Need some help

[Pim Tebbens]

Greetings,

Last week I tried to make a wide angle video with a friend of mine. He has a Canon XM1 and I have XM2, and we both used the same settings, white balance and focus. The strange thing is when we compared both video's they where totally diffrent.

www.tintrin.com/video/

My footage where totally diffrent from color and doesn't seem to be like the reality when I visited the place. I didn't custom presets or anything because the XM1 doesn't have that option as far as I know. Something wrong with my camera or there is something wrong with my settings, can anyone help me plz?

Kind regards,
Pim Tebbens

[Ken Tanaka]

Welcome Pim,
Your results are normal. The GL1 and GL2 (XM1 and XM2) are completely different cameras. Different CCD blocks, different color management, etc.

With the XM2's greater controllability it will probably be easier to get the XM2's color to match the XM1 if you need to do so. But they will rarely really look the same, particularly in wide shots, due mainly to differences in resolution.

[Pim Tebbens]

Thanks!

When you look at my video stills, what would I need to change to get the results even, compared to the XM1? I find it to be so strange that my video footage is way darker and diffrent from color then the XM1 footage with the same settings. I understand that I can't compare the XM1 with the XM2, but shouldn't my video footage results in a better image?

[Ken Tanaka]

It's hard to tell, Pim. Precise adjustments would typically have to be made with the use of a color-calibrated production monitor on a scene-by-scene basis. It would be impossible to accomplish by simply trying to match the images on the LCD screens; they're not very accurate and are highly susceptible to ambient lighting.

Offhand, the "XM1" shots seem to show a better exposure and are a bit sharper than the "XM2" shots, which appear to be slightly underexposed (particularly the top 2). You'll probably have to push your reds up on the XM2, as it tends to be more neutral than the XL2's reddish bias.

Again, though, you would really need to match your shutters and apertures and shoot precisely the same scene simultaneously to get a good handle on this. One alternative is to shoot a Gretag MacBeth color chart to balance colors. Adjust your sharpness last.

[Pim Tebbens]

Ok I understand.

When you look at the lowest stills you see the color diffrences (train). I compared the left image color of the train with the orginal color of the company of those trains and it seems to be the correct color. But when you look at my footage, you see that my train is yellow-green. You said something about color calibration, where can I find that on my camera? Or would this be fixed when I use a higher exposure setting? Sorry if this a noob question but I'm just clueless atm.

[Ken Tanaka]

Check your manual under "Custom Presets". The color settings are in a sub-menu.

[Corey MacGregor]

To me it looks like your white balance is off. You should try doing a manual white balance with both cameras. I've done several shoots with gl1 and gl2 and you can't even tell the difference between the two except that the gl2 footage is slightly sharper.

Corey

[Pim Tebbens]

I did use manual whitebalance but perhaps I did something wrong correcting it. Does the mx2 used to need more saturation compared with the mx1?

Thx for all the help so far!

[Rob Lohman]

Welcome aboard DVInfo.net Pim! I guess you are from the same
country as I am looking at your frames <g>

[Pim Tebbens]

Thanks Rob!