Ralf Strandell
February 26th, 2004, 02:38 PM
I encountered this annoying (and constant) color fidelity problem: It was a winter day at noon, overcast (and the sun behind the clouds was relatively low here at 65 degrees north), snowing, almost no shadow and lots of snow on the ground. I then tried to shoot a yellow brick building in ambient light. No matter what I did, the yellow bricks had a slightly too warm tone.
My camcorder (Sony PDX10p) is a quite limited one, because it has only "indoor" (3200 K), "outdoor" (5800 K), "auto" and "manual" white balances.
When I used the 5800 K setting, the picture was slightly too warm. The same with auto mode. I even tried to set the whitebalance from the snow ( < 100 IRE ) with no success. Still too warm colors on bricks. I tried to apply white balance shift from the "custom presets" menu of my camera. I did not notice a big change. I suspect I need to apply a more powerful transformation... Or am I doing something wrong here?
Oh, I allmost forgot. I did use a Hoya multicoated HMC UVA+UVB+IR filter that has a local reflection maximum of +0,5% (reaching 1% reflection if I remember it correctly) somewhere at the red end of spectrum, but that shouldn't be a problem - or is it?
The questions:
1) What could I do to compensate this inadequate set of white balance presets?
2) Any ideas on how to calibrate the camcorder (or recording) and get more natural color?
3) Does anybody know how much (in Kelvin) the white balance shift steps in the Sony PDX10 are?
These color fidelity problems repeat and repeat and repeat and it seems to be impossible to achieve natural reproduction of colors...
- - I was happy with my camcorder until I saw what a professional 6000 euro still camera can do... Sony says my camcorder is a pro model, but I would call it "pro" instead... - -
My camcorder (Sony PDX10p) is a quite limited one, because it has only "indoor" (3200 K), "outdoor" (5800 K), "auto" and "manual" white balances.
When I used the 5800 K setting, the picture was slightly too warm. The same with auto mode. I even tried to set the whitebalance from the snow ( < 100 IRE ) with no success. Still too warm colors on bricks. I tried to apply white balance shift from the "custom presets" menu of my camera. I did not notice a big change. I suspect I need to apply a more powerful transformation... Or am I doing something wrong here?
Oh, I allmost forgot. I did use a Hoya multicoated HMC UVA+UVB+IR filter that has a local reflection maximum of +0,5% (reaching 1% reflection if I remember it correctly) somewhere at the red end of spectrum, but that shouldn't be a problem - or is it?
The questions:
1) What could I do to compensate this inadequate set of white balance presets?
2) Any ideas on how to calibrate the camcorder (or recording) and get more natural color?
3) Does anybody know how much (in Kelvin) the white balance shift steps in the Sony PDX10 are?
These color fidelity problems repeat and repeat and repeat and it seems to be impossible to achieve natural reproduction of colors...
- - I was happy with my camcorder until I saw what a professional 6000 euro still camera can do... Sony says my camcorder is a pro model, but I would call it "pro" instead... - -