitoLite 8F
and it's almost like a smaller version
of the Pocket Cannon Mini.
It's supposed to be an On-Camera light
but it's a very cool little directional
super bright accent light.
And again, I wanna emphasize the point of this video
is not to just tell you,
"Hey go out and buy a bunch of expensive lights."
I do think however it's absolutely worth investing
in dedicated video lights.
My first full-on bright dedicated key light
was a really inexpensive light that I had found.
I made a whole video all about it.
You could check that out and it worked great
until I accidentally broke the mount on it
which was my fault.
And that's when I upgraded to an LED light
instead of a fluorescent light.
And for things like the PavoTubes
which I'm fortunate to have six of them
which is completely insane,
and the review for those is gonna be real fun
cause there's a lot of light.
Saving up to buy the two of them that I paid full price for,
was scary cause it was a big investment.
And I thought maybe there were cheaper versions I could use
that would be just as good.
But honestly I was just driving myself crazy
and it was worth it to wait a little longer
and buy the thing that I actually wanted
versus just trying to get by with the cheapest things
I could find in the world.
Sometimes inexpensive things work really well
and sometimes they don't.
Now, as I said, if you've already got a decent camera
and a decent lens,
the next best money that you can invest into your setup
would be your audio and your lighting.
So if you wanna know more beyond this setup
I have two playlists here one all about audio
and one, all about lighting.
So I hope they're delightful.
I made that joke so many times.
And it's funny every time.
(soft ambient music)