White Balancing Your Camera (or Gray Balancing?)

A few years ago I did a piece on custom white balancing your camera. It is important to learn this skill to get the best looking footage, especially if shooting with an 8-bit 4:2:0 camera (like many of us use).

Interestingly, as I was doing a little research to put this piece together, I noticed that using a gray card generally produced better results than using a white card. I've had a lot of questions on why and up to now, I just assumed that it had something to do with the fact that 18% gray is closer to the luminance level that we generally shoot for skin tones. Turns out that was a decent guess, but not the whole story.

Art Adams posted an interesting piece titled, "The Secret Art of White Balancing" that goes into way more detail, particularly in light of the fact that many cameras can now capture 12-14 stops of dynamic range. To do that, cameras have a tendency to compress the highlights and shadows (even aside from log profiles, it seems) so using a target closer to the less compressed mid-tones often results in better white balance.

Definitely worth the read, if you're nerdy like that (I am).

Why Use a Color Chart?

Why would you use a color chart in video and film production or post production? With a color chart like the X-Rite Color Checker Passport Video, you can set your exposure and white balance quickly during your shoot, and in post you can quickly and easily color correct your footage. But perhaps more importantly, a color chart can help you learn how to produce better video and how to color correct and grade your footage more effectively. Using a chart can teach you how your camera reacts to and interprets color and light and that will help you make better decisions when shooting and editing. In this demo, we look quickly at some ways you can use a color chart in editing/post production to fix exposure and especially color balance issues. We also quickly look at using a color chart to understand how your camera interprets different colors and reacts to different light sources. The demo includes manual color and exposure correction using the X-Rite Color Checker Passport Video and automatic color and exposure correction using Color Finale, a third-party color grading plugin for Final Cut Pro X

This one is a pretty nerdy episode, so if you don’t really have the interest or 12 minutes to invest, you are now dismissed from class. ;-)

Deal: X-Rite i1Display Pro Colorimeter - Calibrate Your Computer Monitor

B&H has a special going on the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter which is what I use to calibrate my computer monitor. Now this is not to be confused with a legitimate color managed workflow that colorists use (at many thousands of dollars), but for those of us that are enthusiasts or one-person crews, calibrating your computer monitor will at least get you into the ballpark and ensure you produce reasonably consistent color on your video and photo projects. And now, you can pick this up for less than $200 US. It comes with X-Rite's Profiler software and calibrates your monitor quickly and easily. Here's a recent episode where we showed the process on my Mac. (also works with Windows):

https://youtu.be/Q7jrIWVBD98

Color Grading with Alex Jordan: LUTs and Highlight Rolloff

https://youtu.be/ytGCWgPpJ1w Another conversation with Alex Jordan on color grading, this time talking about LUTs (what they are, what they are useful for and what they are not useful for) as well as highlight rolloff. I like his practical approach where he clearly explains that you cannot just expect to drop a film emulation LUT on your clips and expect it to fix all the issues your clips may have in terms of exposure, white balance, or color shifts and this makes his "componentized" LUTs more flexible for getting the final look that you're after.

I've learned a lot from Alex's DaVinci Resolve 11 online training. I love that his courses are so succinct. You can get through a lot of material quickly and I think I actually retain the info better at this pace.

Also, in this episode he offers a 20% discount for the next five days on his LUT packs over at LUTMarket.com. Also, if you buy the full pack in the next five days, you also get a lifetime membership to this DaVinci Resolve 11 training which will soon be updated to Resolve 12 training once the new version is released. That's a good value!

Back from NAB 2015

Whew! This year was my first at NAB and I'm pretty overwhelmed right now. For my first visit I decided to start off slow and will be creating a set of short videos over the next few days highlighting some of the more interesting things I saw and learned while on the show floor. For now, there are a couple of special deals going that are pretty nice if you're in the market for these particular items:

Nikon D750 Camera Body for under $2000. That's an amazing deal for anyone looking for a nice full frame camera. I own this and can vouch that it is an amazing stills camera and surprisingly good at video despite is relatively low bitrate. I record to an Atomos recorder and it produces fantastic footage that way and works around the limited bitrate.

I also dropped by a session hosted by FCPWorks which is a consulting group for Final Cut Pro X users - especially larger productions. But they're obviously big on FCPX and brought in Denver Riddle from Color Grading Central to demo his new professional color grading plugin for FCPX called Color Finale. Right now there's a 30% off special (bringing the price to right around $70 with coupon code "NAB2015"). I've been super impressed playing around with it today and it is a huge time saver. I may not have to round trip to Resolve nearly as often now because this has an impressive feature set including color wheels, curves, LUT support, vector secondaries, and layer opacity. Definitely worth a look if you use FCPX for editing and want to save some time round tripping to color correct or aren't a fan of FCPX's color boards (I'm not a huge fan).

I have lots more to tell you about, especially on the audio and lighting fronts, and will get started posting over the next few days.

Oh, and my RØDE NTG4+ should arrive tomorrow so I'll begin tests with that as well for the upcoming review!

DaVinci Resolve: Quick White Balance Correction with RGB Curves

Have you ever forgotten to set your white balance when shooting video?  Or have you downloaded your footage and realized that the color was a little, or even a lot, off? You can fix it quickly and easily in DaVinci Resolve with the RGB curves. And the same idea applies to any color grading app with RGB curves.

Now don’t let that scare you off. I used to be scared of the RGB curves. They seemed so complex and mysterious. But using this simple method, you can white balance a clip in just a few seconds!

I learned how to do this from Alex over at the new YouTube channel “Learn Color Grading”. Lots of quality tutorials on color grading with DaVinci Resolve, definitely worth your time to have a look and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/LearnColorGrading

Here are a couple of tools I use to ensure I can correct my white balance in post:

X-Rite ColorChecker Passport is a little pricey but is a professional tool with not only a white balance patch, but also standard color chips that allow you to put the ColorMatch feature in DaVinci Resolve to use - an automated way to color balance your footage.

Lastolite Ezy Balance Gray/White Card is a little less pricey and is a great, durable, foldable card you can use to white balance your footage in post, set a custom white balance in your camera, manually set your exposure, or manually focus. Great tool. I've had mine for probably 4 years now and I use it all the time.

Thanks for the Feedback!

Wow! Over 90 responses to our last episode where we asked what you wanted to learn about next. And the funny thing? The answer is pretty much, "Yes, all of the above!"

So that's good news to me. It means that all these ideas I've had running through my head are pretty much in line which what you all would like to cover!

We have the first one on order: the RØDE NTG4+. It should arrive some time in March and we should have that review posted somewhere near the end of the month.

Then in April we should see the RØDELink wireless lavalier system. This one is quite interesting. I don't think we'll see pros that work in certain situations move to this new kind of wireless system right away, but maybe I'm wrong about that. What makes this different is that it uses the 2.4Ghz range, the same range that most WiFi networks use. The other wireless systems on the market that have been in use for many years use UHF frequencies. Apparently, the FCC in the US is looking at re-allocating some of those frequencies to other purposes so its going to be rough for some in the next little bit.

With these new wireless systems that use the 2.4Ghz range, on the other hand, you have to potentially worry about interference from WiFi and other consumer electronics (like cordless phones) interfering.

Ty Ford recently posted a test he did with a similar system: The Audio Technica System 10 wireless lavalier system which recently introduced a DSLR receiver for their kit which retails for around $450 USD. The main down-side to the Audio Technica System is that it doesn't use a standard plug for the mic so you're committed to using AT's mics.

In any case, Ty said that he was able to shoot several hours with the AT system 10 and did  not have a single drop-out. That's pretty impressive.

But before we completely nerd out on audio gear again, we'll first cover the Atomos Shogun. Again, not a full review because there have been a bunch of those already. But more a discussion on what it does for one's workflow. I'm finding that 4k is a lot more expensive than just buying a Panasonic GH4...

And of course Audition and Resolve were popular votes as well. We've got plenty to cover there as well as we dive in and learn more on the audio and color fronts.

So thanks again for your input! We've got lots of exciting things to cover in the next few months!

iMac 5k Display Color Accuracy

http://youtu.be/Ls1G_q1DZhM From the time that Apple announced the iMac with 5k Retina Display, I wondered how color accurate the display measured. As a photographer and videographer, I didn’t wan to put all my money into an all-in-one computer that had a beautiful, but color chaos screen. So here we use an XRITE i1Display Pro colorimeter to get a read on how well the color would work for basic photo retouching, video editing, color correction and grading for an enthusiast producing for the web. (This is obviously not a reference display for color critical work. Look to brands like Flanders Scientific and Sony for displays in that range).

DaVinci Resolve 11: Learning to Match Shots from Different Cameras

One of the issues that comes up in multi-cam shoots is that the color from different cameras can, and often does, look very different. I am not a colorist but this is a practical problem that I am learning to fix using DaVinci Resolve 11. In this example, I shot a scene with two cameras: A Nikon D750 and a Panasonic GH4, both using their Neutral Picture Styles and set to tungsten white balance. But as you can see, the two clips look startlingly different! Using techniques I learned from Patrick Inhofer, we use color match, then manually tweak the luma on the two clips, and finally massage the color just slightly to get two clips that can cut together without distracting the audience.

To learn more about color grading from Patrick, check out his new DaVinci Resolve course over at Lynda.com or see his website: taoofcolor.com

http://youtu.be/Zr7FQKzxl68

Basic Cross Process Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve

In our continuing journey to learn color grading, let's take a look at a fairly simple cross process grading look in DaVinci Resolve Lite. Nothing too complicated but a look that I've found to be pretty useful in a fair number of cases.For those not familiar with DaVinci Resolve, it is one of the big color correction and grading tools used by professionals and indie film-makers alike. There are paid and free versions available at http://blackmagicdesign.com. The main caveat with the free version from my perspective is that you need a computer with at least a dedicated video card and fairly well appointed specs in terms of RAM and CPU power. It will not run well (or even at all) on ultrabooks with fairly light specs.

http://youtu.be/_lKeCG5FnPI