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#31 | ||
Trustee
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Seattle WA
Posts: 1,253
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Re: big white balance calibration target
Doug - thanks for coming back with more input.
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Question: If one wants to "save" all the light one can and not have it "lost" due to using gels, why not just use the Minus Green to begin with? Note: These LED floods really lose a lot with the 3/8 Magenta gels. These lights were originally intended for use indoors. A little background: I doubt these pictures will help because they look different on my screen now than they did on the monitor I was using at the time, after they were taken. Also, I *may* have also color balanced them a bit. These were taken about three years ago. Here is one sample picture: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...-000_0722.jpeg Here is another sample picture: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...n-000_0528.jpg Both were taken with the CoolLights but I don't remember anymore what I used for gels. The pictures on my laptop that I'm using to write this don't really show any green tint |
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#32 |
Trustee
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Honolulu, HI
Posts: 1,435
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Re: big white balance calibration target
I used to believe this, but it's not totally true. White balance is subjective. For an extreme example, shoot a scene 5 minutes before sunset. With the sun behind your back, look at a white building in front of you. It should appear yellow-orange, not white. If a "perfect" white balance was performed in this case, the scene would look too blue.
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#33 | |
Trustee
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Posts: 1,538
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Re: big white balance calibration target
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By nature I don't EVER try to force my field shots to achieve "a look" - it just doesn't make sense to me. In the studio, the light is fixed. And light changes so much over time during a typical outdoor shoot that if my goal was to come away with "matched lok" footage, I'd be constantly re-white balancing anyway - and potentially wasting massive amounts of time trying to match the conditions. Waste of time IMO. (I know others feel very differently) My priorities when I'm shooting are to achieve a properly exposed image with a white balance that's close enough. Then I immediately turn my brain to my videography and talent direction and the LAST thing I want to go back to fiddling with is field color correction. I simply feel there are way too many things that are FAR more important for my brain to be engaged with than fractional color tones - something I can easily tweek in post - and something that's getting easier and easier to push around with modern NLE systems. My 2 cents anyway.
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#34 | |
Major Player
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
Posts: 710
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Re: big white balance calibration target
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Color temperature numbers deal only with the blue-orange axis. They don't relate to the magenta-green axis at all. Unfortunately, many discharge lamps have green spikes. This is why people in this thread are discussing adding minus-green gels in front of LED lights -- to tame that green spike. Most modern cameras do a manual white balance function on both the blue-orange and magenta-green axes (and perhaps more besides -- who knows?). Doing a manual white balance under, for example, fluoros, can correct a nasty green spike if your fluoros are giving one. If you just dial in a specific color temperature number, the green spike goes uncorrected and shows up in post. You're going to correct it in one place or the other. My personal preference is to correct it at capture time. I'm almost certainly going to tweak it in post, yes. But I'd rather start from a solid base. Maybe that's just me though, IDK. |
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#35 | |
Vortex Media
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Florida
Posts: 3,438
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Re: big white balance calibration target
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If you're going to take 10 seconds to white balance on a white card anyway (and you should be doing that anytime you're shooting under man-made lighting!!), then it's a no-brainer to use a WarmCard instead and save yourself the hassle of grading the footage in post to make it look the way it should have looked in the first place. Even a simple correction like adjusting the white balance in post takes extra time, and why bother if you could have nailed it at the time you white balanced on the shoot? Most cameras that are being used today only record 8-bit video onboard the camera, and anytime you do ANYTHING to 8-bit footage in post, you have degraded the technical quality of that image to one degree or another. Another consideration is that a lot of DP's won't be editing their own footage. Most freelancers (including myself) turn their footage over to the client at the end of the project and have nothing to do with the edit. So, unless I have a sophisticated client who requests shooting in a RAW format or with an SLOG gamma, I want to make sure the Picture Profile settings, exposure, and white balance are as close to perfect as I can get them right out of the camera. When the client looks at my monitor at the shoot, or when they take a look at the raw footage back at their office, I want them to be blown away by the look I have achieved for them and not to think, "well, it's a start, but we can fix it in post." For anyone who takes the time to actually do a test of their own and look at the difference between an interview shot with a normal white balance and one shot with a WarmCard white balance, there's no doubt which one you and client is going to prefer. I'll be the first to admit that WarmCards aren't for everyone, but for less than a hundred bucks they can give you a better white balance right out of the camera and save tons of wasted time in post for years and years on hundreds of shoots. Not too many products offer that kind of ROI. WarmCards - White Balance Reference System
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#36 |
Trustee
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Posts: 1,538
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Re: big white balance calibration target
Heck, every day people pay $2.50 for bottles of exactly the same fluid that comes from the sink a few steps away - and in test after test after test, the tap water from a decent municipal system is proved to be every bit as healthy and palatable as the bottled stuff. They're buying "convenience" and I get that. But sorry, I'm not buying that "warm cards" are about convenience. I kinda believe they're about insecurity. And a lack of real technical expertise.
If a shooter feels some deep compelling need not to accurately record the light falling on any face by white balancing ON that face in the traditional way - you can simply do what a lot of us have been doing for decades when we find ourselves in light that's too cool or warm for our tastes - white balance through a scrap of 1/4 CTO or 1/4 CTB gel. But how you spend you money is your business in the end. So good luck.
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