Phone lighting tips: How to make your iPhone videos look great

Lighting is a crucial part of any video shoot, whether you're shooting a scene for an indie film with an expensive camera or using your iPhone to record a video of your kid's soccer game. These simple phone lighting tips can significantly improve the quality of your videos, whether you're using the latest iPhone or an old Android device.

3 Simple Phone Lighting Tips to Make Your Videos Look Great

If you're shooting video with your iPhone, you probably don't have a professional lighting kit with you (unless you're actually an independent filmmaker—then this tip isn't for you). Cult of the Mac spoke to Alaskan filmmaker Scott Slone about the best way to get great lighting for your iPhone videos without resorting to expensive and complicated equipment.

Use natural light sources

Slone explained it to us. “You can't always have lights with you,” he said, “so natural light is the best lighting you can get.”

iPhones do a great job of adjusting to the light around you in everyday life, he said. Plus, in low-light situations, you can tap and drag on the iPhone screen to change the exposure of the existing light on the scene. You can even lock in the exposure you want right on the iPhone screen. (Android devices offer similar features.) All of this impacts the quality of the lighting in your phone's video recording.

When recording an interview, make sure the natural light from the window fills the scene for you.

Avoid backlit scenes, advises Slone, meaning photographing your subject with a bright window in the background. Doing so will give you the familiar silhouette you may have seen in videos taken by witnesses who don't want their identities revealed, so avoid that unless you're actually filming an anonymous source.

Illuminate your subject from the side

Ideally, you also don't want the light to shine directly into your subject's face. This can cause your subject to squint, and no one wants that. Position yourself so that you're shooting from an angle that will cast the light on the side of your subject.

If the lighting in your environment is poor, you can also focus on tighter shots. The iPhone's zoom feature lets you get closer to your subject (within reason). And that can help you avoid some of the difficult light contrast options of a much wider shot.

Phone lighting for videos: 30 fps vs 60 fps

Additionally, you can try varying the number of frames per second (fps) you record your video at. This will affect the lighting of the phone video. If you have an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, you can film at 60 fps with a simple switch in the settings.

“Overall, 30 fps on the iPhone 6 is better in low light,” Slone said.

However, if you're shining a strong light source, such as a spotlight, on your subject, you can get much better contrast between subject and background (clean blacks/low noise) with 60fps video. Low-light action videos look better at 30fps, but a static scene, such as a concert, could benefit from 60fps video to better isolate the subject.

Newer iPhone models offer far more options when it comes to frame rate. These can affect how lighting affects the video quality of your phone. The iPhone 16 range, for example, can record video at higher frame rates. And in Cinematic mode, they can record 4K HDR video at 30fps, which creates a wonderful depth of field effect. The iPhone's advanced cameras offer countless options, all of which can affect the look of your videos.

Get familiar with your phone's settings and see how they affect the lighting in your videos. Try out a few settings to find what works best.

If you don't have external lighting equipment or don't want to use one, planning your video shoots to use natural light sources as much as possible will help you capture the best possible videos with your phone.

We originally published this post about video lighting with your phone on July 16, 2015. We have updated the information.