How to Get Rid of Glasses Glare From Ring Lights in Zoom Calls
- Feb 12
- 3 min read
We know, from firsthand experience, the struggle of competing with glare from your own glasses during a Zoom call. While a ring light's direct, front-facing lighting works well on faces, it is blinding on reflective surfaces. Thankfully, there are plenty of alternate lighting options and techniques to remove glare from your calls. Keep reading for our pro tips on how to light videos if you wear glasses.
1) Avoid Direct Lighting with a Bounce
Ring lights can be great for selfies or short videos taken with the forward-facing camera on your phone. However, you're not going to find them in a professional videographer's light kit. In addition to glare, ring lights create harsh shadows and bright spots. Instead, softboxes are the professional's go-to for bright lights that don't create shadows. Unfortunately, they still cause glare in your glasses. Instead, we recommend using a bounce, which both creates soft lighting and eliminates glare. In this process, light is pointed directly on a white surface, causing it to "bounce" and indirectly light the subject. To do this easily at home, arrange your desk and light source so that they both face a blank wall. You’ll need to set the light to a very bright setting, since a lot of it is “lost” when you bounce it. If you can't get the wall setup quite right, try bouncing the light off of your ceiling, instead.
2) Use a Key and a Fill Light instead of a Front Light
If you can't get the bounce lighting just right, we suggest going with a 2-point light setup to eliminate glasses glare. On a professional set, we use 3-point lighting; however, 2-point works just as well for lighting a Zoom call. Start by setting up a "key light"--this is your main, brighter light source--directed at your "good side." The light should be neither directly pointed at your side profile nor directly forward-facing. If your webcam is at the 12 o'clock position, arrange the key light between 10-11 o'clock (or 1-2 o'clock, depending on which side you prefer). The secondary light is the "fill," which is not as bright as the key. As the name suggests, it is used to fill in shadows on the other side and should be placed at the opposing light angle (1-2 o'clock or 10-11 o'clock) to do so. When using this 2-point setup, we still recommend using softboxes or different type of diffusion to avoid harsh shadows.
3) Raise the Light
If you can't quite get the other two setups to work for your Zoom call, don't worry--you can still use your ring light. The caveat, however, is that you absolutely must rise the light above you. Think about it: Basic lighting techniques are modeled from the way the sun gives off light. Along these lines, brains are programmed to expect lights to come from above, and it feels unsettling to see the opposite (think holding a flashlight under your face to tell a spooky story). More importantly for your video call, if you can get your ring light high enough, it won't be directly hitting your glasses and causing a blinding glare. When doing this, be sure that your light stand is sturdy enough to keep the light up at the right height. You can also cheat this trick by lowering your glasses just slightly down the bridge of your nose. Of course, be careful not to push them down too far and accidentally give off snooty librarian vibes. Moving them just slightly down will change the way the light hits them and lessen the glare.
Angela Wolf Video offers corporate video production services near Philadelphia, PA. Do you have a specific video question? Schedule a free video analysis call at bit.ly/callawv
