Blue Bomber
Well-known member
Note that I just got the GH2 a few weeks ago, so I'm still in my testing phase. 
Shot some drifting vids on Sat evening/night, starting under daylight which transitioned into artificial lighting as the night went on. I was using Daylight WB until there was a break in the action where I could correct the WB (7K with some tweaking). By then, though, it was dark, and I was shooting under the lights.
I had shot a bunch of runs in the dark under the Daylight setting, which of course appeared orange under the artificial lighting. What I noticed when I went to correct the color was that the mids were much brighter after correction than the shots that used the correct WB from the start. There wasn't any added discoloration or increased noise (already at ISO 2500) from the correction, either. In fact, when I tried to pull up the exposure on the 7K WB shot to match, the noise was quite noticeable, even after using the Canis Majoris Night hack (supposedly the best high ISO one currently available). Both were shot under the same shutter speed/aperture/ISO, too.
Just wondering if there's an optimal way to set WB in low light situations for exposure, instead of setting it to accurately reproduce the scene. I'm gonna see if I have time tonight to go out and do some testing with WB under street lights, along with a color calibration chart. Obviously, there was more red light from the artificial lighting than white or blue, so that's why the exposure was brighter in the end. But if that's the case, why doesn't everyone adjust the WB based on the dominant light color under low lighting situations to get the brightest image possible? Seems that with high bitrate, you don't run into weird color artifacts after correction like regular DSLR video. Also brings up the idea of using UniWB, since it will show the highest dynamic range available from the sensor for JPG/video output...
Shot some drifting vids on Sat evening/night, starting under daylight which transitioned into artificial lighting as the night went on. I was using Daylight WB until there was a break in the action where I could correct the WB (7K with some tweaking). By then, though, it was dark, and I was shooting under the lights.
I had shot a bunch of runs in the dark under the Daylight setting, which of course appeared orange under the artificial lighting. What I noticed when I went to correct the color was that the mids were much brighter after correction than the shots that used the correct WB from the start. There wasn't any added discoloration or increased noise (already at ISO 2500) from the correction, either. In fact, when I tried to pull up the exposure on the 7K WB shot to match, the noise was quite noticeable, even after using the Canis Majoris Night hack (supposedly the best high ISO one currently available). Both were shot under the same shutter speed/aperture/ISO, too.
Just wondering if there's an optimal way to set WB in low light situations for exposure, instead of setting it to accurately reproduce the scene. I'm gonna see if I have time tonight to go out and do some testing with WB under street lights, along with a color calibration chart. Obviously, there was more red light from the artificial lighting than white or blue, so that's why the exposure was brighter in the end. But if that's the case, why doesn't everyone adjust the WB based on the dominant light color under low lighting situations to get the brightest image possible? Seems that with high bitrate, you don't run into weird color artifacts after correction like regular DSLR video. Also brings up the idea of using UniWB, since it will show the highest dynamic range available from the sensor for JPG/video output...