fottage red or Blue Indoors

M

Monteh

New member
First of all I am happy to be a brand new member to this forum and also a new owner of a HMC40. We webcast Junior A Hockey games and just pruchased this HMC40 which will be the camera we have in the pressbox. It will pan back and forth from one end of the rink to the other. The rink is well lit.

In auto mode the color is either redish or blue in color. When we zoom in on the white ice and wait for the WB to set and zoom out it isn't too bad but when we start panning up and down the ice it changes to a more redish or bluish color again. I tried the presets but didn't find anything natural looking.

Am I missing something simple here. Remember I have had this camera for about a week and have watched some how to videos on Youtube. They gave me an outlook on the features and about the scene files. But I have some questions. If I go to manual mode set the WB then select scene 1 and then change some settings trying to get a good picture, then save the scene file. When I load it and it tells me to power off and I power up again will the settings I just made including the WB be active even if I am in auto mode or do I have to go in manual mode to have the settings in scene one active. I want the auto focus to be active.

Or is there a simple setting I am missing that would cause this change between the blue and red tinting.

BTW if it is just pointed in the pressbox or I take it home and use it anywhere in the house it is fine. Perfect picture. Just when it is pointed out at the ice surface does it do this blue/red tinting thing.

Thanks and sorry if I rambled on.
 
Turn off the auto white balance. Bad idea to ever use it. Pick something in the arena that looks close to what you want white to be or use a gray or white card and do a manual white balance. Indoors under constant lighting conditions you never want your white balance changing while you shoot.
 
I set the white balance both on a white card and zoomed in on the ice. With both it is still a little on the red side. but not bad. I guess I could go in and adjust some color settings and save them in scene one.
 
I will try the off white (grey) card and see if something that happens. Other than the white balance this it has worked good for us.
 
You can also assign ATWLOCK to one of your user buttons and lock in the white balance when you think it looks good, and it'll stay that way.

And all your settings are preserved when you turn it off.
 
I imagine the rinks you shoot at use sodium vapor lighting. It has what is known as a dis-continuous spectrum and is hard/impossible to color balance because some colors just aren't there. Barry's idea to lock in a setting is the way to go because auto balance will just continuously hunt (and never find) the correct balance.
 
I have been playing with it for a few nights. I assigned ATW to user 1 and ATW locked to User 2. I saved some settings in scene 1. I used a greyish card to set it. It is close but if I look at the LCD screen with the rink in the background it is still a little redish. But it is hard to see it as all the seats in the rink are red. I am starting to think I am seeing red without looking through the camera. :-)

I'll keep working at it.
 
I tried the 18% grey card and it seems to do the trick pretty close. We will see how the game goes on saturday.

thanks for the help
 
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