08
Aug

Build the Perfect Green Screen Photo Booths: Lighting Tips and Tricks

In the last blog post: Build the Perfect Green Screen Photo Booths, we examined different background chromakey fabric material, and their advantages and disadvantages. Now it’s time to look at lighting the perfect green screen photo booth. And, here’s the dirty secret: every photographer knows the secret to great imaging is light. Controlling light, or if you can’t control it, adapting to it. It’s that single skill that makes photography an art. The challenge is: at an event, a photographer can almost NEVER control light. Think of an event floor. They are always lit by overhead lights: sometimes fluorescent, sometimes metal halide, sometimes halogen. Sometimes, all of those.

Each type of light has different characteristics. Fluorescent tends to be a wash of light, near shadowless, but can be a strange color temperature — and can vary drastically in the color balance. Metal halide, those buzzing glass dome lights hanging above the convention floor, are typically a cooler light but can range from 2700 up the scale. They can cause harsh shadows under the eyes of participants, strange casts under the chin, and a typically “ghoulish” skin tone. Don’t believe me? Check yourself out in the mirror at your gym. It’s probably lit with metal halide, see how flattering your skin looks? No? Thinking of running and having micro needling done? Try different lighting, first.

Halogen lights give a similar harsh glare like metal halide, and are typically a cool color temperature. They tend to be less of a flood light, and are found in the old “can” lights shining down in smaller rooms at the convention center. They are tricky devils! Because they almost always create a spot light, the color temperature can vary greatly across a green screen photo booth. If you’ve ever wondered why your participant is blue on one side of the booth and orange at the other, take a look at the ceiling. I bet you there are some can lights shining down.

To build the perfect green screen photo booths, you need to overpower the environmental lighting with lights you can control.
When you are an event photographer, you can’t control the general lighting where you’re shooting. Here’s an example of mixed lighting — halogen lights in the “cans” on the ceiling, and fluorescent lighting. To control the lighting, over power it. Here we’re using four LED lights set to a color temperature of 4100.

“AH!” You think, “That’s why I use auto white balance!” To quote the waitress who didn’t believe Matthew was still suffering the effects of (legal!) anesthesia from the doctor’s office, but was, rather, she thought, abusing fentanyl: mmmmm hmmmm. Good luck with that. Auto white balance on your camera will give you awful color balance on finished photos when shooting under mixed lights. Actually, auto white balance on your camera will ALWAYS give you crappy color balance. Instead, set the color temperature on your camera for the best average of the different lights across your booth. Then, fine tune with color settings in your green screen program.

OH, SNAP! I just lost half of you. Yes, SET THE COLOR TEMPERATURE. TAKE YOUR CAMERA OFF AUTOMATIC. If you don’t, you will always be average. At best.

That brings me to the lights you use to build your perfect green screen photo booths. I know most of you are using a built in flash, the one that came with that point and shoot white photo box thingy. If you’re lucky, it bounces off a card and lights the subject. If you aren’t lucky, it’s straight on. If you’re lucky, it’s straight on, but a ring light. Or, ditch those stupid boxes altogether. Buy a camera. Learn it. Buy some lights. What you’ll give up in portability and ease of setup, you’ll gain in the images you create. If you don’t care about the images you create, keep using the automatic box photo booth. Have at it. But don’t try to be great. You won’t be.

Let me be clear: I hate these types of photo booths. They are meant to give acceptable results. I don’t want acceptable results, I want remarkable results. To get remarkable results, to build the perfect green screen photo booths, you have to be able to take your camera off automatic, and you need more than one flash.

I use four to six lights to build the perfect green screen photo booths. Six lights if I’m using a foam background, and need to light that background with backlights. Then four lights in front, either in a wing light pattern or on a truss, clamped in a row and shining down. By utilizing all those lights, you OVERPOWER the ambient light in the room. Then, you can fine tune your color balance, and obtain great results.

To build the perfect green screen photo booths means creating the perfect lighting.
To build the perfect green screen photo booths means creating the perfect lighting. I use 4-6 lights, depending on the background material. Here, the four lights are all in the front, but up high, on a light truss. By shining down onto the subject, it creates a wrap around light, and shadows are eliminated.

I use LED, continuous lights, of one variety or another. I like lights I can turn up and down, and set the color temperature on (although I almost always set it to 4100). I like a flood light, vs. a spot light — a light that spreads out evenly and washes the photo set with wrap around lighting. Wrap around lighting is light that cloaks the subject, removing shadows, and giving flattering light from all angles. It’s the opposite of a spot light.

With the right lighting, and the right chromakey green screen background, you are on your way to build the perfect green screen photo booths. I know this is a technical post. But, I want to share with everyone my tricks for achieving great green screen. Photographers are too isolated. They think they need to work secretly, that someone will steal their idea. Steal away! With any luck, if you steal my ideas on lighting, you can improve on them. And then, perhaps, green screen will be recognized as the art that it is.

Next up: creating the perfect artwork to build the perfect green screen photo booths.