HPX170 White Balance Problem - Need Help

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pg00990099

New member
Hello, I am a working videographer, not a beginner, but not a seasoned pro. I have owned the HPX170 for over a year and I still can't seem to get my white balance to look correct.

My picture seems to always look a little blue, or a little reddish. I can't seem to lock in correct color.

Yesterday I was shooting outdoors and I white balanced on a white card and when the camera was low to show grass, there was no green. It looks very brown. Overall the entire picture just didn't look right. The overall color looks off. Almost like it is missing blue. Same problems indoor. White light almost looks a little purpleish when balanced.

When I use Auto white balance, it still looks off. When I transfer the footage to my computer (Avid Media Composer 3), the color shifts again and looks purpleish/blue/reddish.

I am just not sure about what I am getting. I have everything on the camera set at dead 0.

Here is a link to see what I talking about. This is a video I did recently. Please watch it through. On the camera LCD is looked fine. You can see that it looks really red.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REwYEdrpzRk

My question is: Can something be wrong with the camera? Or can someone give me a Pro tip on whitebalancing correctly. Because what I am seeing is not what I am getting.

Thank You.
 
1. How often do you black balance?

2. Do you have ATW enabled?

3. What would your 5600k preset looked like for this shot? What would have been your complaint about the 5600k preset?

I find the WB on the 170 to be great, peraps your camera is messed up?

Dan
 
I have black balanced once, when I got the camera. I am going to conclude "my user errors" are causing my problems.

Can you give me more info on the white balance steps you take in different situations?
 
It doesn't hurt to black balance more often. I do it usually once every shoot after I white balance. I shoot a lot of multiple camera shoots with the 170 and the 200, which are fairly close in color. Generally, I will use preset WB and shoot a chip chart. I have a nice still photo chip chart that has a black, white and 18% gray chip. The idea isn't always to shoot with the most accurate colors. For a lot of what I shoot, the directors I work with seem to always want skin tones and BGs to look rich and warm. This is best achieved on post IMHO so the objective is to match the cameras reasonably close together and add the warmth in post.

I will generally do a manual white balance and then flick back and forth between that new manual white balance setting and the preset setting that matches the lighting. I use whichever looks the most accurate to my eye. But like most people, I don't drag a broadcast accurate monitor to every shoot, I often am using the camera's LCD or a consumer HD monitor, neither of which are particularly color accurate. This makes me tend to want to use camera WB presets more than manual WB because at least then I have a baseline for all of the cmaeras. That, of course, doesn't mean that the 5600k preset on this camera will match that camera, but it will generally be "in the neighborhood".

The rest of the equation is Final Cut's 3-way color corrector or using Color and using my chip chart. I can generally match color pretty closely.

It sounds as if you have a different issue though, which is you don't like the colors your camera is giving to you. That is a separate issue than white balancing generally. Have you tried changing or modifying your scene file until the colors look the way you want them to?

Dan
 
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