OPS · Pro PLAYBOOK

The studio SOP: lighting, audio, and network for a room that sells

Updated 2026-10-16 · Sources & methodology noted inline

THE ECONOMIC CASE FIRST: in live commerce, your camera chain is not production quality — it is conversion infrastructure. The benchmark data across categories is unambiguous: demo-driven categories lose a large share of their potential conversion range to bad lighting and bad audio before the host says a word. A viewer who can't see the product texture doesn't distrust the product; they simply don't buy, without telling you why. This SOP specifies a setup that punches above its price, in purchase-priority order, because sellers who buy the camera first and the light last have it backwards.

LIGHTING (SPEC, NOT VIBES): one key light at 45 degrees to your face and product zone, diffused (softbox or dome), positioned slightly above eye line; one fill or bounce to kill the hard shadow side; and — the piece most rooms skip — a dedicated product light so the hero SKU gets camera-visible texture independent of your face lighting. Color temperature matters and must match across all sources (mixed daylight-and-tungsten rooms read as amateur instantly); set everything to the same kelvin and white-balance the camera to it manually, never auto. Test standard: can a viewer read the texture of your hero product's surface in a replay frame grab at phone size? If not, the light is the bottleneck, not the camera.