ChromaDuMonde and Vectorscope readings

[MichaelTiemann]

I have a shiny new ChromaDuMonde 28-R optical signal generator. After whitebalancing the camera (in daylight, so there's no question that we're dealing with full-spectrum light), the hexagon in the vectorscope is very skewed and small. Now, the idea of ChromaDuMonde is to use "realistic, desaturated colors from nature", so I can turn up the Chroma Gain to +7 and that makes my hexagon much larger (although none of the colors reach full saturation when I do this). Red is the color that's closest to its vectorscope box: it's just a touch short, but dead-center on the line between the central box and the red box. Magenta is probably the next best color: it's not quite on center, and a bit shorter than the red, but the parade of colors from red to magenta is by no means a straight line. There's a pretty sharp saturation falloff moving from the red box toward magenta, and then saturation is slowly regained as it marches toward magenta.

Blue is read with even less saturation, and Green even less. But where things really fall apart is Yellow (which really misses its box) and Cyan (which has half the saturation of the other colors, and barely makes itself visible as a vertex between Green and Blue).

Anybody else tested the reference colors of the HMC150 and come to any conclusions on the best way to interpret the color saturation levels that it produces?

 

[Barry_Green]

You sound like you know what you're doing, so this message is probably beneath you, but in case yo're new to the 150 I figured I'd throw this out there. Color saturation and how they approach the vectors are dependent on what you have your matrix, chroma level, color temp, and chroma phase settings set to. The norm1 matrix should be the most neutral, the cine matrix is the most saturated, etc.

 

[MichaelTiemann]

You sound like you know what you're doing,

More like "really willing to learn"

so this message is probably beneath you, but in case yo're new to the 150 I figured I'd throw this out there. Color saturation and how they approach the vectors are dependent on what you have your matrix, chroma level, color temp, and chroma phase settings set to. The norm1 matrix should be the most neutral, the cine matrix is the most saturated, etc.

I meant to mention that I was using the default scene file, i.e., HD Norm, Auto Knee, etc. My real question is not so much about the saturation as to why there is such a marked difference in the levels of saturation the camera is willing to produce as one heads around the color wheel.

I'll post an image shortly...that will be worth far more than my blathering.

 

[MichaelTiemann]

Here's a photo showing my vectorscope result with Scene file 1, all defaults except WB (set to what was measured) and Chroma Level (+7).

 

[bill totolo]

This may be something you already know: The ChromaDuMondes usually require you to turn the gain on your Vectorscopr to 2X, it should say this directly on the chart. If you try to hit the color targets otherwise you'll end up over saturating your image.

 

[MichaelTiemann]

This may be something you already know: The ChromaDuMondes usually require you to turn the gain on your Vectorscopr to 2X, it should say this directly on the chart. If you try to hit the color targets otherwise you'll end up over saturating your image.

Yes, I do know that. I'm trying to understand what I need to do to get a less skewed-looking hexagon.

BTW, it appears that the HPX300 allows such flexibility that the color matrix can really change the shape of the vectorscope image. (HPX300 Scene files with vectorscope traces) The changes possible on the HMC150 and HPX170 (not surprisingly) seem far more limited (HPX170 Scene files with vectorscope traces).

And it seems there is nothing that cannot be done with the color matrix of the HPX2700, which can even go negative:

 

[bill totolo]

I would start with known color sources such as 3200 Kelvin tungsten lighting, see what that hexagon looks like before white balancing for outdoor lighting.

Just my .02