I recently shot some studio work using an Xl1 , sony dv tape, fotoflex lights(3200K) and noticed that even though the color balance was perfect for skin tones . whites, reds.light gray,etc . a lady`s bright green dress was recorded as blue! I mean VERY blue. We were able to change this in the edit, but it remains an interesting problem....do certain cloths(pigments in the fabric) give a different color when lit with tungsten light? Perhaps someone who does weddings has seen this effect, eg .when the bride`s dress is displayed in perfect white but the bridesmaids` dresses are the wrong color in the video. I`d like to hear some comments from shooters out there!

Did you manually set the white balance?

I know that I've seen the angle of light will give me some trouble with regard to exposure which I find confusing. Same place, same subject but if light is coming though a large window I get OK metering, but if it's spot lit (evenly in the entire frame), it overexposes a bit.

Yes, my belief is there are some differences in which light is used to light something, as well as how some camera's light meter (or colorometry) is calebrated.

Also have seen weird Auto White Bal. tonality when I've shot under fluorescent lights due to their cycle frequency.

But answer the manual light balancing question and someone else can give you their experienced opinion.

Again, did you manually white balance? If you haven't been, I can understand why.

I've been shooting the XL1 since '99 and, aside from the popular gripe about focusing issues, the main drawback that I've come across with the camera is that it tends to manually white balance toward blue. I've tried balancing through all levels of CTB, with mostly unsatisfactory results. The presets have simply worked better, and in controlled environments, auto white works better also.

When I had the camera in to Canon recently for servicing, I told them about this in the hope that there might be some tweaking they could do. They said there wasn't, but I should try white balancing on an 18% greyscale card instead of using pure white. I haven't had the chance to try it yet, so I can't report on its effectiveness, but you may want to give it a try.