Question about skin tones and Vectorscope reading

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Duke Sweden] “And if I’m getting good skin tone is it really necessary to have it align with the skin tone line?”

No. The line is a reference and not a rule. Also the line is actually a legacy thing when vectorscopes had an in phase-line for NTSC signals.

[Duke Sweden]

Thanks, Tero! Another nagging question I can scratch off the list ☺

Here’s a screen shot from a recent shoot. On my monitor it looks dead on (slightly blue because it was cold and this was what I actually looked like).

How does it look on your monitor?

Dell XPS 8920
Intel i7 core 7700 build
GeForce GTX 1050ti
32 Gigs of RAM
3 7200 RPM SATA Drives
Windows 10 64-bit
DaVinci Resolve 14.3

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Duke Sweden] “How does it look on your monitor?”

Underexposed

[Duke Sweden]

OK, that brings up another point that has always bothered me. When you say underexposed are you looking at it from the viewpoint of a color corrected image without taking into consideration that I color graded it too look “late in the day”?

That’s always driven me nuts. I’ll put up a graded shot and people will say it’s too dark or too this or that, then I’ll see another video that looks absolutely terrible regardless of what the person was going for, super crushed blacks or greenish tint, etc., and it gets praised to high heaven.

Dell XPS 8920
Intel i7 core 7700 build
GeForce GTX 1050ti
32 Gigs of RAM
3 7200 RPM SATA Drives
Windows 10 64-bit
DaVinci Resolve 14.3

[Duke Sweden]

How’s this? This is what I would consider just color correction, no grading.

Dell XPS 8920
Intel i7 core 7700 build
GeForce GTX 1050ti
32 Gigs of RAM
3 7200 RPM SATA Drives
Windows 10 64-bit
DaVinci Resolve 14.3

[Joseph Owens]

Well its all about context.

If you wanted to convey a depressed, world-is-weighing-down-on-me, Shawshank-blue… you’re on the right track.
People who are altering their image fascinate me when they are trying to hit some numerical value. Like the In-phase vector, which — the person who referred to it as the “I-Bar” and sort of instituted it as a general flesh-tone reference may never live down — does have a *very* ball-park value, and only because the NTSC engineers chose it as an important hue when designing the YIQ encoding system. It is virtually meaningless now.

About 15 years ago, there was a TIG (Telecine Interest Group) discussion about grading fads and styles n which the takeaway boiled down to — at some point when film historians are looking at treatments, they will be able to determine what year the film was produced in by the “look” that was prevalent at the time. One item that was discussed that re-appears often is the pre-occupation that “fleshtone” be a certain value, regardless of the ambient lighting or environmental feel. And we can do it, because “Power Windows.” And so you get… in a green room, where all the lighting is green, the “battle control room with radar displays and stuff is green, green green… and the actors faces are all a lovely tan-amber. Sure. Teeth like a Colgate commercial. Audience don’t necessarily register that stuff, but in the back of their minds they start getting the idea that they are being had. Does that take them out of the movie? Suspension of Disbelief is a delicate thing.

jPo, CSI

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Chris Wright]

this is what I would call a purely technical grade. levels 5-90(allows room to grade) ire 50 at 18% grey. saturation channel 140. hue-skin tone line. white balance set for global tint average in HLS scope. I forgot to add, I also set my black and white point white balance. I use the histogram as it is easier to see rgb values. everything falls into +-1 pixel rgb tolerance.

I start all my images this way. this way, they not only match scene to scene, but leaves room for creative grading later.

[Chris Wright]

I recommend buying a color probe like colormunki. this should negate a lot of the problems you are experiencing with
scopes not matching what your eyes see. If you want to try a free self calibration, let me know, I have made a munsel chart that works really well.(just for fun to see if I could improve on perceptual grading)

[Joseph Owens]

[Chris Wright] “also set my black and white point white balance.”

Beard is really that blue?

jPo, CSI

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.

[Chris Wright]

i’m tracking that, lol. like I said, its a technical grade. you grade the aesthetic grade later. I don’t do multi-whitepoint/secondaries grading until all my shots match. its goes a lot faster to fix it for all, than for separate shots.
if your curious from an ire point of view, the beard isn’t the brightest object and so the whole image obviously won’t be fixed in only 3 whitepoints as black, white, mid aren’t enough for aesthetic grading. I did play around with it but didn’t save a ‘final look’.