In this episode of The PBP.fm Show, we dive into why good lighting is crucial for your podcast recordings. Join us as we discuss how proper lighting can enhance your on-camera presence and make your content more engaging. Learn the basics of three-point lighting, the best gear to use, and practical tips for setting up your own lighting. 

Whether you're just starting out or looking to upgrade your setup, this episode offers valuable insights to improve your podcast's visual quality. Don't miss it—tune in now!

Richard Matthews: So lighting, I think is one of those super it's really simple but it seems really complex and you know, it fits right in like with the stuff we've been talking about, right? The four things that, you know, that you should have for your podcast lights, camera, microphone, backdrop, we're on, you know, the lights is that is the one we're talking about today and.

Lights are really important for I think two reasons. So one of them is the psychological thing and the psychological thing is your eyeballs, right? So when you are creating content, you are trying to connect with an audience who you're not in the room with. Right. You're not actually speaking to these people.

You are showing up over the internet, whether that's on TikTok or YouTube or, you know, Apple TV or whatever it is, it's a disconnected form of communication and because it's a disconnected form of communication, we have to get as much of our. Humanity to the other person as possible and that all starts with your eyes.

So if you don't have good lighting, your eyes will disappear.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, podcaster, expert, or thought leader, you'll discover creative ways to leverage your digital content from blogs to video, from YouTube to Tik TOK and everything in between. We'll show you how to stand out from the noise so you can directly connect with potential customers, build strategic partnerships, and drive leads into your business.

Get ready for actionable tips and tangible takeaways on improving your digital presence across the board. With that, let's dive into this week's episode of pbp. fm.

Richard Matthews: I'm doing well. I am you know, Father's Day was yesterday at the time of this recording and I spent a good two weeks with all of my children getting a cold and I avoided it. I avoided it until Father's Day when I was taken out by the cold. So if my voice sounds a little bit off, it's because I'm mostly recovered today.

But you know, the plight of a father is you always get the cold that your kids have.

Brandi Spaich: That is true. All right so I think we were gonna discuss some lighting today, so why is good lighting important to have when podcasting?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So lighting, I think is one of those super it's really simple but it seems really complex and you know, it fits right in like with the stuff we've been talking about, right? The four things that, you know, that you should have for your podcast lights, camera, microphone, backdrop, we're on, you know, the lights is that is the one we're talking about today and.

You are showing up over the internet, whether that's on TikTok or YouTube or, you know, Apple TV or whatever it is, it's a disconnected form of communication and because it's a disconnected form of communication, we have to get as much of our. Humanity to the other person as possible and that all starts with your eyes.

So if you don't have good lighting, your eyes will disappear. And so, so we can demo that. Probably we'll demo this a little bit through the thing. We turn the lights off, you'll see the blue in my eyes disappears. This camera is actually fairly decent at picking up the light. If I turn all of my lights in here and just use the light from The thing you'll see it, looks very grainy and you'll see that I don't know, it just doesn't look nearly as good as when you

Brandi Spaich: Even worse when you have dark colored

And so the first thing that we want to do with the lighting is we want to have the lighting show your eyes off. And so that is our primary goal is how do we get that human connection? Does that make sense? Yeah

Brandi Spaich: And, you know, I think it's also important just, even just so they can see what's going on. Because, I mean, I know when I watch some videos, if it's not bright enough, or the lights are too dim, it's not only just the eyes that I can't see, I just, I can't see them or what's going on.

Richard Matthews: My wife and I giggle about all of the Justice League movies that they've been making over the last 10 years where it's like, it's beautiful that it's all dark and mysterious, but it's so dark and mysterious that I can't see what's happening on the screen. You're like, I'm sure Batman is doing cool things, but I can't see him.

Brandi Spaich: Exactly. It's like, I have to boost up the brightness on my TV every time to be able to even watch one of those movies because it's so dark, I can't see. It was Godzilla for me that I couldn't see.

And so your lights are really going to help you set your face off. And so like one of the things you'll notice if you're looking at Brandi and I hear is you can actually tell that we have a nose, right? You can tell that there's depth in our face and our eyes. the shadows on your face are created by your lights. And so the lights are going to, you know, reflect across your face, and they're going to give you the depth that someone is used to seeing in person that your eyeballs can make out, but the camera may not be able to make out if it doesn't have enough light to do that. And so if your face is Cause your lighting is flat or something like that. You're going to not look good on camera. And, you know, one of the things we talk about all the time is if you look good and sound good, and it's easy to make that happen, you're more likely to record. And if you're more likely to record, you're more likely to get that consistency over time, that's going to help you succeed with your podcast.

And unless you're using one of these you know, these big professional cameras that are capable of seeing in the dark, right? You can see the hole on this camera is bigger than the entire camera. For like the Elgato thing. So it's got good lighting, you know, capture capabilities, but these little cameras, they're super potent.

You can obviously have a great picture quality with them, but, they, that small sensor has to capture a lot of light in order to have a good picture quality. So the more light you have, the better your small camera is going to be able to accomplish getting a good picture. So that's sort of the third reason.

It's just, very technical, small sensor equals more light in order to get the same picture. If you have a bigger sensor, like on a bigger camera, a big professional camera, you can use less light to get the same quality picture, but for us, we want as much light as possible. And so that's what we're going to talk about today is lighting.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so lighting is one of those things that, you know, we are

So you have the two lights in your setup. so we'll talk about all three of those real quickly for what three point lighting is, and we'll talk a little bit about some ways that you can modify it and ways that you can use different lights to accomplish the same thing, we'll get into some gear that makes all this easy, but three point lighting is a key light, right?

That's the light that provides, you know, the main light on your face. There's a fill light. That's the light that lights up the shadows created by the key light. And then there's what's called a rim light. And the rim light is a light that, you know, basically shines on the back of your head or on the background to separate you from the background. so we'll talk about all those and we have ours set up here so we can sort of adjust it live and show you what they look like. And so the main idea for the three point lighting is that you first have a key light. So let me turn off my, I'm going to turn off my rim light. You'll see that's just light on the backdrop.

Brandi Spaich: Mine is on the other side, so.

Richard Matthews: yeah, so

up and over, that's my key light. And then you're going to want to adjust the brightness of that light. And so adjusting the brightness, if you have a light, like the one that we recommend, you'll have a little dial. You can just adjust the brightness for them. If you are using like a lamp or something like that, where you can't adjust the brightness, you can do the same thing with distance.

And so if I go a little bit here, you can see that shine has started to turn white. I'm just a little too bright right there, right? And so if I pull it back just a little bit, so I go wherever the shine is and then just back a couple of steps and you'll have a nice good light for your key light. And now this is, you know, if you're ever if you've ever watched movies, they call a single light.

This is like your dramatic shot. We're not going for drama. Right. We're going for easy to see your face, that kind of stuff. and the positioning we talked about where it's just over your head and off to the right or off to the left, depending on which side you put your key light on. That should be just good enough to light up your eyeballs really nicely.

So you can see, I can see my eyes, really well in the thing. I don't know if you want to do the same thing. Just put your key light on and show

people.

Brandi Spaich: Yep. This is just my key

Richard Matthews: just the key light and you'll see the shadow on, in your case, I believe it's the right side of your face.

Brandi Spaich: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: and

Brandi Spaich: I mean, it's my left, but I think my camera clip is

So assuming the distance is the same to my face, Okay. Right? If one's at 40%, then my fill light would need to be at 20%. Easy math. If you're using distance to control your lighting, if one's at three feet, then your fill light would need to be at six feet. Does that make sense? so we'll go ahead and turn the fill light on and you'll see what it does immediately is it pulls up and it fills in the shadows over here.

So you can see the side of my face, but because it's less bright than the key light, it's still kept that depth, right? So you can still tell that I have a nose, that I have eyebrows and you know, there's some 3d to my face. Does that make sense?

Brandi Spaich: makes sense to me. It definitely, like you said, it just provides that depth really nicely when you have your three point, or I guess in my case it would be two point lighting.

And so mine's a little bit higher than it should be just because of the small space that I'm in. but you can tell lighting up the background a little bit, it does separate me just a little bit. and so if I had better positioning, I might be able to show that off a little bit better. but your goal with that rim light is, is, If your key light is over here to the right, your rim light is going to be off to the other side.

So there'd be opposites behind you. Key light here, the rim light would shine on the back of your head the other direction. And those, that's a three point lighting setup. And the rim light you can just adjust until you get the, you know, the color that you like on the back of your head. But that's it.

it's super easy. once you know what it

so for the type of shots we're doing, where it's just one person in the camera. the two key lights, or sorry, the key light and the fill light is, that's really all there is to it. And it makes your life pretty simple. And what's cool is it almost doesn't matter what type of light you use.

The only thing that's going to matter is that all the lights you use are the same, what's called color temperature. And so color temperature is the, warmth or coolness of the light. So if you've ever seen a light and some of them look like they're a little bit orange or they have a little bit of like blue tone or green tones to them, different lights have different tones to them.

It's like an incandescent bulb is going to be warm, right? A fluorescent bulb is going to be have a little bit of the green tones to them. tungstens are gonna have a little bit of yellow, that kind of stuff. So they'll all have different, whatever type of bulb it is going to have a different color to it.

So somewhere around like 4, on the Kelvin scale. And so our little light things here, we can actually change these lights. So if we go all the way down to a very warm, It's like 3, 500. You'll see, it'll add a little bit of like an orange tint to our faces, right? And if we go the other direction, super cool, right?

This is like 6, 000 Kelvin. You'll see it goes a little bit white. and, 5, 000 is actually sunlight, right? It's the same. the same color temperature as sunlight, and that tends to look fairly good on most skin tones. If you tend to be on the darker side, right? So, you know, if you're Indian or African, something like that, if you go more to the warmer tides warmer colors, it'll help your face look really nice.

and then what's, important about that, one of the things that's really useful to note is your camera will have what's known as a white balance setting, right? So if you're using one of the cameras that we recommended, like the Elgato the Elgato, what do we have in the face camera, the face cam pros there's a white balance setting in there and it'll default to automatic.

And I put it down at the same color temperature as my lights and it'll still sort of keep that color that's still very warm. So I'm going to go ahead and put it back to Oh, I messed up my lights. There we go. Put it back at the 5, 000 on mine and put it back over here on the 5, 000 and there we go.

So that 5, 000 sunlight works really well. The other nice thing about the 5, 000 Kelvin sunlight is if you happen to be using a window or you have windows in your office, the sunlight that's coming through is generally going to be in that 5, 000 range, unless you're like at sunset time when it'll start to get a little bit like of that orange color tone to it.

That you can just turn on and off really simple and easy. So I think they're worth the investment for, I think these lights are 160 bucks each, so two of them costs about 300 or so 320 bucks to get a couple of lights. And you know, you've got a couple of them. I got a couple of them. What are you, what are your thoughts on just like the equipment itself as far as using them and getting it set up?

Brandi Spaich: Personally, I really like them. They're super easy. I mean, if my desk wasn't such a mess, I'd move my camera so you can see, but they just kind of clamp on to my desk. So, they have a rod that attaches to the actual light itself, and I just screw it onto my desk. And it's done, and that's all I gotta do.

Ha,

ha,

Richard Matthews: Yeah, they were just. They were very easy to get set up. I have my, I actually, I took the clamps off and I drilled them into the desk because I'm in an RV and I needed a little bit more permanent setup for them. Um, But I have them on the same the same poles that they came with. And they're just really easy to set up.

Brandi Spaich: what I was just about to talk about here. I will show I'll show them what they look like, because mine is pretty Mine is little, it only controls my lights, but mine are set to be Pokemon, but, like, I can just do that, my lights are off, on, and then these are my brightness, so if I want to turn up brightness, I can just hit those, and then right back down to where it was.

Richard Matthews: Nice. Yeah. So the little stream deck things are super cool. And Elgato sells those as an accessory. Otherwise they give you a little software controller on your computer that you can just drag the dials and do the same thing. the buttons are just for, you know, it's mostly just because we're nerds and we thought they were cool technology.

So we bought them and set them up in our

studios.

With upbeat energy and clear, empowering advice, Richard guides publishers, experts, and entrepreneurs on starting a podcast, improving social strategy, and connecting with your perfect audience. Visit pbp. fm and book a podcast strategy session to start spreading your message today

Richard Matthews: so. We really like those Elgato key lights. There's a few other lights on our podcast shop page where you can see we have the Elgato air light their key light air, which is a smaller, little bit less expensive light. It's going to have less of your mounting options available.

And then there's an even smaller light the loom cube lights, which are about the size of a cell phone. I actually used those loom cubies lights for the first 200 or so podcasts. episodes, my podcast, they came out before the key lights did. they're a little bit more expensive, but they're battery powered.

and then because they're battery powered, you don't have to worry about plugging anything in. They'll generally last through an entire interview or two. so those are my, they're great lights. The caveat is because they're battery powered, you're not gonna have as much control. you're not gonna be able to do like a whole day recording session with them unless you plug them in, but the smaller battery powered light is going to work really well for that.

So we have those three options on our lighting page there on the podcast thing. So as far as gear goes those are the Elgato key lights come with essentially our highest recommendation. They're really good lights. They're a little bit heavy. So, you know, they do come with the mounting clamp and the pole and whatnot.

So if you happen to have a flimsy desk or something like that, you might have to think about it because you know, they weigh, I think they weigh like two or three pounds each. So they're beefy, they're a beefy set of equipment. You can

Brandi Spaich: They're very

Richard Matthews: you can tell they're well made.

Richard Matthews: It's a very beefy light. Um, And then one of the other things that's really nice about the Elgato key lights that is very uncommon in the lighting situation is that they are what's called edge lit. And so rather than the LEDs pointing out of the light and shining right into your eyes, they're actually lit around the edge of the frame and the light is going into the light itself, into what's called the diffusion panel, the thing that actually looks like the light.

so you can actually look directly into either of the lights and it doesn't impact your eyes. Whereas like if you were to get the loom cubes or a lot of the other led light panels, you're actually, the led lights are actually pointed directly at you coming out of the light into your face. and so if you're doing interviews like this and the lights are pointed at your face they can strain your eyes after a short period of time because of just how bright they are.

And then a couple of other things that are just useful to note. If you're working about setting up your lights if you use something like an incandescent bulb or you use like a tungsten bulb, those lights generate heat. And so if you have an incandescent bulb and you're going to be doing, you know, doing two interviews a day or something like that during your recording days having a light shine on your face for 45 minutes, that has that generates heat can make you sweat.

It can make your makeup run, right? It can, you know, do other things. So these led lights from Elgato, the Elgato ones, because of the led lights, they run cool, right? They're cool to the touch. You can actually touch them and feel them. There's no, yeah, there's no temperature output at all. So it doesn't make your room warmer.

Any of them will work. Our favorite is the Mark two, the key light Mark two, which is the one that both you and I have in our studios. So as far as lighting goes, that's pretty much all there is to how you set it up and what you do with them. Do you have any questions, thoughts, anything we might've missed for our audience?

Brandi Spaich: other than maybe, like, no, we covered the software that comes with it, right? The control center? Yep. I think that's about it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So I have,

Brandi Spaich: of

people ask a lot about the heat, but, I mean, the only thing generating heat on my end is my actual computer itself,

So let me see if I can Pull these out and show them to you. so let's assume these are actual prescription glasses. They are so there's a couple of things that are useful to note about about your glasses. So the first one is that if you take your glasses, the lights are going to if the lights are on the same level as your glasses, the light will reflect off of the glasses and shine right back into the camera. So your eyes will disappear. And of course, these are sunglasses. So my eyes are disappearing anyways. And then you can see if I turn them up just a little bit, so they're, facing there. If the lights were there, my eyeballs would disappear. Right. And so if it was a clear glass thing, I wouldn't see my eye.

I would see the big square of the light. and so what you want to do is do two things. Number one is you want the light to be above your eyes and tilted down shining into you. And so what that'll do is the light will hit the glasses and then bounce down instead of bouncing straight back. So, as you can see, lights tilted up, glasses tilted straight.

Brandi Spaich: That makes sense to me, and that's pretty cool, cause I mean, like you said to your audience, when you were front facing, you couldn't tell at all

that

Richard Matthews: can't even

can't even tell that

I lifted him up. I lift him off just off of my ear a little bit, and that will give, get rid of that reflection. Cause again, if you remember our goal is eyes are the window to the soul. so you want your audience to see your eyeballs through the glasses and you don't want them to see that reflection of the lights.

And so, you know, I've recorded hundreds of episodes of my podcast with my glasses on, and as long as you can see your eyes and you get your light set up, right. That's really useful to make sure. Cause you know, I think there's a lot of us that wear glasses. And so if you're recording with glasses on, those are just a couple of tips for making sure that your audience can still connect with you if you're wearing glasses.

Brandi Spaich: Right.

Right.

well,

is there anything else you want to mention about light? I think we got it pretty well covered.

I know it seems like it should be complicated but it's really not. And, if you're getting into, I know we're going to talk a little bit next time about your backdrop. Right.

And you'll see there's a lot of people that will they put in a lot of effort into lighting the back of their studio, right? Whatever

their studio is, you notice we have really simple setups, right? We don't have anything. We just have a backdrop on there, but some of the people that are setting up fancier studios and they got all this fancy lighting back there, we'll talk a little bit about that in our next video.

That's not what we're talking about here. The lighting we're talking about is just the lights on your face and you can make just the lights on your face. Super easy, right? you know to quote one of my favorite YouTubers, barely an inconvenience, right? You get a couple of lights set up and

get them set up with the right brightness and you have, you know, a picture quality that looks really good. and that's all you need to do. and my other thing that I just want to remind everyone again, and I know we would keep saying this over and over again, if it's simple and it's easy, For you to just turn off or and turn on or set up and not take down any of those kinds of things.

Brandi Spaich: right?

Richard Matthews: So,

Brandi Spaich: Consistency is key.

Richard Matthews: yep.

Brandi Spaich: So,

Richard Matthews: that's all I got for you today.

Brandi Spaich: alrighty, well,

thank you guys for tuning in, and thank you, Richard, for, you know, talking to us about some of that lighting. if you guys are wanting to see more, want to see us next week talk about our backdrops and everything, just go ahead and follow on whatever you're watching us on, Or listening to us on.

So, thank you guys,

Richard Matthews: Awesome

thanks for

me uh, having me on again, Brandi I

know we got,

more episodes coming up and I know we got more things going on with the podcast, push button podcast brand whatnot, what all we're doing here. So appreciate you uh, being here.

Brandi Spaich: Of course. Alright, well,

thank you, and we'll see you later.

And if you'd like to get help building an omnipresent content marketing strategy with a podcast and you want help, you might want to book a podcast strategy session with us at PBP.fm. Just click the book a strategy session button and book a time on our calendar. We look forward to speaking with you and be sure to tune in next week for our next episode.