DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

How to light up a green screen for a perfect key and seamless compositing

May 23, 2016 by John Aldred Add Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

how_to_light_a_green_screen

Setting up a green screen to record footage of a subject that will be cut out and composited into another background has become commonplace these days.  What is ultimately a pretty straightforward process, however, can be a difficult one to learn.

This video presented by Doug Guerra from B&H shows us some tips and techniques to help eliminate a lot of the common issues faced, such as colour spill, key fringing around our subject, and only partially removed backgrounds.

As is the case with pretty much anything you’ll put in front of your camera’s lens, the main ingredients are good lighting and a solid exposure.  Large soft light sources will help to provide a more even spread of light across your background and prevent hotspots.

greenscreen_even_exposure

A good exposure, and a lower ISO will help to prevent other colours from creeping into your footage and polluting the background, making for an easier and cleaner key.

greenscreen_overexposed

Where this may have been done with a handheld light meter in the past, as it is often done today, we are now presented with other options to help us ensure an even and consistent exposure on our backgrounds.

Mobile apps such as Green Screener (Android version) allow us to simply point our phone’s camera at a lit background, and easily see how the lights are falling, and where we may need to adjust things.

greenscreen_mobile_app

Just like shooting subjects on a white seamless, you’ll generally want to keep a good distance between the subject and the background.

This helps to not only prevent your subject from casting their own shadow onto the background, or your subject’s lights from causing hotspots on the background, but it also prevents light (and green colour) from spilling back onto your talent, and causing issues that can be difficult to correct.

Stopping the background lights from hitting your subject also means that you can light your subject separately with your background in mind, to help make the composite a little more believable.

greenscreen_sunny_composite

Obviously, we all want to shoot our footage as correctly as we can.  It helps to make our post workflow go as smoothly as possible.  Sometimes, though, we’re not the ones shooting the footage and we end up stuck with whatever we’re given.  Doug provides a few tips to help correct some common issues in post.

greenscreen_fix_it_in_post

So, if you’ve been having green screen issues, or you’ve ever thought about giving it a try, either for stills or motion, have a watch of the video.

Fortunately, I get to shoot most of what I want to shoot on location and don’t need to deal with green screen all that often, but it’s definitely a useful technique to know for those times when there’s little other choice.

Do you have any other tips for shooting on green screen?  Let us know in the comments.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Here are four green screen tricks you can make without the green screen 5 Tips for lighting a green screen for a clean key How to use light painting and compositing to make perfect car photographs High Key, Low Key, Or Just Badly Exposed?

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: b&h, Chroma Key, Green Screen

John Aldred: from diyphotography.net

About John Aldred

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

« LandscapePro promises to turn your dull boring images into dramatic landscapes
Build your own motorized custom camera slider from scratch for around $75 »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • Here’s a bullet time video booth you can build yourself
  • Ricoh has discontinued the HD PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2AL Limited silver lens
  • This “stellar flower” unravels the twilight’s evolution in 360 degrees
  • Strobes vs Continuous LEDs – Which is right for you?
  • Wave goodbye to Apple’s My Photo Stream next month

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy