DVX100B - White balance wavers even in manual

U

usatraveler

New member
Trying to figure out what might be at the root of this - I've noticed that while shooting, even on a manually-set white balance, the color of a shot will "waver" without any camera movement or lighting changes. The shot will look normal, then over the course of a few seconds it will gradually show a heavy reddish tint, then gradually shift back to normal, and it repeats itself, cycling.

Any guesses?
 
yes this does happen offen if you shoot in manual mode but since you are mentioning it i can't think of anything else.

how many hours does the dvx have?
have you ever thought about taking it to repair?
 
So it seems as if this is something that does occasionally happen? I'll play around to see if I can find a workaround until I can get it checked out.

It has about 130 hours, relatively new. Repair has been a thought, just didn't know if anyone knew of anything obvious that I could change that I had overlooked before.
 
usatraveler said:
It has about 130 hours, relatively new. Repair has been a thought, just didn't know if anyone knew of anything obvious that I could change that I had overlooked before.
Click to expand...

can't be broken then. 130 hours isn't a lot at all.
once more make sure the white balance is correct and set it on A or B. not the PRST. can't think of anything else if it still does it so maybe someone else can give you advise.
Good luck
 
jordandov said:
Does it show up in post?
Click to expand...

Yes, it does, at least sometimes. I'm not sure if it depends on the lighting condition, I'll have to try it in a few places. The difficulty is that much of what I'd shot recently has been for other people, where it was their tape that I would give them immediately after shooting, and I never really got to see the result. Still, if the issue has appeared on tape, they haven't noticed.

That said, I don't really recall seeing this problem under sunlight, which was the condition on all of the recent tapes that I didn't keep. However, I noticed it once indoors at an arena (maybe flourescent? Mercury vapor? not sure now) a few weeks back, and I noticed it again yesterday under stadium lights at night (Mercury vapor?).

As for A/B/PRST, it was on B, and it was not on ATW; I had manually white-balanced beforehand.

EDIT: Re-tested a few minutes ago at home under some flourescent and incandescent, didn't notice anything. My guess is that it was the type of light in use, but it seemed odd to me that it would do it in a cyclical way like that, and also that it was fairly drastic. All of this with it being set to manual. If it is indeed the type of light causing this, and if this is normal manual-WB operation in mercury-vapor lights, any suggested way to work around it? ATW? I'm admittedly relatively new to dealing with these lighting situations on this camera, pardon my lack of knowledge.
 
Last edited:
A little bit of quick searching on other sites about mercury-vapor lighting seems to indicate some flicker and color-shifting. Does this seem to be in line with the type of wavering I'm seeing? If shutter matters, I was going at 1/250 at the most recent occurrence, but I don't remember what I was using a few weeks back at the indoor arena.
 
did you try hooking it up directly to your computer and watching without being recorded to tape? maybe your tape drive is messed up... but now that you mention your tests, it could have been the lighting... did you test in sunlight?

i seem to remember seeing it tint to greenish for 1 or 2 seconds a few times a while back but it did not show up in post. did you see the color fluctuations on your screen, evf or both?
 
andythefilmer said:
did you try hooking it up directly to your computer and watching without being recorded to tape? maybe your tape drive is messed up... but now that you mention your tests, it could have been the lighting... did you test in sunlight?

i seem to remember seeing it tint to greenish for 1 or 2 seconds a few times a while back but it did not show up in post. did you see the color fluctuations on your screen, evf or both?
Click to expand...

I used a FireStore FS-4 ProHD for post, bypassing the tape drive though simultaneously recording to tape. I saw the color cycling on the EVF, on my screen, on the FS-4, on the tape.

The bulk of what I've shot in the last few weeks has been in sunlight (or, well, under cloudy skies and rain), and I have not noticed any such fluctuation. My gut says now, with reasonable certainty, that with the 1/250 shutter, each frame was catching these lights at a different point in their 60Hz pulse cycle, similar to when I point the camera at a scoreboard using LED lights while I have the shutter on; sometimes I see the display, sometimes I don't.

Still, I'll be on the lookout for any further issue in other lighting condition.

That said, any suggestion on how to deal with this kind of cycling if the lighting is indeed the issue? There's enough available lighting to use the shutter, and this is fast-moving action, so I don't want to have to turn off the shutter or drop it down to 1/60 if I don't have to. Do I just have to resign myself to the fact that this is going to happen and I can't do anything about it?

Thanks to all for the troubleshooting check-up and suggestions. Now that I think of it, there's this annoying sound that only happens when the camera is off...when I tilt the camera back and forth, it makes this "clunk" noise........... :)
 
Off-speed fluorescents (like 50Hz lights and a 60Hz camera) will cause this, and mercury-vapor and sodium-vapor lights will cause it.

Or, using a high shutter speed (like 1/250) under conventional fluorescents.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top