Jazz Band Grabs

.Alex

.Alex

Active member
Hi Guys,

I recently went to watch a Jazz Festival and took my DVX along with me, really just to have a play and grab some footage of the family etc.

The organisers of the event saw the camera and asked if I could film one of the acts.

I'd never met the band before; didn't really have a chance to chat to the lighting guys; it was literally a case of just shooting on the spot.

The lighting (as you can see) was pretty red (think it must be a Jazz thing!?!) which is a shame.

Most of these shots seem to have a lot of noise in them. Is this because it was too dark? Does red light cause noise (I thought it was blue)? Or am I just cr*p and had my camera setup totally wrong?  ;D

I filmed at 25P (yep PAL) scene F5, default settings. Grabs are taken from Vegas 5.

Any feedback would be great.

Sian Brown 1.jpg


Salamander-6.jpg


Salamander-7.jpg


Salamander-8.jpg


Salamander-10.jpg
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

The organisers gave me access to the stage so I just zoomed in as much as I could from the side and front of it.

The organisers did say that I could go on the stage, but seeing as I hadn't met the band and they probably didn't know what was going on, I thought it would be best not to steal their limelight. 8)
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

These are really nice grabs. I'd guess the red is there because you didn't set the white balance - either manually or using a 3.2K preset.
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

[quote author=.Alex link=board=Clips;num=1108648600;start=0#0 date=02/17/05 at 05:56:40]The lighting (as you can see) was pretty red (think it must be a Jazz thing!?!) which is a shame.[/quote]

The red is a common problem with lighting at concerts. Even if you white balanced you might still have problems. Especially if they are pumping lots of reds. Then there's the issue of how the dvx handles reds.

Luckily, you can clean up those images a little by doing some quick color correction. Try reducing the red, playing with the hue/saturation, the black levels in the shadows, and finally the contrast.
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

I did try to white balance, but it was a bit tricky to do it accurately at the time; I thought this could be a source of the problem, but they were pumping loads of red and magenta onto the stage.

In these kinds of situations is it best just to select one of the presets?

Hans - Thanks for the colour correction tips, I'll have a play with those and see if I can improve them.
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

i was under the impession that the dvx handled reds verywell? or is it just better than other video cameras?
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

Here are the first two with some quick color correction:


48122831.jpg

48122808.jpg

​

  • Auto Levels
  • Color Balance (-40,0,0) drop the red
  • Darken Shadows
  • Reduce Saturation
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

Try dropping some of the levels down towards black next time you color correct and use the gamma to control the mid tones
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

Thanks Shooter, and thanks to Hans to for his color corrected grabs.
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

with the different colors used in concerts, i believe it is darn near impossible to get a decent white balance.I would just preset it and go with that.Never had a problem in preset for a concert using betacam sp,dvcpro, or the dvx.
 
Re: Jazz Band Grabs

The thing about white balance in this instance is that you do it before you enter the area lit by stage lights. You could use a tungsten (3200k) preset because you would expect that inside. Then all the gels on the lights will show as the lighting designer intended. eg. green , red, mauve, orange etc. The idea of WB is a "reference to white" and in some instances it is used to "correct the color temp of the source lights. Not in a stage lighting situation because you would neutralise the colour to reference white. (eg accurate skin tones)
 
I hope replying to a very old thread is OK. I've been doing a lot of shooting at indoor music events with stage lighting, and the biggest frustration I currently have is that while everything else is rendered pretty accurately (using the 3.2K preset), magenta comes out as orangey-red. It's clearly visible in the viewfinder and screen on the DVX100B. Older footage doesn't seem to be so badly affected, so is it likely that a fault has developed with the cam? I've been using the preset FLUOR scene to try to improve matters, but it doesn't make much difference. Should I re-program one of the scene settings to get the magenta back, or might that be simply creating a fault to fix another fault?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top