We've all seen those elaborate lighting setups before and we've all let out a big sigh thinking, "Man, I'll never be able to make my projects look that  good because I don't have that many lights." Good news, you can still make your scenes look beautiful and cinematic even if you don't have much lighting equipment. In this video, the team over at Aputure shows you five different lighting setups that you can pull off with a single light. Yeah, just one.

Here are the lighting setups mentioned in the video:

  • Flat lighting: This gives off a clean and simple but is also, as the name implies, kind of flat and boring.
  • Paramount lighting: This makes your subjects look prominent with that iconic "butterfly" shadow under their nose
  • Loop lighting: Similar to Paramount lighting, Loop lighting is angled slightly to one side of your subject to give a more dramatic look.
  • Rembrandt lighting: Gritty and high-contrast, Rembrandt lighting is great for those emotionally darker scenes.
  • Split lighting: This technique is achieved by placing a light 90-degrees to the side of your subject to put half of their face in shadow and half in light.

Still stressed because you don't have any professional lights? Well, stop it. If you can't afford or don't have access to any professional equipment, shop lights and cheap LEDs will usually do just fine, and as we've learned from the video, you don't necessarily need a bunch of them—I mean, it'd be nice—you can get a lot more done, but you can make do with what limited units you have.

Source: Aputure

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