Washed colours in stage light and bad 4:2:0 artifacts

[Jacob Nielsen]

Main white stage lights were rather dim - but those blue and red backlights very strong. Gain was +3. Shot in 720P. How would you guys white balance this? Probably it would have helped if a little warmer balanced to avoid the washed blue colors? FYI i chose one of those "HVX simulating" PP settings found on another board. Next time I'm trying without any PP. Of course the lighting was very bad for camera work - but if I can't convince the light techinician to dim the backlights and turn up the main lights - is this as good as it gets with EX1?

:dankk2:

 

[matthew77]

Looks like you are clipping on the blue and green channels (the cyan areas in the second grab) and in the blue and red channels on the first grab. Slight clipping would look a lot better than clipping in broader parts of the image. I would be sure to use a cine gamma curve so that the slope leading to the clipping is reasonable soft. And then I would lower the exposure in camera and boost it in post. Cine 4 would probably be a good choice for this shot because it is relatively more sensitve to shadows while rolling off the highlights.

I would avoid any PP that tries to make this camera look like another camera (especially the HVX!). That's a folly, and it will limit your options dramatically by throwing out lots of information before you get a chance to play with it in post. Extreme situations like this require that you capture the greatest dynamic range possible so that you can grade in post for the most pleasing effect.

 

[moldcad]

Cine 4 would probably be a good choice for this shot because it is relatively more sensitve to shadows while rolling off the highlights.

Beware of black stretching that Cine4 does - the stage dark background may become noisy!

 

[matthew77]

The noise is there whether you stretch it (which makes it more visible) or not - you can always crush the blacks back down in post.

 

[devnull]

Why are you blaming 4:2:0?

 

[kubalsky]

When you say 720p do you mean 24p 30p or 60p? 24p and shutter at 1/48 would be best, what shutter speed? you using the Bill Ravens PP thats been posted? great for daylight and certain well lit night scenes but too dark at night generally. I would have tried the standard PP or a cine setting. Also , flick over from the preset white balance and scroll through the tempratures till your happy.

 

[Stevet]

Blue channel clipped. Happens to all cameras if you're not careful with the exposure under those particular lighting conditions.

 

[basspig]

There are two things I can say about this issue:

1. The image is about 3 f-stops overexposed.
2. The EX1 does a poor job downsampling colors to 720p.

I'll elaborate on 2.:
I shot some 720p footage a while back in which there was a red satin cover on something in the frame. On playback, that red was pixellated. I also shot some 1080p footage of that same object and it was sharp and crisp all along it's edges. I concluded that there was a deficiency in the way color gets resampled to 720p in the EX1. I try to avoid 720p for anything with intense colors.

 

[Jacob Nielsen]

Well - now that helped I think! Thanks to you all for your advice! I think I improved on my next shoot: I asked the light technician to bring up the front lights, dim the backlights and make as even a light level across the whole range of the stage. Thus I went from +3db f:2,8 from previous shoot to -3db f:3.4, made a "concert" profile with CINE4, dialed the white preset to my wish and voila! Same F-stop on all frame grabs. But next time I'm going for 1080p as adviced by basspig. This is non CC'ed. I'm really amazed by the dynamic range and the low light performance of this camera! Thanks again!

 

[Stevet]

Wow..
Nice work. It looks great man!
I imagine it would look even better at full 1920x1080

Nothing like good old Shure SM58 mics flooding the stage..
Not to mention hot chics in their nighties! LOL

 

[adamr316]

I was going to advise this but you've already done it. Congrats on shoot #2, you're images look real nice!

TV people always need to talk to stage lighting people. It's absolutely critical. Lighting for the human eye is different from lighting for a camera as well all know.

This is probably the biggest peeve of low-end to medium-end videographers who tape concert or play performances. We inevitably need to ride the iris to compensate for uneven lighting that looks fine to the naked eye. Or we end up with situations that our cameras cannot physically deal with like the first post's screengrabs.

The best way/easiest way to rectify situations like this is to talk with the lighting design team ahead of time. WAY ahead of time if possible so as to not make them do more work than they need to. And do camera tests before the "real" gig. That's what all the big time pros do. All this stuff is planned for months, setup for TV and tested/finalized at dress rehearsal.