A dark and moody home studio video setup, using a daylight balanced LED video light for your face and subtle accent lights in the background.
✨ To achieve a dark and moody look, you'll need a daylight balanced video key light for your face and dimmable or low-powered accent lights for the background.
🧙 Create some distance between you and the background so that the key light for your face won't lighten the area behind you.
🧙 Use a daylight-balanced LED studio key light (preferably with a large softbox) to light your face.
💎 These image quality settings will produce fantastic detail, color, and dynamic range without needing to color grade.
Rotate the Mode Dial to Movie Mode
Set the File Format to XAVC S 4K
Set the Record Setting to:
Set the Picture Profile to PPOFF
Set the Creative Style to Standard
🧙 If you prefer a more natural look or a better starting point for color grading, I recommend increasing saturation slightly while lowering contrast and sharpness.
Set DRO/Auto HDR to Off
🫥 These autofocus settings will allow the camera to focus on your face continuously.
Set the Focus Mode to AF-C
Set the Focus Area to Wide
Set Face/Eye Priority to On
Set the AF Drive Speed to Normal
Set the AF Tracking to Responsive
🧛 These exposure settings will put an emphasis on your face while also separating you from a dark and moody background with three-dimensional pop.
Set the Exposure Mode to Manual
🧙 The lowest possible aperture F-number depends on your lens and focal length (zoom).
Set the Aperture to the Lowest F-Number
Set the ISO to 100
Set the Shutter Speed to 1/50
🧙 Most daylight-balanced LED video lights have a Kelvin temperature around 5500K.
🧙 A custom white balance corrects any color shifts and produces an image with accurate colors and better-looking skin tones.
🌓 Steps to make the image brighter or darker.
🧙 Using a Variable ND Filter is best since it keeps the shutter speed fixed at 1/50 for natural motion blur.
Attach a Variable ND Filter and dial up the filter strength
🧙 Raising the shutter speed too much may introduce flickering with certain lights and make your movements look unnatural.
Raise the Shutter Speed to a higher value ( 1/60, 1/80, 1/100, etc.)
🧙 Raising the ISO will introduce noise (grain). However, it's the best option to evenly increase brightness in most cases.
Raise the ISO to a higher value ( 125, 160, 200, etc.)
🧙 If you raise the key light intensity too much, the background may get darker due to the imbalance in light levels.
Increase the Intensity of the Key Light
🧙 Zebras can help you determine whether or not the highlights in the image are too bright (overexposed).
Assign a Custom Key to Zebra Display
Set the Zebra Level to:
🎤 These audio settings are intended for a dedicated microphone, which will significantly enhance the quality of your audio.
Connect a Microphone into the Mic Input
Set Audio Recording to On
Set Audio Level Display to On
🧙 To prevent the audio from clipping, make sure the audio levels never surpass -3db while talking into the mic.