Picture style and WB.

[Gustavs Repse]

Hello. I am finally a proved owner of 550d and so far i'm quite pleased except that i was expecting more from Kit lens in low light situations.


Anyhow, i have some questions about the WB and picture style.


These days i see most ppl using Color Corection . So my question would be, how do WB and picture style influence your results for CC. Should i try to go for the least modified footage when recording aka Faithful PC and AWB/Daylight WB so that i dont have "mesed up footage color vise in the end" with which i'l have problems with cc.


Right now i am shooting:
1080 full hd 24p
Movie Exposure-manual
Quality is 18M 5184x3456 [ 439 ]
Picture Style- Faithful.

Also, should i switch to RAW quality?

And 1 more thing. I was testing my 18-55mm kit lens low light capability yesterday and i notice that on different shutter speeds i had this radiant flow in my video. Like when you are filming a pc monitor you get these lines going from down to up, i had the same . It was weird cause on 30 it was fine on 40 it wasn't on 50 it was fine again and on 60 it went bad. Iso was araund 1600-3200 .
I need to watch some pattern when adjusting iso with shutterspeed?


All i have now is 18-55mm lens, but im planing to get 50mm f1.8 . Been reading a lot of good about them here. :)


Any tips will be appreciated . :)

[James Donnelly]

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

Hello. I am finally a proved owner of 550d and so far i'm quite pleased except that i was expecting more from Kit lens in low light situations.


Anyhow, i have some questions about the WB and picture style.


These days i see most ppl using Color Corection . So my question would be, how do WB and picture style influence your results for CC. Should i try to go for the least modified footage when recording aka Faithful PC and AWB/Daylight WB so that i dont have "mesed up footage color vise in the end" with which i'l have problems with cc.


Right now i am shooting:
1080 full hd 24p
Movie Exposure-manual
Quality is 18M 5184x3456 [ 439 ]
Picture Style- Faithful.

Also, should i switch to RAW quality?

And 1 more thing. I was testing my 18-55mm kit lens low light capability yesterday and i notice that on different shutter speeds i had this radiant flow in my video. Like when you are filming a pc monitor you get these lines going from down to up, i had the same . It was weird cause on 30 it was fine on 40 it wasn't on 50 it was fine again and on 60 it went bad. Iso was araund 1600-3200 .
I need to watch some pattern when adjusting iso with shutterspeed?


All i have now is 18-55mm lens, but im planing to get 50mm f1.8 . Been reading a lot of good about them here. :)


Any tips will be appreciated . :)

Congratulations on owning a marvelous camera.

The kit lens should not be a disappointment. The light gathering performance corresponds to the fact that it has an unexceptional maximum aperture. Light sensitiviy wise, it performs roughly like any lens which only goes down to f/4.5.

Regarding your question about raw quality, if you are referring to shooting stills, yes I would recommend raw to get the best out of the camera, and give yourself a chance to correct issues after the event. I'm sure you understand that raw mode is not applicable to shooting movies. If it was, the camera would really be miraculous.

The canon 50mm f/1.8 will give you that low light boost you're after, but I have one, and I never use it for video. It is sharp, but has a crap focus ring, which really is a problem for me, and creates video which looks a bit washed out. I prefer my Pentax Takumar 50mm f/1.4. The colours are better.

Don't use AWB. Set your WB manually and leave it the same for your whole shoot. Neutral is a good picture style to start with. It will give you a bit of latitude for colour correction without messing up the image.

For feedback about your video issue, post something to Vimeo so we can see what you mean. A picture is worth a thousand words. By my calculations at 24fps, that means 24,000 words per second from a video.

[Gustavs Repse]

Thank you .

Ohh and im sorry i didnt mention for what i am using the cam. Its mostly video, so the questions are Video related.

I should stick with the quality im using now . ok

And no, i didnt know that Raw is bad for video. :) Il look into it.



For Setting WB manualy i took a white paper, took a picture of it in the environment im shooting video and made from it my custom WB and applied to the vid. Can i use the same Custom WB for differently lit enviroments or i should each time do the same procedure.

Right now i dont have anything shoot worth puting on vimeo, but there will be in future.


And for the lens, my budget is tight , so i feal like the Canon 50mm f1.8 is my only option right now .

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

I should stick with the quality im using now . ok

There is only 1 quality setting for video. The quality setting you speak of only applies to taking still photos.

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

And no, i didnt know that Raw is bad for video. :) Il look into it.

RAW is great for video. Your camera does not shoot RAW video. We all wish it would. RAW is only available for stills.

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

For Setting WB manualy i took a white paper, took a picture of it in the environment im shooting video and made from it my custom WB and applied to the vid. Can i use the same Custom WB for differently lit enviroments or i should each time do the same procedure.

You can either do this procedure every time you shoot in different light, or you can simply choose a WB preset from the camera. If you will be doing color correction after shooting this might be your best option. Otherwise, keep using the procedure you're using now.

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

And for the lens, my budget is tight , so i feal like the Canon 50mm f1.8 is my only option right now .

You have numerous options. But you haven't made yourself aware of them yet. Based on the questions you've asked here, I'd suggest you take some time going through your manual very carefully. You are confusing things you can do in stills with what you can do in video. I would also suggest you spend some time watching some tutorials online that discuss your camera. It's capable of a lot, but you really need to educate yourself a bit about the camera to take advantage of it.

[Gustavs Repse]

Ohhoo

So the video quality is not my concern. Its integrated. Tho its confusing that in the video dedicated mode there is options wich can not be used for video.

Manual is a good and usefull thing . But in my experience its same like Traffic rules. You can do them scrupulously by the book and every1 on the road will hate you for it. Or you can go with the flow of the traffic, brake some rules, but the outcome will be better.

What im saying is that whats written in manuals quite often doesnt sync with what people are actualy using and what works for majority.


But You are right. Im lacking the basics.

[Perrone Ford]

It is very important to understand the rules well, so that you know when they can be broken and how. Just like traffic rules, breaking them in the wrong way, can be dangerous.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

And for the lens, my budget is tight , so i feal like the Canon 50mm f1.8 is my only option right now .

A good used manual lens like the Pentax James mentioned should not cost much more than the Canon but will be significantly better for video. I have both - the Pentax is my favorite video lens, while the Canon is only used for shooting stills (where I can use autofocus) in very low light . KEH has several, here's one for roughly the same price as the Canon (you'll also need an adapter which should run about $10):

Pentax Manual Focus 50 F1.4 SMC M (49) 35MM SLR MANUAL FOCUS STANDARD ANGLE LENS - KEH.com

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

You can either do this procedure every time you shoot in different light, or you can simply choose a WB preset from the camera. If you will be doing color correction after shooting this might be your best option. Otherwise, keep using the procedure you're using now.

I would recommend always doing the manual white balance for the best results. I've found there's a significant difference between manual and the presets - manual does not just choose a preset temperature for you, and it's especially important for getting accurate skintones. Even if you're grading later you'll get better results if you start with the most accurate recording.

Originally Posted by Gustavs Repse

And 1 more thing. I was testing my 18-55mm kit lens low light capability yesterday and i notice that on different shutter speeds i had this radiant flow in my video. Like when you are filming a pc monitor you get these lines going from down to up, i had the same . It was weird cause on 30 it was fine on 40 it wasn't on 50 it was fine again and on 60 it went bad. Iso was araund 1600-3200. I need to watch some pattern when adjusting iso with shutterspeed?

This isn't related to ISO, just shutter speed - it's caused by your lights. You'll often get this with older fluorescent fixtures, most modern ones don't have the problem. Try shooting under sunlight or incandescent lighting and I'm guessing you won't see the problem anymore.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Evan Donn

I would recommend always doing the manual white balance for the best results. I've found there's a significant difference between manual and the presets - manual does not just choose a preset temperature for you, and it's especially important for getting accurate skintones. Even if you're grading later you'll get better results if you start with the most accurate recording.

I respectfully disagree. Though I do understand why you would say this. Getting "accurate color" from the camera isn't my goal, though I know it is for a lot of people. My goal is getting the cleanest footage I can back to post, and doing custom white balances often make that impossible.

[Sam Tansey]

How so Perrone? Are you suggesting that custom white balancing can result in compression artifacts or noise? In theory a custom white balance should give you the most latitude for color correction either way in post as the colors will be neutral, (or close to it)

Gustavs, I recommend a 50mm 1.8 as a cheap jumping off point for the world of primes and low light. You will find that a fixed length lens will make you a better photographer/videographer by making you work harder for your shots and also forcing you to use a more flattering focal length.

The kit lens is a minimum f5.6 @50mm ie forget about it.

For general picture album videography and photography imo, Auto white balance is fine, it generally gives a warmer feel for indoor lighting then custom which need post processing or use of white balance offsets.

Portrait, picture style with the contrast and saturation turned down will make exposing faces easier and wont need color correction. (of course depending on the seriousness and importance of the project)

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Sam Tansey

How so Perrone? Are you suggesting that custom white balancing can result in compression artifacts or noise? In theory a custom white balance should give you the most latitude for color correction either way in post as the colors will be neutral, (or close to it)

Fundamentally, here is the problem.

Let's assume for a moment that we could shut off the camera's ability to process light hitting the sensor. In other words, we'd be shooting RAW. For most types of light, we would be capturing more green light than anything else, followed by red. Blue is a distant third. Even golden hour light is lacking in the blue channel. Most people shoot indoors with tungsten fixtures, and these have nearly twice as much red light as blue.

When we do a white balance, what we are REALLY doing is adding gain to a specific color channel. This introduces an incredible amount of noise into the blue. If you'd like to test this, light a scene with tungsten balanced light, and white balance to that light. Then shoot a scene daylight balanced and feed as much blue light as you can by either using HMIs, double CTB on the tungsten fixtures, or daylight balanced fluorescents.

Take a stillframe of those images into a picture editor that will let you examine the different color channels independently. You will immediately note that the blue channel on the tungsten balanced images are VERY noisy. The blue channel on the daylight balanced light will look more like the red. Neither will look as clean as green. This is because the green channel is sampled far more frequently than the other two channels in these cameras that do color subsampling. It's also why we do greenscreen and not "redscreen", and bluescreen is used less and less.

If you want cleaner imagery from your camera, FLOOD as much blue light as you can get into the camera without clipping the blue channel. You'll find that your images are MUCH cleaner than other folk's work. Shooting with the daylight pre-set means the camera is set to NOT add much gain to the blue channel because it's already expecting to get quite a lot. Setting a tungsten pre-set means the camera immediately adds gain to the blue channel because it knows it would only be getting about half the blue light it needs to make a color accurate image.

After watching the Panavision tests, and doing testing myself, I've mostly curtailed my used of tungsten light. I push daylight or even 6500k light as much as I possibly can. My stuff looks Smurf blue in the camera sometimes, but lovely coming out of post.

[Sam Tansey]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Fundamentally, here is the problem.

Let's assume for a moment that we could shut off the camera's ability to process light hitting the sensor. In other words, we'd be shooting RAW. For most types of light, we would be capturing more green light than anything else, followed by red. Blue is a distant third. Even golden hour light is lacking in the blue channel. Most people shoot indoors with tungsten fixtures, and these have nearly twice as much red light as blue.

When we do a white balance, what we are REALLY doing is adding gain to a specific color channel. This introduces an incredible amount of noise into the blue. If you'd like to test this, light a scene with tungsten balanced light, and white balance to that light. Then shoot a scene daylight balanced and feed as much blue light as you can by either using HMIs, double CTB on the tungsten fixtures, or daylight balanced fluorescents.

Take a stillframe of those images into a picture editor that will let you examine the different color channels independently. You will immediately note that the blue channel on the tungsten balanced images are VERY noisy. The blue channel on the daylight balanced light will look more like the red. Neither will look as clean as green. This is because the green channel is sampled far more frequently than the other two channels in these cameras that do color subsampling. It's also why we do greenscreen and not "redscreen", and bluescreen is used less and less.

If you want cleaner imagery from your camera, FLOOD as much blue light as you can get into the camera without clipping the blue channel. You'll find that your images are MUCH cleaner than other folk's work. Shooting with the daylight pre-set means the camera is set to NOT add much gain to the blue channel because it's already expecting to get quite a lot. Setting a tungsten pre-set means the camera immediately adds gain to the blue channel because it knows it would only be getting about half the blue light it needs to make a color accurate image.

After watching the Panavision tests, and doing testing myself, I've mostly curtailed my used of tungsten light. I push daylight or even 6500k light as much as I possibly can. My stuff looks Smurf blue in the camera sometimes, but lovely coming out of post.

So basically, what your saying is that its better to use blue light where possible? In circumstances where this isn't possible, ie available light indoors and the blue channel will be pushed, surely its better to balance things in camera, before the footage goes through 8 bit h.264 compression.

Also you seem to imply that White balance is a physical/electronic process rather then digital, is this right, I'm often slack with WB when shooting raw because I didn't think it did anything that I couldn't do in basic photo software.

[Perrone Ford]

[quote=Sam Tansey;1557011]So basically, what your saying is that its better to use blue light where possible? In circumstances where this isn't possible, ie available light indoors and the blue channel will be pushed, surely its better to balance things in camera, before the footage goes through 8 bit h.264 compression.
/QUOTE]

Absolutely better to use blue light. As much as you can get without clipping the channel.

Not sure what you mean by "available light indoors". If it's a movie set, I rebulb every practical light. If it's sunlight, then you're good anyway, unless you can gel the windows. If you're talking about event lighting, then I'd go for a daylight preset if it won't clip the red channel, or if it will, then a balance around 4500k. I want to do everything in my power to not let the camera add gain to that blue channel, or limit how much it adds.

And no, it is NOT better to bake in a ton of gain in the blue channel in the camera rather than deal with it in post. You have a TON more control in post, and you can move that video out of 8-bit color space into 10, 12, even 16 bit color space if you like.

Originally Posted by Sam Tansey

Also you seem to imply that White balance is a physical/electronic process rather then digital, is this right, I'm often slack with WB when shooting raw because I didn't think it did anything that I couldn't do in basic photo software.

White balance is an electronic process. Not sure what you mean "digital". Saying something is electronic doesn't preclude it being digital. Or do you mean analog?

If shooting RAW you can certainly skip the white balance if you want. But that doesn't apply to shooting video with these cameras.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Perrone,

You make a great point about the relative light density at the RG&B wavelengths. But wouldn't it make sense to flood the camera with blue light, and then to apply a custom WB? You'd be applying gain in the camera on 14-bit(?) data to optimize how the bits fit into the 8-bit range. With a strong, blue light, assuming that you are near the correct balance for RG&B, you would simply be fine tuning the gain, rather than boosting the heck out of the blues (and blue noise) to get it to balance.

In fact, one might want to screw on or mount a blue filter for filming on bright days, as compared to shooting with a straight ND filter.

It would be nice to have a set of filters available for various color temperature scenes that would equalize the colors to the sensor in a range of situations.

But I still think you can WB to fine tune the 8-bit output.

[Perrone Ford]

John,

What you say makes a lot of sense, but think of it like this:

You have white balance that pivots around green, which stays constant.

In most cases, you have an abundance of red, and not nearly enough blue. If we white balance to that, or use the tungsten pre-set, it does not lower the red levels, it merely adds gain to the blue.

If we merely flood the camera with blue light and white balance, Less gain is added to the blue channel which is what we want. If we overdo it, and add more blue than red, and if we do NOT white balance, the footage goes blue. If we then white balance, we add gain to the red.

If we stay on the daylight preset, and add enough blue for the image to take on a slight blue cast and DO NOT do a white balance, we can assure ourselves of adequate levels of blue and red light, and no in-camera gain is being added. It WILL give a blue cast to everything though.

This presumes that the sensor is naturally balanced to daylight. Most are. If the sensor were naturally balanced for tungsten, we wouldn't see the noise in the blue channel we do when balanced on the tungsten preset.

Your idea about using a blue filter is a good one, and frankly one I'd thought about. They exist and were very popular during the period where we all shot on film. If you had daylight film, and wanted to shoot under tungsten light, you added a specific filter. These are still widely used in film cinema cameras. The problem of course is that they lose about two stops. But it was FAR more convenient to filter the lens than run around trying to filter 10 lighting instruments on set.

[Sam Tansey]

[quote=Perrone Ford;1557020]

Originally Posted by Sam Tansey

So basically, what your saying is that its better to use blue light where possible? In circumstances where this isn't possible, ie available light indoors and the blue channel will be pushed, surely its better to balance things in camera, before the footage goes through 8 bit h.264 compression.
/QUOTE]

Absolutely better to use blue light. As much as you can get without clipping the channel.

Not sure what you mean by "available light indoors". If it's a movie set, I rebulb every practical light. If it's sunlight, then you're good anyway, unless you can gel the windows. If you're talking about event lighting, then I'd go for a daylight preset if it won't clip the red channel, or if it will, then a balance around 4500k. I want to do everything in my power to not let the camera add gain to that blue channel, or limit how much it adds.

And no, it is NOT better to bake in a ton of gain in the blue channel in the camera rather than deal with it in post. You have a TON more control in post, and you can move that video out of 8-bit color space into 10, 12, even 16 bit color space if you like.



White balance is an electronic process. Not sure what you mean "digital". Saying something is electronic doesn't preclude it being digital. Or do you mean analog?

If shooting RAW you can certainly skip the white balance if you want. But that doesn't apply to shooting video with these cameras.

By electronic, I did mean analogue, ie it sends more power to blue channel, that is what it sounds like your saying when you say it increases the gain. Im not an expert on audio visual electronics but I have always thought of Gain is an analogue process. If it is the case that WB adjusts the sensor gain on different light channels, then it would make sense even when shooting raw to try and get close to neutral.

Many people using these camera's (probably most people) and by the sounds of it this includes the OP are using it to shoot live events where they have very limited control over the color of the light. Personally I bought the camera to shoot live music, others might be shooting weddings etc. In these circumstances the live lighting and how it looks to the naked eye is far more important (if controlled at all) then how it will be recorded. We just have to work with it and use our cameras in a way that gives the best results.