A $50 Ring Light Can Nail Most Social Media Videos (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: A ring light is all you need in order to make video content for social media. Let me explain. I was clearing out some old gear the other day and found this ring light that's been sitting in our closet for years. And it made me stop and think for a second because I've got all these really high end fancy lights in my office. And yet for most content that I make, this $50 ring light would do just fine. Ring lights are actually really good at what they're designed for. Lighting a single person close up talking to the camera. They're also easy to set up and insanely forgiving.

[00:00:26] Speaker 2: But are there a couple of quirks?

[00:00:27] Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the first one is this ring catch eye reflection that you get in your eye. Having a catch light is great. You actually want that because it makes you look human. But the perfect circle that happens here kind of looks a little bit robotic. Now, quick and easy fix for this is taking a frosted shower curtain or some type of diffusion and draping it over the ring light. That way you still maintain the catch light, but it's not that round ring that's inside your eyelid. The second problem is output. For one face, this is usually plenty of output, sometimes even too much output. But if you're lighting a room or multiple people, that's where a bigger light might make more sense. So here's the thing. Most people making social media content aren't lighting an entire room or multiple people. They're lighting themselves. So, yeah, ring light does have its limits. But for most people, most of the time, it's more than enough.