A poorly adjusted webcam does not stop you working. It only makes you look tired, distant or badly set up, on every call, in front of every client. And if you post clips from your calls, that is the picture you are posting.
The good news: most of it can be fixed in ten minutes, once and for all. In order of importance.
1. The light comes from the front
This is the fix that changes the picture most, and it is free.
Sit facing a window. Daylight is broad and soft, and it arrives from the side or the front rather than from above. Turn your desk round if you can.
Never a window behind you. The camera sets its exposure on the brightest part of the picture: the window comes out clear, you come out as a silhouette.
In the evening, a lamp behind the screen. A desk lamp with a shade, or one turned towards the wall facing you so that the light comes back softened. Avoid the ceiling light on its own: it lights the top of your head and hollows your eyes.
A slightly warm light coming a little from the side gives the face some depth. A cold light from straight ahead, the light of the screen alone, flattens it.
2. The camera is at eye level
A laptop sitting on the desk films you from below. People see your chin, your nostrils and the ceiling, and you seem to be looking down on the person you are talking to.
Raise the lens to the height of your eyes, or a little above: a pile of books, a stand, a monitor arm. Your gaze becomes level, as it is in a face-to-face conversation.
3. Framing: in the centre, eyes on the upper third
Three reference points are enough.
- Your eyes sit on the upper third of the picture, with a little air above your head. Neither a head cut off, nor a head lost in the middle of a wall.
- Your shoulders and upper chest are in shot. That is the distance of a conversation: about an arm’s length between you and the screen.
- You are in the centre. Not pushed to one side to show off a shelf.
That last point matters a great deal for vertical video. A webcam films in 16:9, a short is watched in 9:16. When you cut a vertical frame out of a horizontal picture, at full height, you keep only a strip a little under a third of its width. If you are in the centre, you are in it. If you are off to one side, you lose a shoulder. We go into these questions in The 9:16 vertical video format.
4. The background says no more than it should
What is behind you is seen as much as you are.
- Tidy away whatever draws the eye: an open door, a bed, laundry, a screen that is switched on.
- Leave some depth. A wall a metre or more behind you gives a more pleasing picture than a wall right up against your back.
- Go for a simple backdrop: a plain wall, a bookcase, a plant. Nothing written that people would try to read.
If your room does not lend itself to that, blur the background. Most video call tools offer it, and a blurred background is better than a distracting one.
5. Sound comes before picture
People forgive an average picture. They do not forgive unpleasant sound: after two minutes of echo or crackle, nobody is listening to what you say any more.
Bring the microphone closer to your mouth. It is the only rule that really matters. A laptop’s microphone sits fifty centimetres away and picks up the room as much as your voice. A wired headset with a microphone, earphones or a USB microphone placed in front of you do better, for a few tens of euros.
Choose a room that has no echo. Curtains, a rug, a bookcase, a sofa absorb sound. An empty room with bare walls bounces it back.
Switch off whatever makes noise: notifications, a fan, a window onto the street.
Clean sound matters for your videos too: the captions are written from what the microphone picked up.
6. The connection holds up
A picture that freezes or a choppy voice ruins a call, whatever the lighting.
- Move closer to the router, or plug in a cable if you can.
- Close whatever uses the network: syncing, downloads, other video tabs.
- Ask that nobody starts watching a film in high definition in the next room during your important calls.
7. Your eyes go to the lens
Looking at the screen is looking at the other person’s face. To them, you are looking a little below their eyes. Looking at the lens is looking them in the eye, but you can no longer see them.
The compromise: slide the other person’s window right to the top of the screen, just under the camera. The gap becomes almost invisible. And when you say the sentence that matters, look squarely at the lens.
Hide your own picture too, if the tool allows it. Seeing yourself all the time is tiring and distracting; we talk about it in Camera shy: why it happens, and how to post anyway.
Two details that show
Clothes. Go for plain colours. Fine stripes and small, tight patterns shimmer on camera. Pure white dazzles under a strong light, pure black loses its detail.
The lens. A laptop’s webcam lives under your fingers. Wipe it with a soft cloth: a hazy picture is often nothing more than a smudge.
The one-minute check
Before an important call, open your camera’s preview and go through this list.
- The light comes from the front, with nothing brighter behind me.
- The camera is at eye level.
- I am in the centre, eyes on the upper third.
- Nothing is lying about in shot.
- The microphone is close to my mouth, the room is quiet.
- Notifications are off.
Your webcam is a camera
All of this was already true for making a good impression. It is truer still if your calls become videos.
That is what Dailies does, for calls held in French or in English, with an extension whose interface is in French: it records the call you hold in Chrome, your microphone and your webcam, then cuts captioned vertical shorts from it, reframed on whoever is speaking. It can blur or replace the room behind you. But it cannot invent a light that was not there: the picture in a short is the picture from your webcam that day.
Ten minutes of setting up, once, and every call after that benefits. The method for getting videos out of them is in One client call, five shorts.
Key takeaways
- Light from the front and a camera at eye level do most of the work on the picture, for free.
- Stay in the centre of the frame: a vertical short keeps only the middle third of a horizontal picture.
- Sound matters more than picture. Bring the microphone closer to your mouth.
- Hide your own picture and put the other person under the camera.