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Three-point lighting is a foundational lighting method that consists of – you guessed it – three lights! It consists of a key light, fill light and backlight or hair light.
It is a basic setup that fully lights your subject in a flattering way.
The key light is your brightest light source. It provides the most light onto your subject and a lot of people like to put the key light on what they feel is their best side.
The key light goes on one side of your subject and the fill light goes on the other. The fill light is usually slightly less bright and ‘fills in’ the other side of the face.
Having the lights at two different brightness levels helps to create the depth that we talked about in our previous tutorial on how to use natural lighting in your home.
The third light in our setup is a backlight or hair light. This is a subtle light that is positioned behind our subject and helps to create separation between them and the background.
These three lights are the foundation of our three-point lighting setup.
When I create my youtube videos I often only use one light, the key light, because of how much time it takes to set up a three-point lighting system. If I’m creating something that I want to look really professional, I will absolutely get all my lights out and have a play with the look of it and create something really nice.
You can do a lot with just one light, and rules are made to be broken, so once you have the three-point lighting system down pat you can experiment and see what works for you with different looks.
Often I will use natural lighting and artificial lighting hand-in-hand. Sometimes the natural lighting in a room can look so good, that’s all I’ll use to create the video.
I may stick primarily to natural lighting but boost the overall setting with a key light or use an accent light to add something to the scene.
A big benefit to using artificial lighting is the control you will have over your shot. You won’t have variables like clouds going over the sun or day turning into dusk; you have total control over the levels, the position, and you don’t have to worry about any unexpected changes.
One thing to keep in mind is the potential for shiny-looking skin when you have lots of light on your face. It’s handy to have a matte powder ready for when you start feeling sweaty because skin shine shows up more when you’re using artificial lighting than under natural lighting.
To make your artificial lighting softer and more flattering you can purchase softboxes to go over your led lights which diffuse the light and make the overall light source bigger and softer.
Another great lighting tool is a ring light; this will give you a really uniform look across your face. Most ring lights come with an adapter to position your phone in the center of the light so you can set up, hit record, and get straight into your video.
If you’re using a DSLR, position your ring light in front of your camera and film directly through the center of the light.
You can adjust the light level and the color temperature on most ring lights to give you even more flexibility and creativity with your lighting setup.
If you’d like to learn more about filming with natural lighting check out this tutorial.
Here are links for you to have a look at all of the equipment we spoke about in this article:
- LED Studio Lights (Amazon)
- LED Soft Boxes (Amazon)
- LED Light Stands (Amazon)
- Ring Light Setup with phone and camera adapter included (Amazon)
- Coloured LED Strip (just for some fun!) (Amazon)
Some of the links are affiliate links which means I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase, at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
If you have any questions please leave a comment below so I can answer them for you. Let me know what you’d like to learn about next.
I can’t wait to see what you create!