Video communication is everywhere today. And who doesn't know it: The thing with lighting. Whether during a video conference, a webinar, or a video message, it is a new challenge every time to present yourself perfectly.

At StoryBox, we communicate passionately with videos. We do this spontaneously in the car to congratulate our customers on their birthday, sometimes quite formally to shoot a short social media commercial for the next webinar or directly at work, for example when we record a new how-to video via a screen recorder.

In all the various areas of application of video communication, we've found that you can perfect and exaggerate a lot, but there are a few basic rules to follow with every video. Here we show you, briefly and concisely, some of the most important Basic rules for appealing video production without artificial lighting — only with natural light.

The natural light

Natural light is the light that comes from the sun, moon, and stars or not from artificial light sources. It is also called the already existing light that is Available Light.

Light from outside or outside provides an ideal source of light. Since we can't always choose the perfect time to shoot, we now refrain from focusing on artistic exploration when nature gives us the perfect light (e.g. blue hour, golden hour).

Basic information about the start

1. Avoid backlighting
2. Are you outdoors or in a room and looking for the ideal position to shoot your video? Be careful not to film against the light source. So under no circumstances should you have the window or the sun behind you, otherwise you will appear colorless, dark, and barely visible. Even the latest smartphones or the best webcams cannot take the rap for this mistake.
3. Make sure there is enough light
4. Ideally, the light comes from the front or the side. In rooms, windows provide sufficient light. This soft daylight in front of you ensures that you get enough light from the window. Professionals usually refrain from using room lighting to maintain a good white balance and, of course, to save energy. But be careful: As soon as the sun shines directly into the room, it quickly becomes too bright and you get problems with contrast.‍
5. The ideal weather
6. In natural light, a slightly cloudy sky is a good prerequisite for beautiful lighting in your video. Shooting during midday hours and direct sunlight poses many risks. For example, the light coming steeply from above casts very hard shadows. The light of the sun can also be so bright that parts of the face are over-illuminated. Another often underestimated problem: When lighting conditions are too bright, people like to squint their eyes.

Tips for whitening, darkening, and dabbing

Of course, you can also do the following against too much sunlight without a large investment:

• When light conditions are too dark you can use a reflector (with a golden coating) or even buy a styrofoam board from a hardware store, to reflect sunlight onto you. You usually need a helping hand for this.
• Use umbrellas or awnings outdoors to shade the scenery and make sure that there are no hard shadows. Ideally, the background should also have no hard contrasts so that you are and remain the highlight as the main character of your video.
• Avoid shooting video under trees, as the lighting conditions change again and again due to wind and movement of branches and leaves, sometimes leaving unsightly speed cameras on the skin.
• Indoors If the sun is too dominant darken the situation. Make sure you don't darken the room too much and that you get enough light from the front.
• When conditions are too hot and summer beads of sweat form on the skin. A little tip: A paper handkerchief or cloth for dabbing can do wonders.

Customization with StoryBox

So that, even in less than optimal lighting conditions, all StoryBox users Produce videos quickly and easily, StoryBox offers its users the following features to edit lighting conditions and to enable excellent results:

• zoom function
• Our 6x zoom function in front camera mode helps you remove problem areas in the image in adverse lighting scenarios.
• Front camera & selfie mode
• Thanks to access to the front camera and selfie mode, you can also react to the lighting conditions with a colleague or acquaintance.
• Access to images and videos
• The professional is always ready for a video with StoryBox. Thanks to accessing the media library and photos on your mobile phone, you can also access your archive and upload company buildings, and outdoor footage to your video, for example. This means that you are independent of light and weather in some situations.
• gamma correction
• With the help of gamma correction, you can edit the scenery very well. This function allows you to lighten situations that are too dark and darken situations that are tooa bright.
• Format Wizard
• So that you don't forget which format you need for your video with all the points to consider regarding lighting conditions, our format assistant always tells you the specified and optimized format.

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