© 2026 Datacolor All Rights Reserved.
Close
Buy Now, Pay Later with Shop Pay
Choose Shop Pay at checkout and pay in 4 interest-free installments on orders between $50 and $3,000.*
- Interest free
- No late fees
- No hidden fees
- No impact on your credit score
- No surprises
How it Works:
- Choose Shop Pay at checkout
- Pay in 4 interest-free installments
- Your card will be billed every 2 weeks
- It’s as easy as that!
Shop Pay installments in partnership with
* Payment options are offered by Affirm and are subject to eligibility check and might not be available in all states. California residents: Affirm Loan Services, LLC is licensed by the Department of Business Oversight. Loans are made or arranged pursuant to California Financing Law license.
Close
Shipping charge and method
United States and Canada
- Flat-rate fee of $5.95 (USD*) on all orders
- Standard 3–5 day shipping
*Canada shipping charges will be based on current currency conversion rates
The Trick to Creating Realistic Daylight on Camera
How do you make a small room feel like midday? It all starts with understanding the color of daylight and how to simulate natural daylight with video lights.
Simulating natural Daylight Under Studio Conditions
Guest article by Rob Ellis, cinematographer and filmmaker
One of the questions asked most frequently in cinematography and video lighting is surprisingly simple.
“How do you make artificial light look like natural daylight?”
Many people expect the answer to involve expensive lights or complicated camera settings. But often it starts somewhere completely different, with observation.
When you try to simulate natural daylight or realistic daylight indoors, you shouldn’t always begin by setting up your lighting. You should begin by studying the light that’s already there. Not just how bright it is, but what color it is, where it’s coming from, what it’s reflecting from, and how all of those elements work together to create something our eyes instinctively accept as real.
In the accompanying video, I’ll walk you through an entire daylight lighting setup step by step and I’ll explain why measuring color temperature should become an important part of the way you work, whether you’re working with natural light, artificial daylight, or a studio lighting setup.
Before recreating daylight indoors, first study how natural light behaves outside. Every location has its own unique mix of sunlight, skylight and reflected color that influences the final look.
Before You Build Light, Study It
People often talk about color temperature, in this case daylight, in terms of strict kelvin measurements. In reality, the color of natural daylight we see during the day is a confluence of different factors.
The light reflected from nearby buildings, trees, or even the wooden decking in your garden can change the way a location looks.
But generally, we have a standardized kelvin chart for our main natural light sources. Direct midday sunlight has one color. Open sky has another.
So we began our lighting setup by simply measuring direct midday sun.
5760 kelvin.
The reading is almost exactly what we expect. Midday sunlight is generally found around 5600 kelvin.
Then we measured the blue sky.
9980 kelvin.
Again, no surprises. Blue sky, or shade, is generally found around 7000 to 10,000 kelvin.
At this point we may think we have everything we need to light a scene using accurate color measurements. Simulating natural daylight with professional video lights should be straightforward. Simply use a hard light for the sun and a soft light for the sky, with the kelvin measurements we recorded.
But for total realism, this isn’t always the case.
Measuring direct sunlight provides the first reference point for recreating daylight indoors, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
The Moment Everything Stops Making Sense
We carefully recreated both light sources. The numbers match. The lighting ratios match. Technically, everything looks right.
But when we compare our recreated scene with the real location, something immediately stands out. Our version looks colder. It’s nothing dramatic, but it doesn’t match the real daylight in this location.
Here’s when we stop looking at our lights and start questioning our assumptions.
“There must be something we’re missing.”
This is one of the most valuable moments in any cinematography lighting workflow. Recognizing that something simply doesn’t look right.
Daylight Is More Than Just Sunlight
To make things clearer, we might want to stop treating daylight as the only light source. Instead, start thinking about the entire location, and you realise that every surface around us is both reflecting and influencing the color of the light.
Our own lighting isn’t large and powerful enough to cover the area of Earth that the sun lights during the day. In which case, we might need to implement some extra lights to replicate the environmental factors that usually bounce natural daylight back, factors that our own lighting, focused on one small area, miss.
Once you realize this, the entire approach to daylight simulation can change. Instead of asking, “What’s the color temperature of daylight?” you may start asking, “What’s the color temperature of daylight in this specific location?”
A seemingly small difference, but one that can have a big effect.
So at our location, we can measure the light falling through the window, then the reflected light from the timber decking outside, then the average light bouncing back from the garden itself.
Rather than guessing, we rebuild those subtle color differences with our own lighting one by one. Together they create something our eyes immediately recognize as believable. Each reading becomes a part of a whole.
So we aren’t just measuring daylight. We’re measuring its effect on the environment.
This small change in thinking can completely change the way you approach lighting a scene, whether you are filming in a studio or on location. If we don’t see wooden decking in the shot itself, can we emulate it to carry the feeling, mood, or aesthetic we need for the scene? Of course.
Colour temperature isn’t determined by sunlight alone. Reflections from surrounding surfaces play an equally important role in creating realistic daylight and natural-looking light on camera.
Why Measure Instead of Guessing
So why not just adjust everything during color grading?
The truth is…
You could. But it likely won’t work as well as physically adding light to the scene.
It’s difficult to add light coming from different directions, and subtle, believable color changes in post-production, if these things aren’t there to begin with.
But more importantly, you’re missing out on a chance to understand and present the looks and feelings you want or need to show in visual form.
Every time you rely on post-production to solve a problem you could have understood on set, you miss an opportunity to become a better cinematographer. Color grading should refine lighting. It shouldn’t replace understanding it.
That’s why a tool like the Datacolor LightColor Meter is a simple, yet fantastic part of any cinematographer’s, filmmaker’s, or content creator’s workflow.
It allows you to measure not only light intensity, but also color temperature and tint exactly where you need it. It means you’re making creative decisions based on real information instead of educated guesses.
The Datacolor LightColor Meter measures light intensity, color temperature and tint in real time, making it easier to simulate natural daylight and build lighting setups from accurate measurements.
Understanding Light Gives You Creative Freedom
Measuring light isn’t necessarily about becoming totally technical, or absolutely accurate. It’s about understanding the ways in which technical precision can help you be more creative. You need to know the rules to be able to break them effectively.
Once you start measuring color temperatures around you, you’re able to build up a library of kelvin values and real-world lighting references, on a notepad, on your phone, or in your head, and call back to them when the scene, mood, or story would benefit from those visual observations.
You’re pulling from reality to create the reality of the image.
Understanding color temperature doesn’t just mean taking a technical reading. It’s part of the language of cinema, filmmaking, photography, and visual storytelling, and all of the different ways we can choose to use it.
So you could be recreating reality, simulating natural daylight in a studio, or creating something entirely new.
Understanding a location means measuring more than the light source itself. Every surrounding surface contributes to the overall color, mood, and realism of the scene.
Watch the full video
Rob Ellis is a cinematographer and photographer based in the South West of England, specializing in professional cinematic image-making. His work spans everything from music videos and short films to commercial productions for brands and businesses, always with a focus on creating distinctive and visually engaging imagery.
Passionate about understanding how light shapes a scene, Rob combines technical precision with creative storytelling. Through practical demonstrations and real-world examples, he helps photographers and filmmakers understand not only how to light a scene, but why light behaves the way it does.
His approach is driven by curiosity, experimentation, and the belief that mastering light begins with understanding it.
Explore more cinematography and lighting tutorials from Rob Ellis on YouTube or on Instagram.
View Rob Ellis’s cinematography portfolio to learn more about his experience and projects.
Looking to learn more?
Explore Datacolor’s free lighting and color management resources for expert tips, tutorials, and educational guides.
Related Posts
Spotlight On – Peter Li
Kate Jonker – Friends with Vision
Autumn Schrock and Spyder Checkr Photo – Precise, Consistent Color Made Easy