What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading?

[Paul R Johnson]

Now we've stopped talking about grading, I'll rejoin.

If you go into an office with dozens of fluorescent tubes, or a restaurant with loads of low wattage tungsten lamps, or shops, or practically any location with lighting how exactly would you recolour them all? You can buy the gel to do it - and it's quite expensive, but the killer is access and time. Much simpler to recolour your lights as a. they're fewer and b. designed to be tweaked. Lights do NOT have better colour temperatures - where did you get this notion from? The point of having them all the same is to prevent colour casts when multiple colour temperatures are in use, because for all intents and purposes, they are different colours - usually a bit redder or a bit bluer. Flu tubes tend to have a greenish cast. The usual decision on what to regel for matching is that you recolour the brightest light sources. Gels are lossy things, so a dimmer light source would be the worst one to recolour. It means that when you have mixed lighting with artificial and the sun, either direct or through windows. You can gel the windows of course, but that's expensive and time consuming. Surely you wouldn't shoot in an office and want to wrap every tube? Even if they'd let you.

Look at the scene, determine where your extra lighting goes and match it. It's really not rocket science, but you've not got much experience at lighting either it seems. If there is sunlight, then you need punch and a high colour temperature - so I'd still be looking at discharge fixtures. Lots of the newer LEDs are now bright and can have their temperature tweaked. Just keep in mind that the cheaper ones are still very spikey and can produce some odd colours that may stand out.

If you set the camera at 3200, and use tungsten halogen lighting white is white. Use 5600 and use discharge lamps and white is still white. What were you expecting? Something different. White balance just needs to be correct .

[Ryan Elder]

Oh when I say better temperatures, I just noticed that skin tones look better to me in a tungsten temperature rather than fluorescent or daylight, but that is just my opinion based on how the skin tones look in my camera. And I am talking about if the camera is white balanced. If I white balance to a 3200 light, the skin looks less pink then if I went balance to a 5600 light. So the skin looks better at a lower temperature white balance it seems. But I can just gel my lights to whatever the location has then, if that's better. Less gel and time like you said.

However, let's say I am shooting a large office space, and I want to separate the skin tones from the back ground, lighting wise. Wouldn't I want to use a different color temperature light on the actors, compared to the lights in the location because then the lights on ceiling, in the background would be a different temperature, and thus separating the skin tones more?

If I match all the light, then there would be no color separation for the skin tones, would there be?

[Brian Drysdale]

You can fool your camera to give the white balance that gives the best skin tones. There are white balance cards that give a warmer or cooler white balance, I know plenty of camera people who use a 1/8 or 1/4 CTB lighting gel in front of the camera lens to give a warmer look in the skin tone when doing a white balance with a card..

Some cameras allow you to do this inside the menu when manually setting the white balance.

To separate the faces more, just light them a bit brighter than the background,

I'm not sure what you're up with different colour temperatures on the faces. However, you can do this with lighting, it's how they did it before they started playing around with everything in post.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh it's just I wanted a more teal and orange look for this project, where the skin tones are warm, but the background is a cool color. So I thought if the lights on the faces were a warmer color, but the lights on the ceiling in the background were a more cool color, than that would help get that type of contrast if that makes more sense?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Oh it's just I wanted a more teal and orange look for this project, where the skin tones are warm, but the background is a cool color. So I thought if the lights on the faces were a warmer color, but the lights on the ceiling in the background were a more cool color, than that would help get that type of contrast if that makes more sense?

The traditional way is gel the lights with the temperature you want. In a small space it's relatively easy to control the light and its temp to your preference, but often there are locations that a powerful light source is a given temperature that you can't change. For example, a room with windows, florescent lights you can't shut off, or outdoors. In these situations your lights will need to match the existing source.

In portrait photography and in video interviews, a common practice is to warm up the the person's skin tone a little bit to achieve a more flattering look.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but why does the light have to match the exiting source, when I am trying to create a color contrast between the skin tones and the background? If I cannot change the temperature of those powerful lights, then wouldn't it make more sense to light the skin with a much warmer light in order to create that color contrast between skin tones and background?

[Brian Drysdale]

The teal and orange look is a bit of a cliche, it's been around for years.

The colour on the face doesn't have to match the background.

[Ryan Elder]

Well even though the look is kind of cliche, I think it can look good with the right amount of tweaking in the color grading. I don't the typical teal and orange lut we are use to seeing, but a more modified version I am trying to create.

So you think that all the light should be white balanced in a scene then and should all match white, and then just grade later with no lights being different color while shooting, is that right?

Also I tried separating the skin tones again in Da Vinci, and maybe the noise is not as bad perhaps.

I tried it on some test footage. Here is the original clip without the skin tone separated from the other color:

Training video draft - YouTube

And here is a test sample with the skin tone separated. Is the noise that bad?

skin tone qualifier test - YouTube

[Brian Drysdale]

The skin stuff looks flat and boring.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but I haven't done any other grading yet. The only thing I did was separate the skin from the ungraded original. When I adjust the curves and add some more grading it will look less flat won't it?

[Brian Drysdale]

If that's what you want, but it would look more interesting in black and white.

[Ryan Elder]

oh black and white? It was in color before, no?

[Paul R Johnson]

So the blue clothes are now green, and you're trying to get the faces right?

I'm a bit surprised you're still trying to polish the turd on this one? This video surely has absolutely no need of a grade at all does it? The red short and the green short and blue walls are what there really was, and now we've got colour shifts making the wall that weird blue colour?

Or was it the other way around? This isn't really colour grading is it? It's and effect and colour replacement. I know I'm rubbish at grading, but it's never occurred to me that you'd use it instead of repainting a room. No wonder you're looking for unusual colour balance settings.

Probably best I do keep out of this one because it makes no sense at all to me what you are doing?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well I wasn't planning on coloring the actual video this way, I just took the one shot as a test to try to get better at grading and separating skin tones. I also tested on other footage, but I got the same thing, where the footage looks somewhat noisier after.

However, if for my next project I actually want blue walls, but cannot paint the walls, can I at least light them so they are darker, in order to separate the skin tones better in post, and the color them blue in post?

I know it was said to separate the skin tones while shooting only, but other colorists in their tutorials are separating them in post, so it is something that can be done therefore, isn't it?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

The only thing that video sample proves is how little color grading matters if all the other things aren't done right (direction, lighting, costume, location, acting, camera work, etc). Color grading is the final step, the icing on the cake so to speak. It enhances a good movie but can't rescue a poor one.