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I have filmed close to 200 videos over the last 2.5 years. At least 110 are cloth diaper video reviews, the rest are informational videos, vlogs, or babywearing videos. I get as much or more traffic to my YouTube videos each day as I do on my blog.
Here at DDL I am in a constant state of evolution. I am never satisfied with my blog, my videos, or the cleanliness of my house. All of those are related. I started filming videos with a Flip Mino, then a Flip Mino HD. Later we bought an Olympus with HD film capabilites and I’ve been using that for close to two years. I am happy with the quality of the gear, but not the lighting.
Good lighting is complicated and very expensive. Since I never im my wildest dreams thought I would still be filming videos after the first one I did on my couch, I didn’t give lighting much thought. My first videos look gross.
I moved to filming on my kitchen table but those didn’t look too great either.
Recently I swtiched from the black background of my table to a white background. This makes shadows very obvious. My solution was to create my own mini cloth diaper filming studio in my basement.
Using 3 Flood Lights, a hanging worklight, a few white poster boards, precariously stacked objects for height, and a photo umbrella I believe I have finally acheived near professional lighting. I say “near” because I still have some shadows that I just can’t get rid of without washing out the product.
Better lighting means easier to watch, a better chance to catch the tiniest details in HD, and it makes me happy to know I am doing the best videos that I can. Not only that, I keep trying to up the caliber of the cloth diaper demonstration. You won’t find me in the shadows showing you a 10 minute, un-edited video about a cloth diaper while I’m in pajamas.
So please excuse the 2 weeks without videos, hopefully next week everything will be back to normal. The video in this post doesn’t reflect the final lighting scheme but those shots were close. Acheiving true white balance is hard to do, but I’m trying to get as close as I can. As I mentioned before, YouTube is a huge portion of my readership so this video is more tailored to that audience. If you are reading this blog then you already know I am way more than just videos! I type a lot of words too!
