Happening again

[Chris Wright]

that 2 second video you uploaded is good. Use that as reference for premiere scopes and monitor balance.

here we go again, aha
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/calibrate-monitor-windows-10

or time for a spyder,
https://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder5express/

[Duke Sweden]

Yes, but that’s one of the problems. The video is way over exposed, yet the waveform shows it at 80 IRE, when it should be blowing past 100

[Duke Sweden]

If I had my monitor any more balanced I’d be travelling with the circus. Duke Sweden and His Fantastic Balanced Monitor!!! 😉

[Chris Wright]

if you have a dynamic range issue, then you could have poor images at 80 ire. for example, blacks crushed would leave highlights stuck at 80 ire. then if your monitor’s gamma was incorrect, it would look even worse.

so can you post a png? we’ll see if we can at least confirm bad exposure or bad monitor. and oh yea, don’t screenshot from a mediaplayer. that’s another variable, use premiere’s monitor.
also, how does the 2 sec. clip look? it should look good in premiere if your monitor is calibrated correctly. you can also play it back in your camera. should look good there too.(yea, I know, waveform monitor blah,blah) guys 🙂

[Duke Sweden]

I do take my screenshots from Premiere Pro. The little camera icon. I’m not THAT newbish ???? The 2 second clip looks great on my monitor. In fact I’m planning to enter it at Cannes next year (yeah, I’m a little loopy right now)

Here’s a PING!!! of my latest disaster, straight outta Premiere Pro.

[Chris Wright]

I cropped your image down to a small skin patch. it showed exactly 18% grey 128 RGB at 50 ire. 40-60 ire, 45ire for some setups. so, if anything, your grey card was perfect!

now to address the rest of the image. you didn’t have a screen to diffuse the sky, so it was extra bright. also the dynamic range of g7/gh4 is about 11-12 stops, but you didn’t lose too much detail in the sky. I could bring back a lot of detail. I first applied RGB curves and brought ire below 99 so lumetri wouldn’t glitch.

your hue was pretty good on the skin tone line, maybe slighter towards red about 4%, still, pretty darn close though, enough not to not have to worry about quantization image loss when post white balancing. your blacks were around 10 ire, still with those cameras not having super amazing low light, it is usually better to ETTR(expose to the right) anyway.

now, if you were trying to get a more balanced look, you could drop exposure down a third or half so that you had a little more dynamic range. maybe a circular polarizer filter(those give sky’s a bluer color and cut down a little f-stop of white light) also, blacks would be blacker and whites wouldn’t blow out so much. Still though, without a light meter, its safer to play it safe with a 18% card and get skins tones as highest priority. A little bounced light onto the actor would give the camera a little color to the skin.

All in all, I think it looks just fine. You’re way, way ahead of the curve. Trust me, I have to fix the ‘other stuff’ 😉

[Duke Sweden]

You almost sound like you have fun doing this ????

I can’t believe that clip is that close to being perfectly acceptable. Thanks for dragging me back from the abyss. I really didn’t want to buy a jet ski ☺

So, one question, because this is what bugged me about the video quality. You’re saying more light will add color, or saturation, to my skin, and, in turn, to the rest of the image? Because that was my major concern. I was getting an acceptable “flat” look to where if I wanted I didn’t even have to do much other than boost contrast, but in this picture you can see saturation is pretty washed out, and I have my saturation at -1. So the amount of light will affect that? I shot this about a half hour before sundown, in the shade of my house, with an f2.5 lens.

[Chris Wright]

being close to sundown and under a forest, yea, it’s gonna be flat light.
skin usually needs reflective foamboard to light for camera’s sensor, expecially in these situations. the trees won’t get the light unless you have a 10k 20ft in the air. you can look up how to make flat overcast lighting look better. it’s outside the scope of a forum. (we’re talking pro cinematography stuff)

Whenever you have really flat light, don’t be afraid to set saturation from -1 to 0, 8 bit needs all the help it can get!
you can grade with premiere’s motion masks and use secondaries to fix some stuff. You can increase saturation, contrast, etc.

You have the technical nailed, now get ready to learn aesthetic lighting and grading.

[Duke Sweden]

But I Thought flat light was good. I hate bright sunshine, or even late in the day sunshine, it wreaks havoc with my skin tones. I’m guessing you’re saying that, regardless of lighting conditions, one needs reflectors and other lighting to get a professional look. I realize that. If I ever get around to making my short film it’s going to have that dreary Autumn, spooky woods look to it, hence the fact I’m always shooting in cloudy conditions.

I just now shot some more footage (nice and dreary outside right now). I increased saturation to 0 on Cinelike D and I’m about to check the results. I also shot a few seconds of the old -5 across the board to make sure I’m getting my exposure right. Time to see what the results are…

[Duke Sweden]

ok I have one more still for you. First I want your opinion on the skin tone, and second I want to know how the overall grade looks on your monitor. To me it’s graded exactly how I like it, dark and moody like a haunted forest, but you can still see detail. Does it look good, washed out, or too dark on your monitor (I’m talking to Chris, of course, since everyone else seems to have changed the channel ???? )