How do I develop an eye for "good" color?

I disagree completely, if you color grade a video you should use the best available calibrated monitor, you can't anticipate the myriad of different monitors but you know that your result is correct on a properly calibrated monitor.
It's called adhering to a standard, and that is good!
 
Of course a great monitor is a great thing.

But the op wants to learn and it is important not to build walls against learning because you breed the culture of not shooting until you can afford xyz bit of kit. And good shooters use what they have. Now.

Also when learning colour one may be choosing to colour to please an audience - and colouring a scene that is so dark (for example) that it is mud on a consumer monotor is not audience pleasing.

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INTENT is another valuable word in the learning process.
I notice that my colleague and I are not hot on the software hotkeys but both have a concept for the scenes we colour.
A flipant example..
A shot one could darken clouds to near black - this could be "good" for a horror film but "bad" for a tourism promo. Of course anyone who has seen the end of se7ern know that bad things can happen in the sun.

From watching movies to knowing martin parr and Ansel Adams help develop a sense of how to use colour and contrast.
 
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1) I agree about the value in having a good monitor. It's ideal. I have one.

2) I know people who shoot and color better on crap monitors than people with lots of fancy gear who know lots of lingo.

Use your eyes. Use the best gear you currently have and/or can reasonably and wisely afford. Be better than gear. You can learn a crap ton right now, and often times its our weaknesses in gear, options, or resource that help us develop into someone and something stronger.

I can guarantee you I wouldn't be as good of a motorcycle rider as I am today if I could have afforded the best bike on the market when I started. I can guarantee you I would not be as good of a cook if I had the means to eat out all the time when I was younger. I can guarantee you I would not be as good of a filmmaker if I hadn't been forced to learn how to light better, edit better, stabilize better, frame more careful, etc. in order to make up for my initial crap gear and crap budget shortcomings.

Embrace what you have.

You need a top end monitor to produce reliable results for corporate clients and broadcasters. You don't need one to learn a ton and get way better at understanding color than 80% of the people working in freelance video. Fact.
 
abreu-canedo said:
It seems you are not talking on a general level of creating color palettes or understanding color theory as much as you are talking about the color profiles that come out of a camera. Am I understanding you correctly?

If so, do you have an opinion based on your experience? I just ask because it may help ground the conversation, and ultimately that is what matters.

You can detect accurate colors by using a chart and looking at a vectorscope. You can also look for the way a camera reproduces skin-tones. You can also judge by what camera gives you the best ability to alter and achieve color profiles in post. But defining what "good" color or "bad" color is can be highly unproductive. But my answer is yes, you can learn to develop a sense for color on your own...through experience and second-hand through films and tutorials. But it is really just developing your own taste.
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Yes, straight out of a camera.

I don't have an opinion based on experience, except, that I once had a Panasonic compact. I used it to shoot short clips in the audience of a concert with difficult lighting. This was around 2008. When I watched the footage, I saw that the singers face, even his whole head was burned out white. I also had this effect on a GoPro 3 Black Edition in DCI 4K 12fps mode. Contrary to this, my Canon cameras manged to retain dynamic range.
But other than that my experience is just from what I have read.

My monitor is a LG 31MU97-B http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-31MU97-B-4k-ips-led-monitor, which is hardware calibratable, but I don't have any calibration hardware (No Spyder or the like).
 
Regardless, understanding and developing an eye for color in general (and studying video, scopes, post work, etc is a great way to do this) will assist you in seeing skin tones straight out of the camera.

I once had the same question with sound. I just couldn't hear the difference. I asked around and people said "just trust your ears!" which turned out to be bad advice if you want to develop a good ear and you have bad ears ;) But, listening to a number of speakers - not just in the store, but longer term, helped. It's one thing to listen to a speaker for 30 seconds and then switch. It's another thing to wear a pair of pro headphones for a week, and then swap to crappy earbuds. Or use studio speakers for a month, and then try and switch to a cheap $100 logitech computer speaker setup that sounds muddy.

Likewise, you're going to develop this by intentional effort and exposure, and so doing things beyond just looking at footage straight out of camera is what will help you develop the eye. Part of my developing an ear for sound was working in post and trying to fight off bad signal to noise ratios, comparing high end microphones I used or rented on shoots VS my own, messing with audio settings. Time, effort, exposure - using tools in post, analysis, or other methods here is really the only way. It doesn't mean you need to become a master colorist (I am still by no means an audiophile), but how can you expect to see and understand color if you don't spend intentional time dabbling in it and learning to discern it?
 
When I moved to LA from a (relatively provincial) Midwest in the late-80's, I was given this advice by a friend who tried his hand in the clothing business. "If you want to buy a good suit, go to a top retailer, see what they have and then try to find the closest possible facsimile within your budget". The same can pretty much apply to the entertainment industry visuals. Although the directors' preferences will vary across the board, rent an Oscar/Emmy nominated cinematography on a Blu-Ray (with the exception of Carmen ... eh, Claudio Miranda films), look at the top pros choices and see what you like an what you don't like.

PS. As a side note, the late great Gordon Willis was not into bright colors, calling it "an explosion inside a Sherwin Williams store". Others called him a "Prince of darkness" for his preference for the underlit, somber scenes and earth tones.
 
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