Lighting the Green Screen
The STUDIOS PDQ Instant Home Studio System was created for the purposes of installing a home studio in minutes for a professional, polished and picture perfect presentation for work, school or other organization and to do so quickly and effortlessly. Our Chroma-key green screen amplifies all available light due to its tight looped construction, vivid green color and non-glare face. However, depending on the available light in your home, office or classroom setting, there is sometimes the need to amplify or augment that lighting.
Lighting is an art that not only involves the color “temperature” of the light source (from warm to cool) but also the diffusion and angling of the lighting source so that it washes over the background surface.
Therefore, the purpose of the lighting that you incorporate into your StudiosPDQ Instant Home Studios System is threefold:
- provide the proper lighting color ‘temperature’ that complements your virtual background;
- eliminate shadows from your face and the virtual background;
- ensure that you, as the subject, is illuminated separately from the object (StudiosPDQ System).
This combination of lighting is what will “Wow!” you audience so that you always look professional, polished and picture perfect whether your lighting is a warm yellow to match the virtual image of afternoon sunlight or the cooler blue hues that match moonlight for a lunar landing backdrop.
Why Lighting is Important
While the STUDIOS PDQ Instant Home Studios System can certainly support the needs of professional photographers and videographers, this article is oriented towards a more generalized audience. The intention here is to introduce you to the reasons why taking the time to properly light your face and the Chroma-key separately, before your video call, will go a long way to wowing your viewing audience.
Think of lighting and how important it is to ensure that you have a good light source before taking a photograph. How many times have you had to adjust your smartphone or camera to add an additional lighting source such as a “flash” whenever a reasonable amount of natural lighting was not available? The “flash” option is added whenever you want to ensure that both the subject (that which is the focus of the photo) and the object (that which is secondary to the subject) are both properly illuminated.
Let’s think of the subject and the object as two integral parts of your photographic composition; two separate but interrelated elements of the same ‘system’ that need to be brought into focus. Now we want to extend the analogy from photography to the video call and place you as the subject in the foreground and the STUDIOS PDQ Instant Home Studio System as the object in the virtual background.
Lighting YOU as the “subject”:
During the video call you always want to ensure that you, the subject, remain well-lit at all times and this is where something like the ‘halo’ ring light will comes in very handy. The ‘halo’ ring light style of desk light is the source of lighting that illumines you, in the foreground, separately from the Chroma-key green screen; this is the lighting that makes you, the presenter, look distinctly separate from the virtual background.
‘Halo’ lights or ‘ring lights’ are inexpensive additions to any home studio; many can mount directly to your desk and also have different color ‘temperature’ settings. Lighting is measured by lumens and temperature; for the purposes of this article we are only interested in color temperature which can either be “cool” or “warm”. The ‘cooler’ light temperature settings (usually above 3000 Kelvin) will introduce more ‘blue’ tones whereas the ‘warmer’ light temperature settings (usually at 2700 Kelvin or lower) will wash a more yellow to amber light across the ‘subject’ (you).
Lighting the StudiosPDQ System as the “object”:
The ‘key light’ is the lighting that is illuminating the StudiosPDQ Instant Home Studios System’s Chroma-key green screen which is essentially your virtual background. The key light is the predominant light source to wash light evenly over the green screen to eliminate shadows.
Lighting the ‘object’ is also very important to ensure that both the subject and object are clearly defined such that the virtual image and the presenter appear to be distinctly, wholly separate. Therefore lighting is a critical component in every successful StudiosPDQ Instant Home Studio set up.
I have incorporated two (2) key lights and one (1) ‘halo’ light into my StudiosPDQ Instant Home Studios System; however, I do not have to rely on the key lights to illuminate my greenscreen as I have my desk directly in front of a large window. In fact, the natural light that comes in through this window has always provided me with more than enough natural light to flood across the Chroma-key green screen of the StudiosPDQ System. I do use the ‘halo’ ring light to light during every presentation to eliminate any shadowed areas on my face during video call. This ‘halo’ ring light also has a dimmer and temperature gauge so I can adjust the warmth of the lighting.
That being said, in the event of a cloudy day and certainly to compensate for the variance of sunlight during the winter months, I also have two (2) key lights on my desk to flood the Chroma-key green screen with additional light. But, as mentioned, the green “face” of our Chroma-key green screen fabric and its tight looped fabric maximizes the way that the surface catches light and saturates it perfectly. This is where lesser grade Chroma-key green screen fabrics fall short and absolutely requires significant lighting resources why the StudiosPDQ Instant Home Studios System outperforms the competition.
For the winter months I do use the key lights much more often. The key light is considered whatever would be the predominant light source that would be ‘streaming’ throughout the ‘virtual image’ that is your chosen background image.
How I use the Key Lights:
While I could have likely gone with just one key light I purchased a pair of them. These two (2) key lights are set up on either side of my desk and they are angled at the edges of the green screen. I have the ‘halo’ ring light mounted to my desk monitor. Whereas the ‘halo’ ring light is purposefully shining on you, the subject, the key light(s) will be positioned away from you and angled towards the edges of the Chroma-key green screen.
The ‘halo’ ring light eliminates any shadows from my face and the key light eliminates any shadows that might exist across your Chroma-key green screen virtual background. Your goal is to always have an even wash of light across the Chroma-key green screen and on yourself and to eliminate shadows. Our high-grade Chroma-key green screen fabric augments the available amount of light and helps to reduce shadows naturally while the key light amplifies this function.
