‘Know Your Meme‘ is an excellent Web series from the people who bring you ‘Rocketboom’. Some of the epsiodes get 350,000 views on YouTube alone. So call me a killjoy but I couldn’t help noticing the mixed lighting.

Now I have ‘mixed’ feelings about this, you could say it’s a creative tool or I’m being picky and it isn’t a big deal, but I reckon it would be better if the whole shot was consistent in colour balance.

As you can see from the thumbnail above the Presenter is lit with unfiltered tungsten (warm light) and the camera is white balanced to that light, but the windows, walls (and Computer screen) have all gone blue due to the high level of ambient daylight (or cooler light).

Solution? Put blue gels on the Tungsten light to balance them to the daylight (easiest way), or add orange gels to the windows (carefully so it doesn’t show up in shot) to balance the daylight to the tungsten light which can then be used as is, without gels.

A great light that doesn’t require any gels is the Kino Flo Diva Lite. You can just swap the tungsten balanced strip lights for daylight ones in a couple of minutes, and you have a soft light ideal for lighting people that also doesn’t give off masses of heat and can be easily dimmed. (See video below)

Looking for a Tungsten softlight? I also use the Rifa Lite (economic, soft light that’s great for interviews and presenters). Check out the Lowel Rifa LC-66eX eXchange-Lite, 120-230VAC, 25″ x 25″ Collapsible Soft Light System