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Different Cameras Used In Production – Trouble Color Correcting
Hi Everyone:
I am in a bit of a dilemma. I shot my film with different cameras. The shots with the two Canons are fine and the colors are vibrant. Very easy to color correct those shots. The one shot with Nikon give a very different, washed type look in several of my shots. I tried doing the white balance on everything to see if there would be a better match, but it didn’t work very well. In many of these shots I can get away with the difference because it’s not that noticeable, but one angle that appears in various places of the film is so completely different that it’s very noticeable. Pops out at the viewer. It’s in the courtroom, so the court has wood panels on the walls on one side and light blue wall paper on the other. One cut, to the witness, is against the paneled wall, and the other cut, to the lawyer, is against the blue wall. If all walls were the same, I believe I would be able to work out it better, but since the walls are different, it creates a bigger problem for me to fix.
Aside from trying the white balancing, I also did bump map to give different lighting, as well as curves, lab adjust and saturation methods.
Does anyone have any other ideas that I haven’t thought of?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Debbie
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22 Replies
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Did you adjust using individual colors (i.e. red, green, blue) with the curves adjustment? If so, how did you find the right spot on the curve? I use curves a lot these days, and they are very powerful if you think through the color theory.
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Hi,
Would you mind posting stills from the various cameras, showing common details appearing with different colors? I would like to make some tests.
Best regards,
Frédéric—
FBmn Software: Professional GPU-powered plug-ins to fix White Balance and Exposure issues in a few clics.
Color-matching made easy with the ColorMatch plug-in.Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my tutorial.
Or about Keyframes? Watch this one. French version here. -
Did you color test the cameras before filming, to see how they matched up? I never heard of a production mixing Canon and Nikon.
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[Dave Osbun] ” I never heard of a production mixing Canon and Nikon.”
I’ve even had trouble mixing cameras from the same company e.g. Sony EX1, Sony Z1P and NX5. They all looked different and I had to adjust gamma levels (particularly with the EX1), but even that was not perfect.
Frederic Baumann does have a colour match plug in that I have had some success in using.
When I took my EX1 footage back to the camera man, even he had trouble matching it, but he was able to white, grey and black balance in his editor (Edius). I haven’t quite figured out how to do the same in Vegas.
If your image is washed out, try adding some contrast.
My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 12 (x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6
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Hi Everyone:
Thank you so much. Your advise is so greatly appreciated. I was able to fix some of it by adding curves red, blue and green adjustments on the entire track, creating a more balanced color, then I went in to each clip and made adjustments. There are about four shots where the difference is very noticeable, and I can’t seem to find the balance.
The particular shots that are so different, I can’t post online as of yet, because of the premiere status of the festivals I am going to be submitting to.
Thank you so much for your help.
All the best,
Debbie
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What?? I’ve never heard someone say they can’t post screenshots due to the “premier festivals” they’re entering. I’ve seen multi-minute videos of scenes prior to submission of international festivals.
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In the future, color correct all the cameras in the same lighting scenario on the same white piece of cardboard, tablecloth, tshirt, or whatever you can find on site. Use the cameras CUSTOM setting. I made my own white balance card with white on one side, and a 1/4 CTB shift on the other for instances when I want a warmer color balance. This works much better than the factory presets from the manufacturers. You’re setting the cameras to YOUR specific needs.
http://www.Sublime-Lighting.com
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
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Hi Dave:
When I called the office of several, that’s what I was informed. It’s not about showing you, but that posting anything on the internet eventually gets on the search engines. This is an issue with distribution as well.. So I figured I would comply with the rules just in case.
Many thanks,
Debbie
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https://store.smpte.org/product_p/dlab-smpte-pos.htm
Shoot this chart with each camera in the same lighting setup, it will give you a starting point for color correction. This should also work with Resolve 11 with “auto correct.” Other charts that work in Resolve are really for still photography, not HD video. The smpte chart actually has patches that line up with your vectorscope, at 1/2 intensity (due to cost/printing technology) None of the still photo charts do this.
Always use charts! It saves you time in post.
Cheers,
M
Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com -
Thank you Brian:
I appreciate your response. Definitely will pay more attention to this detail next time.
All the best,
Debbie
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