Hi Guys

Sometimes at weddings things are hapenning so fast that I have no option but to snap the camera into full auto and let it handle exposure. In our over-bright Australian sun, mid-day outdoor shots end up being a bit washed out and they are slightly over-exposed so the chroma level goes down too resulting in "wishy washy" colour.

I can, of course, correct this in the camera BEFORE shooting with one of HMC scene files BUT when everything is happening fast you sometimes just don't have time..and if you do you also have to remember to change back when shooting in shade otherwise skin tones go crazy with higher chroma levels!!

At the moment all I do is use the Brightness and Contrast plugin and drop brightness down to - 5 and contrast up to +10 and it looks fairly good!!!

Is there a better plugin to use???? or a better method to use in Vegas when I don't have time to adjust before shooting???

Chris

You should never use "Brightness and Contrast". How about posting a sample image?

I use a combination of Curves and Levels to fix problems like this.

Chris, being where you are you should have a polarizing lens! If you know you are going outdoors, you can get a filter case that goes on your belt, keep the filter in there, and and just screw it on real quick. I have such a case, and it goes right on my belt, is small, and works great.

It doesn't answer your question above, but would help in many situations. You probably already know about this, but thought I'd throw it out for you anyway.

Chris I use "Color Curves" play around with it and you will soon get the hang of it. You can easily control brightness & contrast with curves also add a little extra "Saturation Adjust" to washed out colours.

Levels seems to have the most affect on resolving these issue. I start at the top of the sliders in Levels, and work my way down, and finalizing with a little touch on gain if needed. You should have your scopes up and be watching them to keep everything in limits too.

Thanks all

Very interesting!! It actually happens very rarely but sometimes we will have an outdoor civil ceremony on a concrete paved area in full sun and you have to be there to believe the brightness!!!!

Edward??? why not Brightness and Contrast ??? (not questioning you just wanted to know why you wouldn't use this plugin and when you should use it)

Thanks so much the general feeling seems to point towards levels and curves which also makes sense!!

Jeff the HMC82's are a pain in the butt to screw on a ND filter or polarizing filter..you have to unscrew the lens hood then add the filter and then the hood goes back on again...easy enough operation to do of course BUT it would take 30 seconds of time...trouble is that we get situations where half the area is REALLY bright and half is OK so I might only need to adjust a few shots!!

Chris

I know that we are not supposed to use the B&C, thing, but I use it an awful lot, on every video. I use it to punch up the contrast in virtually every video I edit, even if only a hair's worth of adjustment. But it works pretty well.

When the blacks are not matching from camera to camera I use the B&C to match them up.

So like Chris says, what is it about it that makes it not a good choice?

why not Brightness and Contrast ???

Because they clip.

Oh well at least I'm not the only person who is doing things the wrong way.... Adam? do you still get clipping even if you apply a tiny amount of correction .. I seldom, if ever reduce brightness more than -5 and increase contrast by the same ..the preset in the plugin sets both at 10 which is always way too much!!!

What I was REALLY looking for was a Saturation Adjust plugin!! Nic??? where is that one..part of Curves??? I have another wedding to go to shortly so I'll look when I get back later!!

Following advice it's certainly worth looking at levels and curves instead of B&C. Maybe Jeff will try it as well???

I often have an outdoor ceremony with fierce backlighting so I have to expose for skin tones and the overall B&C is a lot lower than cutaway shots of the guests cos the light is behind me with the 2nd camera...I have used B&C to get these to match up a bit better but now I will certainly try levels and curves!!

Chris

I'm color blind, so levels would likely be dangerous for me to play with.

As another tool, I like New Blue Color fixer Pro Open FX version, and it has a saturation adjustment you might like Chris. The Pro version supposedly keeps everything within broadcast specs, but I don't know if that is true.

Because they clip.

Sorry mate I'm getting lost .. don't you mean because they 'can' clip, same with all CC controls?

Cheers.

Essentially B & C affects EVERY pixel in the frame, so for example if you are trying to adjust the blacks you will also be adjusting everything else, which is (probably) undesirable. Levels is more selective which is the reason it's used rather than B & C.

Sorry mate I'm getting lost .. don't you mean because they 'can' clip, same with all CC controls?

No, I don’t. Both of those are linear operations. Increasing either the contrast clips both the highlights and the shadows. Increasing the brightness clips the highlights. I really don’t understand why Sony even included them.

And no, not all CC controls do that.

The proper way to adjust brightness and contrast without clipping is using the color curves, Do not move the ends, do not add any new points on the curve, just adjust the two Bezier handles. If you move both handles down (concave curve), you decrease the brightness. If you move both up (convex curve), you increase the brightness. If you move the left handle down and the right one up, you increase the contrast. If you move the left handle down and the right one up, you decrease the contrast. You can play with them, changing their length, and so on. As long as you do not move the endpoints and keep the handles inside the bounding rectangle, you do not clip either end.

As for washed out colors, it is hard to say without actually seeing an example. They can be washed out because of low saturation or because of incorrect exposure or both. Saturation is easy to adjust in Vegas with the color corrector plug-in. Exposure can be adjusted with the color curves.

The two plug-ins can do virtually all CC. Combined additionally with the secondary color corrector, you can do any and all CC with the three of them. But really, most CC can be done with the color curves alone.

N.B. When I said not to add any new points I was talking about the proper way to adjust contrast and brightness. You can add new points if you want to distort the colors as I did in my Psychedelic preset (http://www.pantarheon.org/SevenVegasPresets/#BonusPreset). But that is not color correction.

To expand on Ian's comment a little, I kind of think of Brightness and Contrast as using a sledgehammer to drive in a finishing nail - something you just wouldn't do. It affects too much too broadly

Thanks Edward and Ian (and everyone else!!)

I was playing with curves and levels last night and it seems very sensitive to change...I KNOW this is wrong but like Jeff I still find that B&C does a quicker and easier job and looks just as good!!

I'll use the fancy plugins when I need really accurate adjustments just in one section...during yesterday's wedding one of the groomsmen's face was caught by the sun streaming in a high window so his face was somewhat blown out and playing with levels helped that a lot where B&C would have made the entire clip darker!!!

Chris

I was going to post basically the same comment, for me time in post occasionally comes into it.

Great info, thanks guys.

Cheers.

Chris "Saturation Adjust" is there between "Rays" & "Sepia". Also you do get a plug-in that does selective exposure called Magic Bullet Looks it has two very useful tools Spot Exposure & Gradient Exposure. Spot will only increase/decrease the brightness at a specific spot say the face of a person in the dark and gradient exposure will do as the name suggests increase/decrease the brightness of a area say the left half of an image that was overexposed.

Thanks Nicolas

I found it!!

Gosh I forgot about MBL...I think my version won't run on Win 7 64 bit so I might have to use the other editor on the XP Pro machine...I have used spot exposure before...really worked well too!! I have it installed on the other machine with Vegas 9. There is no issue swopping over a portable drive for some quick correction !!

Sorry to hear about the Rugby loss!! I was sure the Boks would clean us up!! Hard for me to take sides as I was born in Durban so I stay neutral!!!

Chris

Sorry to hear about the Rugby loss!! I was sure the Boks would clean us up!! Hard for me to take sides as I was born in Durban so I stay neutral!!!

Rather disappointing! Luckily I missed the game due to filming a wedding would have been too much to bare, I heard it was a bugger up, had high hopes that we would make the finals however our overall performance is not that great this year.

You ought to try being an England supporter if you want to experience realk angst!!!!

Richard

You ought to try being an England supporter if you want to experience realk angst!!!!

Richard

Placed against the Welsh performance, we weren't even at the races. Back to the drawing board, and I don't see how we're going to turn it around for the six nations. Looking forward to the French Welsh clash. Could be a classic, or a boring war of attrition.

OK, back on message here, I have used B&C - once, maybe twice. I saw just how destructive to my work it could be I rejected using it ever again. I thought there had to be another way......

I then read many posts, posted naive questions, and surfed the net; watched countless tutorials; read books on CC and grading and studied many videos and films, and BTW, continue to learn. And you know what, B&C continue to be the single, most misleading blind alley one can employ. I can't think or even contemplate just where I'd use B&C now? Levels, CCorrector, CCurves are my go to guys. I just wish you could sit on my shoulder and see how I use them and how B&C are simply just crude to the point of being counterproductive.

Something written above made me think that if you are videoing high contrasty bright environments without filters, then maybe not appreciating what these other tools can give, could be misunderstood?

Grazie