Sunsets

[Lars Barlow]

I recently took my XL2 on a trip so I could get some B-Roll scenery. I noticed that the camera was not picking up much of the light pink bands in the clouds. When I got home and captured I noticed that they were not there at all. While I was happy to realize that the color LCD shows a good replica of what the outcome will be I was disapointed to lose the pinks in the sunsets. Does anyone know how I can fix the problem?

My settings at the time of shooting: 24p, Tv w/ exposure lock, wide open aperature, outdoor white balance, auto gain.

[Armando Ferreira]

<<<-- Originally posted by Lars Barlow : I recently took my XL2 on a trip so I could get some B-Roll scenery. I noticed that the camera was not picking up much of the light pink bands in the clouds. When I got home and captured I noticed that they were not there at all. While I was happy to realize that the color LCD shows a good replica of what the outcome will be I was disapointed to lose the pinks in the sunsets. Does anyone know how I can fix the problem?

My settings at the time of shooting: 24p, Tv w/ exposure lock, wide open aperature, outdoor white balance, auto gain. -->>>

Editing software should or may help bring those out. I also shot some footage and appared blueish (inside house). Later to find out in Premire using AUTO COLOR it adjusted the lighting to normal. Im not sure what software you are using but I would mess around with the color settings to see if it comes out.

[Lars Barlow]

The problem I found is that the light reds and pinks were not filmed originally. I use Premier and I don't think it has the ability to place color where none existed without altering the colors that came out good. Anyway, I was hoping to get some advice as to a way to tweek camera settings to pick up pinks.

[Kyle Ringin]

Two things that can happen when videoing the sunset are:
1. The camera gets the white balance wrong. This can take all the colour out of the sunset. You said you set it to outdoor which is correct.

2. The camera will overexpose the sky if left to it's own devices due to the comparatively dark landscape. Locking exposure is probably the best way to combat this, which you did.
If the sky where all the colour was is white, it sounds like you may have overexposed anyway though - I've never used wide open aperture to video a sunset on my MX500 and it's recognised as having poor low light capabilities.
An easy way to set exposure for this situation (for me) is to set exposure to auto, frame only the bright sky, lock exposure, reframe and tweak slightly.

Cheers.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

The human eye can capture differences in colour and contrast over a far wider range than your equipment can, especially when there is a darker foreground with a backdrop of brighter sky. Taking a manual reading on a medium tone and keeping it locked on that reading will prevent the inbuilt meter from adjusting too far either way, especially during a pan or camera tilt from land to sky. However, I often find this can end up either providing too dark a scene capture, or correct foreground but with too washed out a sky.

A polarizer filter can help a great deal in evening up the dark to light contrast, and to deepen colours in sky, clouds and terrain. When there are more extreme differences between land and sky, then I prefer to use a graduated ND filter, and position the darker section of the filter over the sky. Sometimes, I even use both a grad filter + polarizer together to provide deep and vibrant colours in a scene.

Some other options worth trying are to use a colour intensifying filter (that increases saturation in the red layer of the spectrum), or to adjust saturation in the internal menu.

Yet another option I find useful - and already mentioned by Kyle - is to set the white balance to the daylight (sunshine) symbol, which often gives a warmer tone to your scene when you are not using filters or making internal menu adjusments.

[Lauri Kettunen]

In my experince, having right white balance is crucial when shooting sunsets and sunrises. The difficulty in setting the white balance is that, if the white card is in a shadow, blue is filtered out. The other way around, if the white card is in direct light, the yellow and red tones diminish.

At this part of the world, in winter time the snow fields make it easier to set the white balance, but in the summer time it's often difficult. However, I've found that if I set the white balance just before the sunset, then the reproduction of the colors is the most satisfying.

[Kevin Kocak]

The color is probably there it just isn't as bright as it was to your eye. Like they said above, a little color correction, like a big boost in your saturation will probably bring those pinks up. I have noticed that the colors can be kind of cold or flat when settings are not tweaked but I actuallyprefer it that way. It allows greater flexibility in post. The 3 Way Color Corrector is my best friend.
Also, you probably should have used more manual settings to set the camera to capture the image you are seeing. You can't fault the camera for capturing the image you were looking at in your viewfinder.

[Lars Barlow]

Thanks for all the advice. I will go ahead and see if I can bring out some of the colors I want in the NLE.