NOT a political topic...

[wabbit]

....but I have been watching the coverage these past two weeks and more times then I can count I have noticed the color jumping all over the place. Has anyone else noticed this? Are these network cameramen just leaving the auto white balance on or what?

I guess in all the chaos of the coverage they might be just an abundance of amateur cameramen at the helm but I am seeing this across networks and conventions.

So anyone notice this and have a theory?

Cheers

[Hawk Teflon]

No, i think it's the fact that Republicans wear more red, and Democrats more blue.

[TwistedLincoln]

I'm not sure what channel you've been watching, but I've noticed that problem on Fox News for the last several weeks during almost all of their interviews. It seems to happen when they switch camera angles -- perhaps they aren't setting the white balance of all of their cameras together?

[Sad Max]

Every cameraman is a rugged individualist.

[ConspiracyPenguin]

I think it is probably partially due to the fact that they are doing live coverage from multiple cameras and it is difficult to keep things seamless and in check. But what do I know? I just write and act. :grin:

[TimurCivan]

I shot the NYC leg of the Obama/MAccain Nomination Promo Spots for CNN... When you see them cut to NYC, Thats some of the stuff i shoot.

The producers were complaining that the NYC times square locations color was all over till they stepped out of the van and realised therre are 300 foot long, 3 story high walls of LED lights that blink from Blue to red for a bank of America sign. Infact i just got home form the Mccain nomination.

its amazing how much light thoes things throw out. its liek having a 10K behind diffusion, switching Blue, then White, then Red ever 15 seconds.

I dont know about the Convention hall locations, but ive ben battling color all Day. Lucky for me, were shooting F900's and the Colorspace can handle it....

[ugafan]

I shot the NYC leg of the Obama/MAccain Nomination Promo Spots for CNN... When you see them cut to NYC, Thats some of the stuff i shoot.

The producers were complaining that the NYC times square locations color was all over till they stepped out of the van and realised therre are 300 foot long, 3 story high walls of LED lights that blink from Blue to red for a bank of America sign. Infact i just got home form the Mccain nomination.

its amazing how much light thoes things throw out. its liek having a 10K behind diffusion, switching Blue, then White, then Red ever 15 seconds.

I dont know about the Convention hall locations, but ive ben battling color all Day. Lucky for me, were shooting F900's and the Colorspace can handle it....

can the control room adjust the color to make it match up with the other cameras?

[MiniMan13]

can the control room adjust the color to make it match up with the other cameras?

Yea Shouldnt they just have an engineer mess with the CCU's till it looks decent?

[brianluce]

How do the broadcast those little bio films on the jumbotron? Do they just point the camera at the jumbotron? Or do they get a separate feed? I noticed CNN seems to just film the screen, and at an angle.

[Luis Caffesse]

its liek having a 10K behind diffusion, switching Blue, then White, then Red ever 15 seconds.
can the control room adjust the color to make it match up with the other cameras?
Yea Shouldnt they just have an engineer mess with the CCU's till it looks decent?

Sure, but what's the engineer going to do when the light is changing every 15 seconds?
:)

[MiniMan13]

Sure, but what's the engineer going to do when the light is changing every 15 seconds?
:)

Change the Color Temp every 14?

[wabbit]

Some of the color shifting I noticed was during single shots. For example, tonight while McCain was speaking the CU shot of him had his skin tone jumping all around, even while the jumbotron was constant. This effect was on the two of the three networks I jumped between. The worst was PBS, whom for whatever reason, was about 3 seconds ahead of the rest.

If the stage lights were constantly shifting that would account for it but that would seem like a very poor choice for the convention to do.

I noticed similar color shift at the convention hall during the Democratic convention but not at Obama's speech.

I do like the Red/Blue theory though :)

Cheers

[MattinSTL]

I worked the live feed for Fox News last Sunday and we used an Arri 12 HMI to key our correspondents (James Rosen and Carl Cameron)... which basically allowed us to shoot 5600k throughout the entire day.

I don't know why nearly all the cam dudes aren't doing that... but then again I shot B-cam for a guy out in LA that decided to start white balancing at about 2pm and I actually recorded a snippet to the editor by whispering into my cam mic (before the take of course) "you're going to notice the cams no longer matching color. That's not from me, I was just told to white balance."... by dusk I knew nobody was keeping this operation in sync... and naturally the CC on that job was a bitch.

BTW... both James and Carl were very cool... but Carl was surprisingly full of personality. We joked around a lot as we were people watching between hits. I didn't even realize who he was when he walked up and I said "hey that's a really nice shirt"... and I think that lack of concern from me, about who he was, surprised him... or maybe not, but we did have a reasonably fun day... as gigs go.

[Sad Max]

Of course a newscast is theoretically more about content than presentation. Variations in color balance don't really count for much, do they?

[MattinSTL]

We were on PLL with a satellite truck... so if there had been a problem we could fix it pretty fast. The encouraging thing about all this is that there really aren't that many good cameramen. Getting the shot counts for more then getting the shot right, until you get people to understand that you will do both... then you get the job.

The crew I'm on takes this stuff really seriously and producers are always surprised at how much we'll do to get the best possible shot... These camera guys are working 6 days a week because of that... and in the midwest that's really saying something.