A product video is a typical type of video that is often used by businesses. These videos highlight the product to provide viewers with a more comprehensive understanding of its features and advantages. However, they have higher requirements for lighting than other traditional videos. The product videography lighting has a big impact on the product's color, size, and depth. In this article, we will focus on its importance, what light to use, and lighting tips to help you light the product video properly.
Why product videography lighting is important?
Lighting is crucial in product videography for several reasons:
Visibility: The product will be well-lit and visible to the audience with good lighting. It enables viewers to see the features, details, and textures clearly, which is critical for making wise purchase decisions.
Highlighting product details: Proper lighting helps to emphasize the product's unique selling points as well as key characteristics. It could offer shadows, highlights, and depth, giving the object a three-dimensional looki and making it more attractive.
Mood and aesthetics: The product videography lighting establishes the tone and gives it a certain feel. Various lighting strategies may elicit feelings and improve the product's visual appeal. For example, soft lighting can provide a romantic atmosphere, while bright illumination can create a lively look.
Brand coherence: To preserve brand awareness and identity, lighting should be consistent in all product videos. You may establish a unified visual style that supports brand recognition and is consistent with your brand's image by utilizing similar lighting setups.
Professionalism: Your product videos will appear more polished and professional with well-arranged lighting. It demonstrates that you have invested the time and effort necessary to showcase your goods in the most favorable light, earning you more credibility and trust from prospective clients.
What lights to use in product videography?
Continuous light is a must for product videography since it is constantly on and does not flash. This offers consistent illumination for high quality video production. Among them LED constant light is gaining increasing popularity. Videography lights are coming at daylight, bi-color, and RGB modes to improve product videography lighting and create the target effects for your product videography.
Daylight: These lights provide a color temperature that closely matches natural daylight, usually about 5600K. They provide a bright and cool light that is great for photographing clean and colorful product photographs. They are ideal for displaying items with brilliant colors or keeping a clean and natural look.
Bi-Color: Bi-color lights have changeable color temperatures, so you can shift between warm and cold tones. They normally vary between 2700K (warm) to 6500K (cool). Because of their adaptability, they can be used for a wide range of shooting situations. Bi-color lights allow you to modify the color temperature to match the ambient illumination or create certain moods for product videography. They help you create a warmer atmosphere for lifestyle or personal product filming, or a colder tone for high-tech or sleek objects.
RGB: RGB LED light produces a broad variety of colors by mixing red, green, and blue LEDs. They provide countless creative options for product videos. These lights often have built-in controllers or smartphone applications that allow you to change the colors and brightness, and even create dynamic lighting effects. They may add a touch of innovation and distinctiveness to your product videos by matching the lighting to your brand identity, emphasizing certain features, or making eye-catching effects.
Remember that the video lighting you use will be determined by your specific demands, budget, and overall aesthetic goals for your product videography.
How to light a product video: 5 tips for novice videographers
If you are new to product videography and want to get started, here are 5 tips that you can follow:
- Choose your lighting options for product videography carefully
- Use 3-point lighting setup
- Select color temperature to create the right mood for product videos
- Watch for glare especially when filming reflective products
- Play with the product for the best look
Read on to get more details.
Choose your lighting options for product videography carefully
As aforementioned, there are a variety of product videography lighting to select based on price and functions. All of these choices should be tested to evaluate whether they are worth the cost. Determine the kind of features you require for your project to prevent overpaying for lighting. Choose the choice that provides the features you require, not those that would be good to have.
Use 3-point lighting setup
Three-point lighting is a common setup for product videography lighting. It is a triangle setup that surrounds your subject and provides optimal lighting by regulating highlights, shadows, and brightness. It consists of key, fill, and back lights.
- Key: It is the brightest source of lighting among the three. It is also the lamp that will offer most of the illumination for your subject.
- Fill: It is lees intense. Its purpose is to remove shadows cast by the key light.
- Back light: It separates the subject from the backdrop. It adds depth to prevent a flat backdrop.
Remember that the particular lighting setup will depend on the product, intended style, and message you want to portray. Experimenting with various lighting approaches will help you discover the ideal balance for effectively displaying your products.
Select color temperature to create a right mood for product videos
Consider color temperature while lighting your product video, since it has a big influence on the mood you want to express. Warmer lighting tends to be more inviting than cooler ones.
When selecting your lighting, choose a single sort of light to utilize throughout, whether chilly or warm. Try not to combine color temperatures since it will result in a color imbalance, making your product videos appear weird. Color temperature will be the most important factor in determining the appearance and feel of product videography, establishing an emotional connection with your target viewers.
Watch for glare especially when filming reflective products
Glare can be an issue when lighting product videos, particularly when filming glass. It becomes an issue when using diffusion boxes. A fast fix is to move your lights higher on the stands so that the glare is no longer apparent in the camera's viewfinder. If elevating the lights doesn't work, try moving your key and fill lights farther apart while keeping them roughly equal.
Play with the product for the best look
Experiment with the product to determine what type of product videography lighting to use based on the story you want to convey. Do you want your video to appear dark and ominous or bright and airy? You may also experiment with the product to discover how it appears best with different lighting. Maybe change its status by melting it or putting it in an unusual stance. This is the moment to make your product appear amazing and use lighting to truly tell a narrative about it.