Video Lighting

[Kim Welch]

is there any difference in lighting for video and film?

Update, November 2026
The principles are the same: key, fill, backlight, motivation and contrast. The main difference is exposure latitude. Film and today's high-end digital cameras handle highlights differently, so check your waveform or false color. Modern cinema cameras have wide dynamic range, but protecting highlights and lighting for the look you want still matter.

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[dpwannabe]

Cinematography dvd

Cinematography dvd

Mr. Wagner,

If I remember correctly a few years ago you were thinking of doing a cinematography DVD series. Is that still in the works?

Shaun

 

[David Mullen ASC]

is there any difference in lighting for video and film?

No, lighting is lighting. You make adjustments for the contrast, dynamic range, color balance, etc. of any film stock or digital camera, but the fundamentals are the same in terms of how to key someone, how to fill, what direction to key from, how to replicate available light, etc.

The only exception I would make is a lighting trick based on extreme overexposure in part of the frame, which then lights another part of the frame with the ambient bounceback, which just tends to work less well with digital. But it still can be done.

Let's remember that if you skip-bleach process the negative, you will run into the same problems of dealing with highlights "clipping" too fast as video -- yet that would still be "film lighting". So I tend to think that the whole notion of "video lighting" is misleading.

You do run into the phrase "TV lighting" or "video lighting" in another context, which is to describe overly-flat high-key 3-point lighting, or unimaginative ENG portrait lighting, usually as a derogatory label. But that term means less and less as more and more digital work is being lit properly.