Color...is it me?

[Jeff Troiano]

While I'm new to color grading in general, I plan to keep my grey card with me, and try to remember to take a few seconds before shots. That way I can use the grey card for getting white balance correct in resolve.

[Mark OConnell]

Excellent suggestion.

Noa, in this case it's easy. The t-shirt and the wall are both clearly meant to be white. How you approach this on harder shots will depend in part on what software you're using. You're going to need to read up/check out a tutorial on whatever color correction tools you have.

I just did a search and there are multiple tutorials for the Edius color correction tool on Vimeo.

EDIUS 6 Tutorial - Color Grading - Episode 1 of 5 on Vimeo

[Noa Put]

I still rely on some very simple color correction tools in Edius which do the job on my gh3 footage, I just point at what should be white, gray and black if I see the color is not right but for a shot like what I used to test I was not there so I can only guess what should be white, since the source footage contains hardly any information because it almost looks black and white what appears to be white might be a bit different, just like a wedding dress is also not always only white.

With my gh3 I leave it in auto whitebalance most of the time and in some occasions I use the presets, with my latest film I done called "fruits de mer" the camera was in auto whitebalance all the time yet the colour I got was just great. If I would have dialed the kelvin temps myself it would have looked wrong, I"m sure.

Just because of this I"m sure the pocket cam is not a camera for me, and if I see the remarks and look at the videos of many others it's also not a camera for them, it looks like just a few with sufficient colorcorrection knowlegde are able to get the most from it.

Also thx for the link but I have seen all those videos. :)

[Steve Nunez]

I ended up putting mine on the Classifieds section here (and locally on Craigslist)…….I like the cam and what it represents but too much work to get the "look" i want…….unless a firmware update changes it……I'll just stick to my trusty GH3.

[Sam Tansey]

The color is great however properly de-logging it seems to require more than just adding curves and saturation.
Reds and oranges tend to blow out and yellow seems to need some saturation added if you add a curve and saturation and leave it there.

I've tried to match the BMCC to Rec709 lut in resolve using my own skill set and there is definitely some secret sauce I'm missing to get the image the same across the full range of color and luminescence

Fortunately the LUT works really well and you can get normal balanced looking footage relatively easily with it. It's not a hugely difficult or massively time consuming workflow to ingest your footage via resolve apply the LUT and then render it out as Rec709. With this footage you can edit in your NLE and even do correction and grading. Grading this would be similar to grading camcorder 8 bit footage on a standard setting.

If you want to be more fussy then send it back to resolve via xml for final color correction.

It's worth taking the time with it because the flexibility to bring sky's back or bring up shadows or simply correct for an exposure or white balance that is off is well above whats possible with DSLR'.

[Wacharapong Chiowanich]

I have been thinking about this, could it be possible that the BMPCC captured ProRes files miss some color information? Not just some form of color cast or imbalance that hides behind the log film gamma looks? I am suspecting this because with "just" 4:2:2 sampling and 10-bit depth, the files were incredibly hard to grade to the normal looks when I tried them in FCPX and Color. The 12-bit RAW files captured by the bigger BMCC were not nearly as hard to make them look right despite the process being much more time consuming. I have also seen plenty of online videos graded from the BMCC's RAW files that looked superb. Some even had the overall color pumped up to eye-popping vivid levels and yet the color still looked right and balanced. Not seen a single video from the Pocket yet that looked close to any of those videos. While plenty of very compressed videos from numerous camcorders and DSLRs can have more or less the balanced looks from the get-go.

[Sam Tansey]

Originally Posted by Wacharapong Chiowanich

I have been thinking about this, could it be possible that the BMPCC captured ProRes files miss some color information? Not just some form of color cast or imbalance that hides behind the log film gamma looks? I am suspecting this because with "just" 4:2:2 sampling and 10-bit depth, the files were incredibly hard to grade to the normal looks when I tried them in FCPX and Color. The 12-bit RAW files captured by the bigger BMCC were not nearly as hard to make them look right despite the process being much more time consuming. I have also seen plenty of online videos graded from the BMCC's RAW files that looked superb. Some even had the overall color pumped up to eye-popping vivid levels and yet the color still looked right and balanced. Not seen a single video from the Pocket yet that looked close to any of those videos. While plenty of very compressed videos from numerous camcorders and DSLRs can have more or less the balanced looks from the get-go.

Imho its a workflow thing. No one ever tried to grade those raws inside their NLE. Originally when the workflow came out many people were using Adobe camera raw in some form to convert the files. ACR has its own delogging built into it that is very good. If you open the cdng in ACR you don't get faced with log footage. It's got the adobe look and you can grade it from there. It was that or use Resolve in which case most people figured out how to use the LUT's.

[Mark OConnell]

This took all of about 30 seconds to do in AE.

[John McCully]

And this took a little longer, maybe 45 seconds, but I'm having a slow evening. Vegas Pro 12.

[Noa Put]

Looks like the blacks are crushed a lot loosing all detail so you"ll loose the benefit of 13stops DR. Would be great if there just was a preset you could drop onto the footage from within your NLE that would get it right from the start.

[Bill Bruner]

I haven't personally been able to do it in my NLE (Vegas Platinum 12), but I've seen a few grades that let me know it's me and not the camera.

Apologies to those who have already seen them, but here are some of my favorite BMPCC grades from the Pocket Cinema Camera group on Vimeo:

The Case on Vimeo

UVM Select Aerial Shots on Vimeo

BMPCC+Pana 12-35mm Test Footage #3 on Vimeo

I still like the images (and the baked-in color) from my GH3, but it just can't match the DR or the 'gradeability' seen in these (or my own) BMPCC results.

I will be keeping the Pocket Camera. Eventually, I'll figure this grading stuff out :)

Cheers,

Bill
Hybrid Camera Revolution

[John McCully]

Noa, good question. I believe the marketing pitch of Blackmagic of 13 stops of DR is a bit of a load of old cobblers at the end of the day. Yes, the RroRes codec allows a wide DR to be captured but in regard the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera where is the 13 stops measured and have we seen any science to back up that claim?

Two points about this; the first is that if one fiddles in Resolve which I know little about, and perhaps in other software I know nothing about, it is possible to isolate colors and so on and adjust the selection independent of the remainder of the image. Second, probably many high bit-rate 4:2:2 codecs enable this; it’s not just a ProRes thing (although Apple might claim otherwise). I suspect many sensors, including the sensor in the new Cyber-shot RX10, will capture a similar DR (published data) as that claimed by Blackmagic for the BMPCC, and if delivered in such a manner that it might be captured by a high bit-rate codec then almost infinite post manipulation is possible whereas highly compressed AVCHD does not permit the same degree of manipulation and is more of a ready-to-wear solution, and by the way most often for most of us is just fine.

The preset that you want is the DSP unit in your GH3 and it delivers a product that is not too shabby when all is said and done and meets your needs and the needs of your customers, presumably.

The good thing about the BMPCC is that you and I rather than Panasonic get to choose the levels of everything, more or less while the not so good (if you are a production unit and not a hobbyist filling in time) is that to do the full monty and fiddle with every clip one might be struggling to get the project completed in a timely fashion, have satisfied customers, and therefore make a profit.

Huge over-simplification I know but then I’m trying to cut to the chase, get beyond the hype, and understand the essentials. Please do not hesitate to tidy me up, in fact I’m counting on it:-)

My gripe with the BMPCC is not about dealing with the ProRes footage (although I’d rather not all the time – the option to save to AVCHD would be nice) but with getting good footage into the damn thing in the first place; the ergonomics. Sorry, my apologies to the OP, don’t want to get off-topic here.

Thanks for the links Bill, nice stuff, and I’m not selling my BMPCC either. I like the imagery and I am happy enough, for now, with my grading attempts, and I’m improving, and getting quicker, as I go. There will be an affordable EVF available in due course I reckon.

[Chris Joy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but 13 stops is for raw, no? The DNG's seem to have more latitude than prores, but I'm in the early stages of learning color correction so I can't say with any certainty.

[Frank Grygier]

For me the Pocket Cinema Camera a low cost entry point into the Log and Raw workflows. This is the future of video cinema. Does the camera have have flaws? Yes. Can they be overcome by perseverance and learning the tools available? Yes. Is it ready for videographers who want to use it in paid gigs. Probably not.

[Mark OConnell]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Looks like the blacks are crushed a lot loosing all detail so you"ll loose the benefit of 13stops DR...

You can crush the blacks as much or as little as you like. That's the whole point!