NEWB Questions Here...

[Jon Fairhurst]

I totally agree with your lecture! I normally apply NR first. In this case, I was hoping to get away without NR. In the final cut, I only felt that the noise was unacceptable as the last note trailed off, I applied the final, quick fade, and the noise went away. I took the lazy approach and applied NR to the final, rather than go back to the beginning and re-processing. When it gave me the results that I wanted without gumming up the piece, I went with it. :)

As to the compression before reverb, that's what I did in the mix - with relatively heavy compression. The compression/limiting during mastering is just to hit the final, target levels without risk of clipping. I avoid adding reverb after the final limiting step.

And this is the first time I've ever applied NR at the tail end. I don't plan to make it a habit. :)

[Peer Landa]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

I totally agree with your lecture! I normally apply NR first. [...] And this is the first time I've ever applied NR at the tail end. I don't plan to make it a habit.

And, I forgot -- the very first thing you do is a Normalizing. (But knowing you well enough, I assume a guy like you would have zeroed it out perfectly already during the recoding ;^)

-- peer

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Bill Davis

Manual white balance on a 5d Mk II is a JOKE. (Sorry, I love the camera and am both an early adopter and a strong advocate - but JOKE is the right word here.) Go ahead and read the laughable directions in the manual if you must.

I personally prefer it to a standard video camera as it's a lot more flexible. The directions make it sound a little more complex than it actually is but they aren't that bad. Take a photo under your lights with something white (or a neutral grey card) in the center of the frame, select manual white balance from the menu and select the photo you just took. I've added the manual white balance option as the first item in 'my menu' to speed up the process a bit (I have it set to default to my menu when I hit the menu button).

You can quickly snap multiple shots in a row - say neutral and a couple different warmer or cooler shades - and then toggle between them to see which you prefer. Or use something like an expodisc and take both incident and reflected light shots. Or for mixed lighting you could take incident and/or reflected shots from multiple angles so you can quickly see how balancing to different sources affects the overall image. Once you've selected the one you want you pull the card, hand it off to your other camera people and now your cameras are all matched.

[Jon Fairhurst]

And don't forget the available WB offset. If you feel that the WB is generally too blue/amber or green/magenta, you can dial it out.

Sure, the number of buttons you have to press for a custom WB is higher than needed, but the results can be dialed in pretty well.

[Brian Carrell]

Color Temp Meters are easy to use, and the 5D allows you to input the specific K setting, it's way way quicker than doing the MWB thing.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Brian Carrell

Color Temp Meters are easy to use, and the 5D allows you to input the specific K setting, it's way way quicker than doing the MWB thing.

Color Temperature Meters due run to about $1000 which is a lot more than the cost of a piece of white card or even an ExpoDisk or similar so you have to pay a price for the convenience.

[Brian Carrell]

Bought both of mine used for 250 (at a local shop) and 320 (ebay) USD.

Yes, it costs more than a white napkin, and yes, it easier to use than a white napkin.

[Evan Donn]

Yes, a color temp meter will save you a couple of clicks - but it won't get you the same results as using a custom white balance. I don't know the exact mechanism behind it but custom and color temp settings are not the same - custom is clearly not just selecting a temperature for you.

Take a picture of a white wall (or anything white that fills the shot), select that as the custom white balance, then point the camera back at the wall - you'll get an RGB histogram where all three channels line up perfectly. If I switch to the temp setting there's no temp at which the three channels are truly balanced. I've tried this with a variety of different white sources and a neutral grey card under different lighting conditions and I can never get as good a balance as I can with custom.