5 Best Video Tutorials About Lighting: for Beginners and Pros

After a long break Video Wednesday is back here. But with a slightly different format - video roundup. Every week I’ll hand-pick the very best YouTube videos related to the subjects we cover in this blog.

This week we posted a very long and thorough material about lighting equipment. This post should have made a great basis for the tutorials I want to share with you today.

Difficulty: Beginner

Basic Lighting Techniques for Studio Portraiture

Author John D.Williamson covers different kinds of lights you’ll have in your setups: main, fill and rim. He also covers major lighting patterns: short, broad, split, loop, rembrandt, butterfly. You can alternatively check out this post by Digital Photography School to get deeper into the topic of lighting patterns.

The Basics of a One Light Setup

One light setup is an essential topic. Before trying 3-light setup and various others, you must first become comfortable with one light. Jay P. Morgan created a very professional tutorial that covers basics of a one light setup for face lighting.

Difficulty: Intermediate

Comparing Umbrella, Softbox and a Standard Reflector

Marc Wallace talks about the difference between umbrella, softbox and a standard reflector.

Difficulty: Professional

Beauty Lighting Comparison Tests

In this video Karl Taylor compares some of his favourite lighting modifiers for fashion and beauty photography: parabolic lights, beauty dish, softbox… Gosh, a boatload of equipment in this video!

Bonus

If you’re a frequent reader, you remember that we had one awesome tutorial recently about shooting on a cloudy day. I’ve found a nice video to give you a deeper knowledge on the topic. This is a cut from Daniel Usenko’s tutorial “Perfect SHOT”.

Photography Lighting on a Cloudy Day

That’s it for this week. Share this post with your friends that master photography lighting and suggest topics for future Video Wednesdays in the comments. Thanks!