I'm at a loss... how to fix this HORRIFIC lighting problem??

[Tropical365]

Also something that you might want to consider, what lens are you using? That video you mentioned she is using a sigma 24mm, which is quite a wide lens which gives her a great shallow depth of field (blurry background) and it's has an apature of 1.4 which means the lens opens up really wide allowing lots of light to hit the sensor, meaning she could shoot in worse lighting and it would still look pretty good. But you would expect that for an $800+ lens

Thanks for your reply. I'm using a $350 Sony DSC W500 camera I bought a couple months ago... I hope I didn't make mistake buying this camera... I watched an instructional video on youtube called Best DSLR Settings for Video (by Think Media) and it said to use the below settings:

30 frames per second
shutter speed 60
apreture use lowest possible? (I don't lik it when background is blurry all the time though)
ISO 5.6 (it said the HIGHER this number is the worse the quality is and to never go about 600??) This is confusing because one second it said 5.6 and the next second 600?
He said take picture of white object and do custom white balance

I'm going to have to call Sony support tomorrow because I can't even figure out how to input these settings into my camera. OMG. I just HOPE I don't have to re-enter all these settings every single time I turn my camera on/off that would be insane!

 

[WebSam]

Thanks for your reply. I'm using a $350 Sony DSC W500 camera I bought a couple months ago... I hope I didn't make mistake buying this camera... I watched an instructional video on youtube called Best DSLR Settings for Video (by Think Media) and it said to use the below settings:

30 frames per second
shutter speed 60
apreture use lowest possible? (I don't lik it when background is blurry all the time though)
ISO 5.6 (it said the HIGHER this number is the worse the quality is and to never go about 600??) This is confusing because one second it said 5.6 and the next second 600?
He said take picture of white object and do custom white balance

I'm going to have to call Sony support tomorrow because I can't even figure out how to input these settings into my camera. OMG. I just HOPE I don't have to re-enter all these settings every single time I turn my camera on/off that would be insane!

One the settings have been set, they will stay there, you'll have to do the settings in manual mode, or one of the other modes apart from Auto.

As for ISO the higher the ISO the more "noisy" your image can get, with the softboxes and being well lit you can kep the ISO down, ISO usually starts at 100 and goes up from there, I think the 5.6 mentioned is the aperture they are talking about. Looks like the camera can go down to 3.5, and they are suggesting 5.6

 

[Tropical365]

One the settings have been set, they will stay there, you'll have to do the settings in manual mode, or one of the other modes apart from Auto.

As for ISO the higher the ISO the more "noisy" your image can get, with the softboxes and being well lit you can kep the ISO down, ISO usually starts at 100 and goes up from there, I think the 5.6 mentioned is the aperture they are talking about. Looks like the camera can go down to 3.5, and they are suggesting 5.6

OMG! I'm soooo happy I could cry! LOL I FINALLY got the box lights to look good after messing around for several hours I figured it out just when I was about to give up. I stuck myself into a corner with strong bright overhead cool toned light and stood in front of a huge door painted in high gloss white so more light would bounce and reflect off of it and then I put the 2 soft boxes in front of me each one slightly off to my side about 3 or 4 feet away and it looked great!!! I no longer look old and SICK and it was flattering light.. and I still have the camera on AUTO setting... AND my video looks much higher quality now! How the heck did this suddenly happen! Wow... lighting really is the SECRET to quality video.

I realize now whey the box lights were making me look like crap... it's because my living room was too large and there wasn't enough light even though I had the 2 soft boxes on full bast it wasn't enough... but by standing in a tiny corner with much more lighting the soft boxes worked great... so in order for them to be flattering I needed more light, go figure.

How INSANE is it that this harsh box light went from making me look TERRIBLE (you have no idea) and making my skin look REALLY bizarre to very flattering just by giving it assistance with more light? Even if I got super close to the camera this time it was flattering! It's way past my bedtime but I can't wait to play with it more tomorrow but I'm so happy! I cannot believe the major DIFFERENCE I'm amazed!!!

 

[WebSam]

Awesome to hear you got it sorted, and yes it's crazy how much light can change everything

 

[Tropical365]

Awesome to hear you got it sorted, and yes it's crazy how much light can change everything

Yeah tell me about it! LOL Thanks for your help and replies to this thread though. My mind is officially blown at the serious difference proper lighting does for a camera so it wasn't the camera settings afterall.. it was the LIGHTING. It's just incredible!!!!