Picture Profile for fluorescent office lighting?

[Colin Albers]

I will be using my NX5U to shoot office training videos. So far the camcorder has been working great, especially outdoors. However, try as I might, indoor office shots in standard office lighting end up overexposed and/or blue looking. I manually set the white balance, which removes most of the blue haze, but I still can't get skin tones to look even halfway normal. Office supplies and books look pretty good, very sharp resolution, but skintones are awful and unrealistic no matter what I do. I realize there is only so much one can do under this type of light but I am hoping maybe someone here has found a better picture profile settings that would help me in this situation. Thank you in advance!

[Heath McKnight]

I'd experiment with the camera a bit when you can just test it out. I'm guessing to push the reds a little bit (into magenta). You may also have some different light coming into your shots, too. For me in office settings, the light coming in from outside is a different shade of bluish-green because of tinting.

At work, we usually try to use a Kino Diva with daylight-balanced bulbs, but I would be hesitant to use CTO if there's fluorescents and no natural light coming in.

If you can, get some magenta or half magenta gels (big ones) and try to gel out the fluorescents.

This is advice from a guy I work with who is a great lighting/gaffer/cinematography expert.

Heath

[John Mulvihill]

I'm no expert but I'd try two free things first. Eliminate the second source of your mixed lighting. Find the k value of the (search online for the standard lighting type k values) lighting that's left over and set the pre set WB on the camera to that value. Play with that setting.
There is also a skin color setting in the NX5U. Finding it will help you become more famillar with all the settings. Other wise I don't know exactly where that adjustment is but I did see it.

Please report back.

John

[Heath McKnight]

Great advice, John. Whenever I shoot in fluorescents, it's never perfect, and I always end up touching it up in color correction. Even on the EX1 I use, where you can adjust the white balance in Picture Profiles better than any other way--for the preset.

I once edited a piece shot by a guy who used natural lighting through a tinted window (greenish-blue), fluorescents (greenish), an HMI (blue) and several tungsten lights (orange). And it was green screen, too! Man, that was tough to color correct BEFORE we even keyed it.

Heath