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Canon C100 vs Sony FS5: Color Matching Problem on Two Camera Shoot
I’m trying to get to the bottom of this problem I’ve had the last couple of times I’ve shot on my Canon C100 with a Sony FS5 as the second camera.
So it’s a color problem. Raw, uncorrected screengrabs attached to this post. In the Canon shot an actor is wearing a blue dress, and in the Sony the dress is green. Both of us were shooting the same color temperature, so I can’t figure out what went wrong here. The Sony did NOT shoot 4K, if that’s a factor — I know it was a problem for me color correcting (In Premiere using Lumetri curves and in Color) because there wasn’t enough info there to put the blue back into the dress without everything going crazy. (I do not know the ACTUAL color of the dress, sorry!)
Something similar is going on in the PEN shots: background is blue and dresses are orangey-red in the Canon, and background purple and dresses bright blueish red on the Sony. We were both shooting 3200K. What’s going on here?
I’ve had good experiences in the past hiring FS5 shooters to shoot with my Canon, but recently I’ve been getting shitty footage with weird color glitches. Should I have the FS5 shoot in 4K? In S-log? Would love to hear if you have any experience with this or thoughts on FS5 settings. Want to try my best to match the Sony & Canon in the future!(Apologies, couldn’t find the relevant Sony forum for this camera so posted in Canon. Happy to move it if needed.)
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1 Reply
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You might shoot both cameras in their respective log spaces, and then use the appropriate LUT to convert one log space to the other. Then you’re at least working from data that’s as close as possible.
You can generate LUTs at https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html
There is a MAJOR exposure difference between your two cameras in the samples you’ve posted, which certainly isn’t helping you. Your best bet is to arrive early, get the cameras hooked up to a single monitor, and do your best to color match them beforehand, as well as get your exposure settings to agree. Remember, ISO is a completely non-standard number, so ISO 400 for one camera can pick up the equivalent of ISO 800 on another. My FS7 and RX10ii can be matched really closely…if the RX10ii is set at half the ISO number.
If you can get a color chip and monitor with waveform and vectorscope, so much the better. Once you arrive at a setup that works for you, save it from the camera on an SD card so you can use it to match other FS5s to your C100, or save a C100 setup that you can use to match to an FS5.
Consider, too, that with theatrical lighting, you often have multiple colors of lights hitting actors at the same time. If you’re shooting from two separate angles, different lights are going to reflect differently at different angles…resulting in certain objects changing colors at different angles. This isn’t the only thing going on here, but it could be a factor.
4K vs HD is probably not a factor here. In theory, at least, resolution doesn’t affect color. In practice, of course, anything is possible, but I suspect that it’s a camera setup issue rather than something that esoteric. Your Sony shooter may have his camera set up with a ton of saturation, or something. Only a very detailed, side by side comparison in a monitor will solve this.
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