DVX200 - Strange Skin Tones even after FW update

[Ben Freedman]

Howdy...

I have had a DVX200 for a couple of months now, and I'm having a hard time warming up to this camera. Coming from a Sony EX-1r, it seems to be very unpredictable in the way it handles skin tones...

This unit is fully updated with the newest firmware...

Here's a shot in my studio. You can see the facial skin tones are rather yellow, and the hands have a very pinkish purple cast to them. This was worse at a higher exposure... I stopped down a little on the aperture to reduce the effect. WB is fixed at 3200K

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1452049981

Just for comparison, I grabbed my old EX1 and captured the same image...

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1452049981

This seems like a much more pleasing image.. On neither camera am I trying to use a picture profile or scene file other than the default. Not going for a 'film' look here or anything like that, so I haven't messed around with the directions. Just using the default scenes...

Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong here? I would love to have the nice, consistent image on the Panny that I have with the Sony camera...

Thanks!

Ben

[Vaughan Wood]

Hi Ben,

The yellow skin tones (I do stage shows with varying lighting) have been largely diminished with the new firmware but are still there as you've discovered.

Barry Green has GH4 scene files listed in the thread below this one which many people seem really happy with, so you could try them, or get his book (download) and wade through that and fix the skin tones yourself by learning all the colour controls in the camera.

The last option is the one I'll do, but have to finish all my editing before I have time to learn and experiment, so it will be February before I get a good run at it and report back.

I think the images I get out of the DVX 200 are leaving the old EX1 for dead, and with a bit of extra knowledge we will all get on top of the yellow tonings pretty soon.

Cheers,

vaughan

[Wacharapong Chiowanich]

Never seen anything like this. Normally when my WB was off for whatever reasons, it would affect objects with similar color and surface the same way and certainly not like the above sample where the face and palms look like they were shot with two different cameras!

Could the lighting have been somewhat uneven? For example, the main lights cast mainly on the palms and less on the face.

[Tim Palmer-Benson]

I have had my DVX200 since October and with the latest firmware updates, I am not seeing the yellowish tinge any more. I am NOT using Panasonic scene files. Rather I am using a set sent in to Panasonic by Barry Green. I am not as experienced as many people here, so I have been trying to tune the BG files just a little more to my liking. For instance, I just did an indoor portrait of someone with a Sony A7Rii using its raw function. The resulting photo looks pretty good to me...nice balance of color and the flesh tones look nice. Then, I tried the same thing with the DVX200 using Scene 4 from SCN2. This is billed as a rich color scene file and it certainly is, but the face looks a bit reddish/florid. So after reading BG's book, I backed off the Chroma Level by -5. It improved the look, and the two pictures look almost the same. No yellowish tinge thank God! But, I am wondering if I did this correctly and should have left the Chroma level alone and instead got into the 16-Pole Color Correction setting!

There is a red apple next to my model with a yellowish/green center core. This stayed much the same after the adjustment, but I still see a little of that florid/ sort of magenta look in the face. So how to fix?

There are so many combinations in this camcorder, you can spend hours and hours tweaking only to discover that in another lighting environment you did it all wrong!

One of my over all questions is....Is the camera capable of emulating the look of any of it's competition cameras such as the Sonys and Canons? Can it be a sort of chameleon in a mix of different cameras and not be detected?

[Joachim Claus]

Originally Posted by Ben Freedman

Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong here? I would love to have the nice, consistent image on the Panny that I have with the Sony camera...

Thanks!

Ben

Hello Ben,

I have experimented with my DVX200 for more than 4 months now, and I have also identified the "yellowish" problem with highlighted skin tones and with red roofs in sunny days. In addition, I found some strange color shifts in blue sky (with bright sunlight) towards turquoise/cyan.

The source of both these color shifts is the Knee Function. If you switch the Knee Function to "Off", the camera produces well balanced colors in both cases, with no color shifts. I have also set-up a manual Knee Function with 96/85. This setting decreases the color shifts in bright areas slightly but not fully. So, I ended up with switching the Knee Function to OFF in all scene files.

Last weekend I had a shooting in bright sunny days under deep blue sky and red roofs when overlooking the city core from above, and I found no shifts of blue sky to turquoise/cyan or to yellow from red roofs.

You may give it a trial for your skin tone problem.

Joachim

[Ben Freedman]

Sounds good, but I sold my DVX200 about 15 jobs ago... Bought a Sony FS5 and haven't looked back. Far superior camera if you ask me...

Best,

Ben

[Vaughan Wood]

New factory scene files are now available in the new firmware 1.51


http://eww.pass.panasonic.co.jp/pro-...pgdvx200_e.htm

Cheers,

Vaughan