Calibrating the Panasonic HD BT-LH1700WE B montior and your HVX

J

jamessilverman5678

Member
i just did this shoot and had a hard time getting the montior not too look green, or even come close to what was in both cameras view finders. i assume it was on factory settings. i was going by the view finders on the shoot, but how do i get see what i am gonna get. or better yet, what the director is gonna get. please help.

thanks
james
 
Did you calibrate using the bars and blue gun only? If so you could safely trust what was on your production montior. There is no real way to calibrate the LCD on the camera so you shouldn't use them for color judgement, even if two or more cameras look the same.

The ambient light on your shoot will have an effect. If your set was bright then your monitor will appear dark. The type of lighting will also effect the color you see on the monitor. You should position the monitor in a way to avoid direct lighting and there should be a hood on it. Once you have the monitor positioned then do your calibration.

Better yet, use the built-in waveform and scopes on the Panasonic monitor to make your color judgements and you'll never go wrong.
 
It might be time for a deep dive. The white/black balance on a monitor is set by rgb gain/bias controls. The hue controls the color angle and not the white or blacks. Two simple tests will demonstrate this. 1. Running component disconnect the r and b, still green? 2 Running composite or s-video crank the hue from side to side you'll notice that the white and black doesn't change color. No amount of chroma/hue treaking is going to fix the white balance issue.

To help, make sure your color temp is at 6500, which is the standard. If you don't have rgb white/black controls see if you can't unlock a service mode that will let you adjust the rgb balance. I notice there is also a 232 pc interface that may allow white/black adjustment. Then really to do this right you need a probe but it's probably safe to take out a little green and add a little red.

If you can't change the rgb gain/bias just send it back to panasonic and have THEM recalibrate it. A broadcast monitor that's too green is defective and completely defeats the point. Their service is spectacular. I had my HVX repaired and returned to me in a week including shipping. Good Luck.
 
The Pansonic 17" monitors tend to be very green. If yours looks green it is probably not your real picture. It's what you get for only a $3000 HD monitor (facitious am I?). Also they are not all the same. Mine is much less green than my buddies, but they are both green.

The consensus from smarter people than me is that you can tweak the interior color gains and get a much better looking picture but it will never be perfect, what might look great for flesh tones may not be ideal for say product work.

I don't have my monitor in front of me so i can't recall the exact menu path, but you need to get into the menu that allows you to adjust the color balance settings. You will find items called Var 1, Var 2 etc. Open that item. Leave the basic setting on 6500K but adjust your high red almost or all the way up and your high green a similar amount down.
Do the same with your Low Red & green.

These are very approximate settings and they will be different for each monitor so its a crap shoot, but this will help a great deal. Maybe yours will only need t half the correction. There is no technically correct setting as far as I can see. My friend sent his back to Panny and 3 months later it came back unchanged.

My suggestion would be to set the Panny against a monitor you know is good ( SD from composite out is fine like a decent 8045). Play with your settings till it looks close. That should give a pretty reliable image though you may never get rid of all the green in the blacks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top