manual white balance sucks

[sdsumike619]

I have a Panasonic DVC80 and I try to follow procedure and get a white balance using a card, but the resulting look is lame, people look pale, practically dead. So I've just been using the preset white balance that says 5.6K, which I guess means 5600 K color temp. Makes the people look tan, a bit too much, but better than the 3.2K setting and better than if I try to achieve a white balance myself.. Is this what other people are doing or do you actually get a white balance manually and go with it?

[guns1inger]

I tend to colour correct most of what I shoot, either because the lighting varies too much for the white balance to keep up, or simply to get the feel I want.

[sdsumike619]

yeah that will work, just trying to get it "right" as best I can to lessen the amount of post stuff I have to do, because encoding to mpeg2 is sloooooooooooooow and the more effect, color correction, etc, the slower it goes.

[lordsmurf]

I manually white balance with cards.

[sdsumike619]

and your people don't come out looking so pale? I must be doing something wrong

[dipstick]

If The lighting is consistant like shooting inside, steady cloudy or steady sunny, then I manually set White balance with a card. If I'm shooting outside during changing conditions, then I leave it on auto.

Setting it manually works best with my Panasonic pv-dv953. It also works best for my still cameras as well.

[pijetro]

Manual white balance is excellent for fine tuning your video...Sometimes, with multiple light sources, i jump into AUTO mode quickly (let the camera make a guess), and revert to manual mode..
I believe your camera lets you choose between different White Balance settings. Natural Sun, Flourescent lighting, etc...Sometimes toggling between them will give you desired results..

As far as your problem is concerned, i think that there's other issues at hand...

[julitomg]

Try this; next time you make a white balance, don´t use a white white card...use a sligthly blue tone (very light blue), keep you iris (exposure)in automatic while you do the WB (return to manual when you´re finished), see if you like the results (the scene will have a warmer, almost orange-ish tone, if it ´s too orange use a paler shade of blue)

[sdsumike619]

Yeah this is for shooting indoors, subject is lit correctly, pure black background.
I'll have to try the bluish color to set the white balance, haven't tried that yet. I have a good camera so I know it's gotta be something I'm doing. I just don't want my people lookin pale as ghosts in the video. Any suggestions of around the house items I could use for the blue color?

[pijetro]

Are you using three point lighting for an interview shot?

You do know that on camera lighting flattens out features unless using multiple light sources right?

[DokSoul]

I'd try the light blue card first. I've considered this product below but haven't bought it. Maybe someone who bought the warm cards could comment.

http://www.warmcards.com/

[edDV]

I'd try the light blue card first. I've considered this product below but haven't bought it. Maybe someone who bought the warm cards could comment.

http://www.warmcards.com/

Warm cards looks interesting. I like the tag "As seen on TV".

If you are shooting indoors with your lighting you want consistancy through the shoot so you don't need clip by clip custom color correction in post*.

Outdoors the color temp continuously changes through the day making things far more difficult. Pros get around that by lighing the set even in daylight in order to hold consistant white balance. Worse cases are day long rock concerts that you want to edit down later.


* This is why pro camcorders have exposure settings including white balance saved to a flash card. Likewise, pro lighing controllers have save modes for the dimmers. That way, the lighting and exposure track day to day during shooting. What you want is exposure continuity throughout the final program, series or DVD. Peeps will notice color shifts especially those clients looking fo ways to delay payment.

[sdsumike619]

Well the shoot had to be put on hold due to sound problems, but I rendered a frame in Vegas under the uncompressed setting for AVI (attached). This looks like what it looks like on the timeline. I noticed that if I render to NTSC DV avi it's a LOT darker for some reason so I figured uncompressed is what I should post so you can see what I'm seeing. Also here is a picture of the halogen shop lights I'm using. I have two of them, one on each side of the subject shooting straight up at the white ceiling and this is what I got. I didn't have any warm cards but I looked at the site and looked around the place and found light light blue paper that looked similar to the warm card so I went with that to get the white balance. How does this look? What can I do to improve the shot?



clip.avi

[edDV]

Hard for me to comment on the white balance since I'm not in calibration here at the moment. It might be tending to blue-magenta a bit.

Exposure looks very good but the white areas on the guitar neck are in the 100-107 % area but are not clipping.

What is missing is a backlight. The purpose of the back light is to add to the 3D illusion by differentiating the subject from the background. Ideally the backlight is mounted above and behind the subject and is visible only accross the shoulders and hair. Barn doors are used to avoid spill on the back wall. Here are some example pics I pulled off the web.

No backlight


With backlight (no fill)


Backlight only


The three point lighting concept also uses the fill (wide dispersion) to light the scene and a key light (~50% brighter) to add contrast to one side of the forground subject. You can fake a key-fill with your halogens by setting the fill side back a few steps vs. the key side. Your current lighting already has one side brighter.

http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~candace/design1.htm
http://www.bbctraining.com/tott3pointlighting.asp
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html

[JohnnyMalaria]

yeah that will work, just trying to get it "right" as best I can to lessen the amount of post stuff I have to do, because encoding to mpeg2 is sloooooooooooooow and the more effect, color correction, etc, the slower it goes.

Hello,

We have just released the latest beta of our Enosoft DV Processor - it will let you adjust the white balance in real time during the capture process. i.e., no additional "post" time. It will also do it on video that has already been captured.

We will create a How-To Guide on using it for adjusting white balance shortly.

[pijetro]

You can also learn a few techniques from Arri's Handbook..
BTW, White Balance looks decent.

http://www.arri.de/infodown/light/broch/arri_lighting_handbook_english.pdf

@JohnnyMalaria
Sounds promising..
There's a few shoots where the white balance slipped through on me..