• Canon Cameras

  footage looks flat

  Posted by Ruby Gold on March 29, 2006 at 12:33 am

  I’m shooting interviews with a GL2 and the Canon factory just sent me a replacement refurbished one for my old camera. The problem I’m having is that the last two interviews I shot came out looking pretty flat. What I can’t tell is if it’s a problem with this replacement GL2, the exposure/white balance settings I’m chosing, or if it’s my lighting. Probably a difficult if not impossible question to answer here, but, if anyone wants to try, I’d be appreciative.

  I’m using a basic Lowell kit to light the subjects (small rifa, omni with umbrella and pro light), I have zebra levels set at 80% for a white subject and 85% for a Latino subject. I set the exposure so there was just a little bit of zebras on the highlights on their faces and teeth. I tried manually white balancing with a white card, which is what I normally do, and in both instances, the manual white balance seemed a bit too pinkish in the lcd screen, and the little icon never stopped flashing, just slowed, so I chose the indoor lighting preset (the light bulb icon) instead.

  In both interviews, the captured footage doesn’t look awful, just kind of flat–the colors look a bit washed out, not much contrast, saturation or dark darks. They look better when I mess with the levels in post, but I’d like to try and get it right in the shoot. Anything jumping out in what I’m describing about zebra levels, settings, etc that might account for this problem?

  thanks a lot-

  Ruby Gold replied 20 years, 3 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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