Color Matching FX6 with FX9 (and FS7)

[ahalpert]

Thanks, Abe. Will your fs7 only come out for higher end client work now that you have the FX3/A7SIII combo?

Nothing is really going to change. I only use my FS7 for interviews and generally shoots that expect a "real" camera. Which are all sort of my higher end work, but not always. And for gimbal-only stuff, i don't use it. For weddings I don't use it. For interviews and things that I produce myself, I don't use it or it's a B cam. (So, now it would become a C cam for that stuff and it should be great to have matching A/B cameras for that sort of thing, but matching color was not the primary reason I bought it)

 

[Grug]

But remember, I'm trying to get the cameras to match live -- if you're doing your color in post give Grug's recommended Cinematch a try.

In theory, if you got a good-enough match from Cinematch (or cinematch + a few tweaks) in Davinci. You could combine it with a LUT you like (S709 or Arri Rec709 for example), and then export those corrections as LUTs that could be fed into the cameras you're looking to match to your main camera. You'd then have the corrected and Rec709'd images all feeding out of the SDIs, and could use that for matched live imagery.

 

[OnSet]

In theory, if you got a good-enough match from Cinematch (or cinematch + a few tweaks) in Davinci. You could combine it with a LUT you like (S709 or Arri Rec709 for example), and then export those corrections as LUTs that could be fed into the cameras you're looking to match to your main camera. You'd then have the corrected and Rec709'd images all feeding out of the SDIs, and could use that for matched live imagery.

Thanks Grug,
You're making me want to try this.
Do you ever do this on set? - and if so, how much time would you estimate (budget) per camera?
(Between production-owned cameras, rental cameras and operators bringing their own cameras on the shoot day, there's a low likelihood of having the cameras to do this in advance for many shoots.)

 

[Grug]

Thanks Grug,
You're making me want to try this.
Do you ever do this on set? - and if so, how much time would you estimate (budget) per camera?
(Between production-owned cameras, rental cameras and operators bringing their own cameras on the shoot day, there's a low likelihood of having the cameras to do this in advance for many shoots.)

No, I’ve never bothered with it myself (most of what I shoot we’re grading in post) and I tend not to stress about on-set monitoring accuracy, because you’re rarely viewing in ideal conditions anyway.

Plus the few live shoots I work on, are generally with matched cameras Venice or F55s, and we’ll have a CCU operator for those.

But making the tranform LUTs in Resolve would only take a few minutes, so it’s really just the LUT transfer process for each camera that you’d need to be up-to-date on.

 

[bracherb]

I currently own a Sony FS7 and have matched it to a Sony A7Sii for live switching. I've done this by tweaking one of the A7Sii's picture profiles to match the FS7 when in HG2 mode. Now I'm thinking of upgrading my A7Sii to an FX3. Has anyone successfully matched the Sony FS7 and FX3 in camera? Are there any concerns with matching these two cameras? Please note that I wouldn't be shooting in S-Log, since I'm live switching.

 

[JimmyMcV]

Thanks for all the input.

My shoot is complete. Now the color-correcting begins. We shot with the FX6 and FX9 in CineEI Slog3.

We color-balanced at the same time off a grey card and then we shot the same color chart in the same position.

Unfortunately, I screwed up my white balance 5 minutes into the shoot. This is only my second shoot with this cam, folks. I pressed the wrong button!

I meant to press the "push auto" button to temporarily bring in autofocus and instead I pushed the button below it for Auto White Balance. And then in my panic I didn't hit "cancel." 20 seconds later, not knowing any way to get back to what I had -- it would have been nice to have an UNDO button -- I basically just dialed in the white balance to about the same temperature number.
But it doesn't look the same, folks. I must say, the footage before the white balance eff-up looks GORGEOUS! So my first task is to try to color correct to get back to how it looked before the mishap.

How would you go about doing - trying to match the image to myself?
Should I try this Cinematch?

I haven't tried to see what, if any, difference there is between the FX6 and FX9 footage. First I just want to color correct my FX6. Because if I can get it looking as good as it did before my White Balance fat finger f*&%-up, this is going to be easy because it looked great!