Documentary Color Disaster

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djkoz

Well-known member
On Monday Cleveland played host to a speech given by President Bush. I went downtown with the intent of filming the demonstrations and interviewing people on both sides of the Iraqi war issue. This was really my first attempt at using the camera in a serious way other than taking some footage of a family event and some video on a vacation.

My video footage did not turn out very well and I am looking for some advice as to how to improve my next attempt.

For background I was using a Panasonic DVX 100A, and I shot in 24pA squeeze mode with a CINE LIKE setting. It was a cold, mostly cloudy day in Cleveland, but then again, what day isn’t?

I did not set the color balance before the actual shooting, I thought I had the Auto Tracking White feature engaged. However, I must have somehow set the switch to either position A or B for fully 2/3 of my footage came out with a red / crimson cast. I can probably figure out what to do next time, but what to do with the footage I have? I’ve experimented with various color FX in Vegas and managed to improve the color somewhat but not really to the point where it looks natural. (I probably don’t know how to use the FX properly.) It would be nice if there were a Vegas FX that simply allowed you to set a slider with the color temperature of the actual light source (say 6500K for a cloudy day) and then set or experiment with a second slider to represent the color temperature at which the camera was incorrectly set, and then magically correct the color. Is there such a beast? and if so, where can I get it?




Thank you very much in advance for your suggestions and advice.

Dan K
 
Unfortunatly, changing color balance from tungsten to daylight in post will never give you satisfactory results. My best advice, make it black and white. If you could post a grabs maybe someone else could take a hack at it, and see how bad the damage is.

I have to ask you one question though. Didn't you notice the color balance issue while shooting? Just wondering. :)
 
Thanks for the replies. Here are a couple of pictures from the video. The first is off color and the second appears to be OK.

1.
image0.jpg


2.
image2.jpg
 
Here is something that I did with just Color Balance and CC. 5 minutes...

Image1.jpg


This is ugly because it is uprezzed. Ignore the softness.
 
Documentary Color Disaster

Thanks for the reply.

Can you tell me what setting you used for the filters? I've played around with these FX but was unable to get as close to natural color as you obtained.

Thanks,

Dan K
 
Alright, well I forgot that I didn't save the session, but it's really simple.

Color balance first, I took out the red and bumped the greens a little bit. I think i had it set to effect the midtones but check the highlights too. Then with the CC I just bumped the yellow mids up a bit.
 
Documentary Disaster

Documentary Disaster

Thanks.

I played around with several color correction FXs in Vegas and managed to correct the color to an acceptable level, though not quite as good as you achieved.

Dan K
 
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