EX1 has very strange black balance problem

F

Fergus

New member
At least I think it's the black balance..
I white balance the camera, and very often the blacks will go Magenta. So a dark blue or grey suit jacket will become dark red, purple or brown. Once it went green. Mostly Skin tones are not affected but not always; or at least they sometimes come out looking a bit strange. The white balance is fine: white is white. Doing a black balance in FCP gets me back into the right ball-park but it's not ideal.
I've had the camera for a couple of months and have seen this effect in many different lighting setups.

I've read about an Infrared problem with the EX1 and the first and worst example of this effect I had filming next to a Red curtain (maybe Jim Jannard has jinxed it.. LOL), but I just experienced it yesterday under pure Tungsten light.

Have any of you experienced a similar effect?

Here are some pics: In all these cases the jacket was really dark blue or grey... :embarasse
 

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You bet. I just filmed a concert where the conductor's jacket came out magenta when in reality it was black. You need an IR filter in front of the lens to fix this problem correctly. The EX-1 displays this problem the worst out of the many cameras I use day to day.
 
I thought as much.. It's a massive problem for me.
Are Sony planning to do anything about it? I've a mind to send it in for repair.. lol
What's the current strategy for fixing the colour in FCP? Doing a black balance on the offending "Purple" jacket mostly seems to work but the jacket might not actually be black.
 
I doubt you can really fix it in post successfully because the infrared has polluted the color purity. I mean, maybe if you did a spot color correction on only certain elements...

But yes, this is the infrared problem, and tungsten lighting is the worst for causing it (tungsten lights, being on the redder end of the spectrum, are more prone to spewing out infrared).

There are several companies who are trying to introduce appropriate infrared filters for use in front of the lens. I'm not sure what the current state of affairs is on that though.
 
if it's anything like the red it's also bad when stacking a lot of nd too.
hot mirror for indoors and ir nd's for outdoors.
 
Hey Barry, I bought a Lowel Rifa light with tungsten heads and it also has the IR problem. Would switching to the FL adapter get rid of this problem (either the single head or the 3-head option)?
 
I bought a Lowel Rifa light with tungsten heads and it also has the IR problem.
Click to expand...
The problem isn't the light, it's the camera's weak IR filtering. Most every tungsten light is going to spew out too much IR for the EX1's liking. If you want to be able to use tungsten lighting, you may have to look into getting an additional IR filter.
 
Barry_Green said:
The problem isn't the light, it's the camera's weak IR filtering. Most every tungsten light is going to spew out too much IR for the EX1's liking. If you want to be able to use tungsten lighting, you may have to look into getting an additional IR filter.
Click to expand...

That was part of my question. If I use the FL heads instead of the tungsten heads in my Rifa, will the FL's put out any IR?
 
On a side Note.

I called Sony to inquire about this issue and the tech had not heard of it and there was only one call in that he found after searching that had mentioned brown blacks.

He said the issue was resolved with a pedestal adjustment.

I think some more EX-1 owners need to speak up to Sony if this happens to a lot of folks.
 
Call the Sony guy again and tell him it was an IR issue and if they say they haven't heard of it they're either woefully uninformed about their own product or not allowed to talk about it. It should be well known by now.
 
I shot a concert last March, with a pair of V1Us and the EX1. The orchestra members were wearing black. Some of the violin section were wearing black velvet. On the V1U, they appear black in the video, but the EX1 shots of those players clearly show a burgundy reddish color to their outfits.
This video has not yet been released, but I will keep my ears open to any comments I may receive about the clothing colors changing in the video. This COULD become a serious issue with them, or it could go unnoticed.
 
While you might be able to tune out the red in black velvet, it might also end up misadjusting other black fabric colors, or a black piano on a stage, for example.
 
anyone know if placing a ir-filter between the camera lens and an 35 adapter achromat is a good idea?
 
I can confirm that using the 486 between the Letus achromat and the EX1 lens doesn't pose any additional problems than using it as the outermost optical element (at least, I personally don't see anything apart from the same green tint; in fact it tends to happen less often with Letus as you don''t use the widest angle).
 
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