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White Balance with the Varicam
White Balance issue. I was shooting with a VariCam last week. It has been quite a while since I used one. I was surprised to see that when I white balanced the RGB gain settings went to zero. No mater what conditions or what color the card was I was balancing on it was always 0. It looked correctly white balanced but I knew the cameras were adjusting the gain differently. This seems like an odd glitch in the VariCam. I would think that the camera would come up 0-0-0 in a perfectly balance lighting setup. But if the lighting was off it would come up 3-2-6 and would give me an idea how off it was. This would also make it easier to create looks. I
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4 Replies
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You need to turn on the AWB offset.
FILM MENU….MENU 4….OPTION….AWB OFFSET (TURN ON)
Now you can keep your RGB gain setting when you white balance.
Chris Bell
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Yes I am aware of that. But loosing my off sets is not the problem. The problem is no mater what I do AWB on or off. The gain settings come up as zero. If I white balance under sodium vapor the gain is 0-0-0. If I white balance in deep shadow the gain is 0-0-0. Even though the camera has drastically adjusted the gain it always registers as 0-0-0. It makes it very hard to know what the camera is doing.
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Hi Bob1dp,
It sounds like you have a background in Ikegami cameras or something like them. I too like this feature when shooting with the Ikegami, it is interesting to watch the RGB adjustments to get a feel for what the camera is doing.
With the Ikegami’s you can view the RGB settings as either “absolute” or “offset”, absolute showing the adjustments, and offset setting RGB to 0-0-0 so if you were to make any manual adjustment directly to the camera or via the remote, you know where you started from, a kind of safety backup.
The Varicam operates in this way too, but does not give you the absolute readings, rather the saftety backup of 0-0-0.
My experience of the menu “Offset” function in the Varicam is that you can set in a pre determined RGB WB offset to what the camera is setting. For example, if you were white balancing and were unhappy with the result and felt that a bit more R or B chanel was required, then you turn on the offset menu item, white balance, make your manual changes to RGB, store it, and now when you white balance the camera will always add in the offset you have set until you turn the menu function off.
I find this function in the Varicam, and the Ikegami cameras I have, a useful thing. IMHO because video cameras use the G channel as a reference when balancing, most images tend to come out a little green shifted, so I add in a little more R and B, in addition with some custom colour correction and matrix settings, to achieve what I feel is a more correct look. Each to his own. I hope this has helped, and hasn’t been a “suck an egg” thing. -
Thanls for the help
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