LED panel lights, COB lights and softboxes for interview lighting

My first interview lighting kit was one LED panel light, a white bedsheet and a wooden clothes airer. The panel went behind the airer, the sheet hung over it, and the subject, a retired ferry engineer in a North Shore living room, looked better than he had any right to under a bare ceiling bulb. The kit was crude. The idea was right: a big soft source on one side of the face and darkness on the other.

This guide covers the video lighting that small documentary crews actually carry, what each one is good at and how they fit together. The room, the chair and the eyeline come first, and those are in shooting documentary interviews. Here the subject is the light.

Three point lighting, and what documentary keeps of it

Three point lighting is the grammar most people learn first. The key light is the main source, set roughly 30 to 45 degrees off the camera's axis. The fill sits on the other side, weaker, to open up the shadows. The back light comes from behind and above, putting a thin edge on the hair and shoulders so the subject separates from the background.

Documentary keeps the key and the back and often drops the fill. Most rooms bounce enough light around that the shadow side is already open, sometimes too open. What a face usually needs is the opposite of fill: something dark on the shadow side to give it shape again. Put the key on the far side of the face, away from the camera, and you get contour; put it on the near side and people flatten into passport photos.

Add one more point that textbooks rarely list: a practical, a lamp that appears in the shot, dimmed to a warm glow. It tells the audience this happened in a real room.

LED panel lights: bi-colour and portable

The LED panel light is the workhorse of small-crew interviews. It is a flat rectangle of many small LEDs, light enough to carry in a backpack, and it runs cool. Bi-colour panels have two sets of LEDs, warm and cool, and blend them to any colour temperature between about 3200K, the warmth of a tungsten bulb, and 5600K, roughly daylight. That range lets you match a window on one shoot and a room full of warm lamps on the next. On many bi-colour fixtures output drops at the very ends of the range, because only one set of LEDs is working there; the maker's documentation will say.

A bare panel close to a face is a broad but slightly harsh source, made of many small points. Push it through a diffusion frame, bounce it off a white wall, or hang it behind a sheet as I did, and it becomes the soft key most interviews want.

These lights were picked from their spec sheets and the makers' manuals, weighed against how widely small crews already use them; we did not test these exact units for this guide. The Neewer 660 kit is two bi-colour panels with stands, a key and a fill (or a key and a back) for a basic setup. If your panels take NP-F style batteries, a pair of large NP-F970 cells with a charger frees you from wall outlets for a backlight hidden behind a sofa.

COB lights and softboxes

A COB light, short for chip on board, packs its LEDs onto a single dense chip behind one reflector. On its own it behaves like a bright point: hard light, crisp shadows. That is a weakness for faces and a strength for everything you can put in front of it. Most COB lights use the Bowens mount, a bayonet fitting that takes softboxes, dishes and lanterns from many makers.

Softness comes from the size of the source compared with the subject, and from distance. A softbox turns a hard chip into a wide glowing surface. Bring it closer and it gets softer and brighter, and because light falls off quickly near the source, the background drops darker too, which helps separation. Pull it back and it gets harder and flatter. If your softbox has a fabric grid, use it to keep light off the wall behind the subject.

The Godox SL100D is a 100-watt daylight COB light at 5600K with a Bowens mount, bright enough to push through a big softbox. The SmallRig 35-inch softbox clips onto a Bowens mount with a quick release and turns that chip into a soft, flattering key. Together they make a one-light softbox lighting kit that handles most sit-down interviews. Lights of this kind usually cool themselves with a fan, so check the fan settings in the manual and ask whoever is on headphones whether they can hear it.

Reflectors, bounce and negative fill

A collapsible reflector is the most useful light I own that does not plug in. A 5-in-1 disc has five faces. White gives a gentle bounce to lift a shadow. Silver gives a stronger, crisper bounce, which is good outdoors and often too much inside. Gold warms the light, and goes orange on skin faster than you expect. The translucent centre diffuses: hold it between the sun and a face and harsh noon light turns soft.

Then there is the black face, which is the one I use most. Held just out of frame on the shadow side, it soaks up the stray light bouncing off pale walls and gives the face its shape back. Lighting people call this negative fill. It costs nothing to run, needs no power and never flickers.

For tight rooms and travel, a smaller pair of panels and a reflector cover a surprising amount of work. The Neewer 480 kit is that smaller pair of bi-colour panels; the 43-inch Neewer reflector collapses into a flat disc for travel.

Window light

A window is the best key light you will never have to carry. Seat the subject so the window is to one side and a little in front of them, put the camera so the window sits on the far side of the face, and you are most of the way there. A sheer curtain or the reflector's translucent face turns direct sun into a soft wash.

The catch is that daylight moves. Clouds pass, the sun swings round the building, and colour and brightness wander from answer to answer. Set your white balance manually, check the frame between questions, and decide early whether the window is the key or merely part of the background. If your panels are bi-colour, set them to match the window so the light on the face stays one colour. Mixing a daylight window with a warm panel gives you a face that is two colours at once, and that is very hard to grade out.

Colour quality and CRI

Two lights set to the same colour temperature can still render skin very differently. The Colour Rendering Index, or CRI, compares how a light shows a set of test colours against a reference source of the same temperature, on a scale up to 100. Low values tend to make skin sallow or slightly green. Crews generally look for high CRI figures, often 95 or more, and some makers also publish TLCI, a related measure built around how cameras see.

Treat these numbers as a starting point, not a guarantee. Shoot a test with a real face and a grey card, look at it on a decent monitor, and trust that over the box.

Flicker, dimmers and the shutter

Flicker is the lighting problem you often do not see until the edit. Household LED bulbs and fluorescent tubes brighten and dim with the alternating current, 120 times a second on North American 60 Hz power and 100 times on 50 Hz power. Some LED fixtures also dim by switching rapidly on and off, which can show up as flicker or slow rolling bands at certain settings.

The fix is usually the shutter. In a 60 Hz country, a shutter of 1/60 or 1/120 averages the pulses out; at 24 frames per second, 1/60 is a 144-degree shutter. In a 50 Hz country you want 1/50 or 1/100. The shutter angle calculator works out the angle for any frame rate and flags settings that are likely to beat against the mains. Before the interview, record ten seconds of the lit set at your real settings and watch it full screen. Ten seconds now beats an evening of deflicker plug-ins later.

Hard lights also cast hard shadows from the boom pole, one more argument for soft keys if you are booming the interview as described in the guide to boom and shotgun microphones.

Three rooms, three setups

Questions

What is three point lighting?

A key light as the main source about 30 to 45 degrees off the camera axis, a weaker fill on the other side, and a back light behind the subject for separation. Documentary interviews often swap the fill for negative fill.

Should I buy an LED panel or a COB light with a softbox?

Panels are lighter, run on batteries and suit travel and tight rooms. A COB light in a softbox gives a bigger, softer key and more output. Many small crews own a pair of panels first and add a COB and softbox later.

Do I need bi-colour lights?

For documentary, usually yes. Bi-colour panels match both daylight windows and warm household lamps, which saves gels and grading. A daylight-only COB is fine as a key if you control the rest of the room.

What CRI do I need for interviews?

Look for high published CRI figures, commonly 95 or above, and test with a real face before the shoot. Low-CRI light tends to make skin look sallow or green.

Why does my interview footage flicker?

Usually because mains-powered bulbs or a dimmed LED are pulsing out of step with your shutter. In 60 Hz countries, use 1/60 or 1/120; in 50 Hz countries, 1/50 or 1/100. Test a few seconds before rolling.