FS7: Mixed light conditions Custom or Cine IE ?

P

Publimix

Veteran
A while ago I filmed kids with slot cars. It was in a room with different light sources tungsten, fluorescent and a big window with day-light (also changing cloudy and sunny).
I used a led light on the camera.
As always I use Cine slog3 cine.
Normally I film outside (nature)

The light in the room was different in each corner and I had to walk around and film, this resulted in different clips. Kids and clips with, yellowish, greenisch and blue-ish skintones. Davinci Resolve saved some clips but it was not ideal.
There had been a camera crew before and they had only used their own lightning equipment (a truckload) and they had sealed of the window. I wish I could do that too but the budget was tight.

So for run and gun, what would be the best method to film there? (the panasonic lumix B-cam with automatic white balance did better than theFS7)

Use more/stronger lights?
Film in Custom?
Other suggestions/tips?
 
Do you have any way of evaluating your scene through RGB values.

Either a RGB wfm (DP502) or maybe a stills camera?

Really you want a RGB on your camera .. IMO a camera is not complete without a tool for evaluating RGB.

Id shoot Slog

Go to a zone.
HOld a grey card
point the camera at the card

take the one of the three wb settings that gives you the most balanced RGB value.

shot the grey card

use that for correction in post

That is what I would do.
 
Publimix said:
The light in the room was different in each corner and I had to walk around and film, this resulted in different clips.
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This would have been an ideal time to switch the camera to the Custom Mode, dial in a nice Scene File, and then use a white card to execute a manual white balance in each corner of the room where the prevailing lighting source was a different color temperature. You might have to WB a dozen or more times during the shoot, but that's just the way it is. It would reduce your time in post fixing things or matching colors to nearly zero. This type of shooting scenario is not new. Anyone who has shot Betacam or almost any other professional video camera in the past 40 years has dealt with this hundreds of times.
 
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Doug Jensen said:
This would have been an ideal time to switch the camera to the Custom Mode, dial in a nice Scene File, and then use a white card to execute a manual white balance in each corner of the room where the prevailing lighting source was a different color temperature. You might have to WB a dozen or more times during the shoot, but that's just the way it is. It would reduce your time in post fixing things or matching colors to nearly zero. This type of shooting scenario is not new. Anyone who has shot Betacam or almost any other professional video camera in the past 40 years has dealt with this hundreds of times.
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Betacam.....UGH.
 
I've gotta agree that in this instance, with tight budgets (which presumably also mean little [paid] time in post), then custom would be my preferred option. I can see why Sam's advocating the controlled 'best-fit' in CineEI methodology, but I feel as though the subject matter doesn't justify bending over backwards to maintain optimal colour fidelity. If it was a modelling shoot where skintones were the main thing of interest then maybe, but for me even then only if I was going to be paid for that painful grading/matching session!

I've had good success using custom in the past for obs doc shoots where I have little/no control (or even warning) of what smorgasbord of mixed-light sources I'm gonna be thrown into next. Here's where I diverge slightly from Doug's (totally valid) methodology too. I would still stay in Slog, and I would turn off everything in the paint menu (especially matrix). This will allow you lots of latitude in post, BUT allow you to custom-WB whenever you like. Depending on what the scene itself looks like you could even pin up a few grey cards in inconspicuous positions to save having to carry one around with you. Alternatively you could even go with auto-WB (perish the thought!!!), but IF you do then dial the WB speed to minimum, to minimise fluctuations within a shot due to moving subjects, rather than genuinely changing light. It's in the Paint menu and is called ATW speed. 1 shifts WB most quickly, 5 most gradually - I'd use 4 or 5 depending how much you're planning on panning. ;-)

Have fun with - would be interested to see the results!

Cheers,

jason
 
Thanks all.

I remember Betacam from my study journalism. Sometimes I was the guy holding the white cards in front of them, but that was hundred years ago.

I don't have RGB monitor like dp502. But I have a 'good as new' white/gray card.
I will end up white balancing a dozen times in these conditions.

I like the combination slog/custom/WB, next time I will try this combination too.
 
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morgan_moore said:
Do you have any way of evaluating your scene through RGB values.

Either a RGB wfm (DP502) or maybe a stills camera?

Really you want a RGB on your camera .. IMO a camera is not complete without a tool for evaluating RGB.

Id shoot Slog

Go to a zone.
HOld a grey card
point the camera at the card

take the one of the three wb settings that gives you the most balanced RGB value.

shot the grey card

use that for correction in post

That is what I would do.
Click to expand...

You are kidding, right? You have to have a monitor with silly RGB values to help choose one of the 3 presets?
 
Do a 'white balance'. It's so easy now, as almost every camera has a color VF. You know immediately if you're at least 'in-the-ball-park' and need to re-balance if lighting is different. I shoot more preset on my F55 and C300 than I ever did on a Betacam, but if I need to do a WB, I do. And it's easy to see if you do. The VF is color! I remember in the 'dark ages' shooting with a B&W VF. Looking back now, it seems like we were shooting blind compared to now, but we did it. And I actually see more improperly exposed and 'white-balanced' video now, than I ever did back in the old analog Betacam B&W VF days.
 
I allways switch to hg8 or 7 when shooting indoors in mixed lighting log is not an answer for everything and the whole burning in the lut is a very unreliable solution I allways get better results in custom mode with hypergammas and adjusting black level for contrast.
 
"Fear of Custom" has now been accepted by the American Psychiatric Association as an officially designated mental disorder. As a corollary 'excessive dependance on Slog" has also been listed as a "potential cause of sloppy lazy camerawork". Look it up - its in the book!

Cine EI is great but its not the only way to make good pictures especially in mixed light with fluorescents where lack of decent monitoring can make it hard to light properly. I recently did some interviews where the director thanked me profusely for using Custom and careful lighting to give him lovely shots that were exactly what he wanted. He said that he travels around the country a lot and hires guys with FS7's who just say - "Don't worry its Log you can make it look like anything in post". Only his experience is you can't. You still need to get the balances of color and contrast right.
 
LennyLevy said:
"Fear of Custom" has now been accepted by the American Psychiatric Association as an officially designated mental disorder. As a corollary 'excessive dependance on Slog"
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:smile:
Just added two new terms to the video vocabulaire: 'boring lens' and 'fear of custom' (after autofocus allergy).
 
If Im editing and grading I would shoot Slog and just make one basic grade for all the four corners. Would take me 10 mins. If someone else would edit that I dont know I would shoot custom. But probably I would just enter the room and ask if I could turns some if the lights of to get a better balance.
 
I rarely have any problems using Cine EI and the three preset WB. Mixed lighting can look really ugly and very tricky to get it right. With any camera. But I often use the mid setting for white balance and just try to turn off as much tungsten sources I have when mixing it with daylight.
 
Run&Gun said:
I remember in the 'dark ages' shooting with a B&W VF.
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But having a B&W viewfinder forced us in the "dark ages" to have excellent discipline regarding white balance and even exposure. I honestly cannot remember a single instance of having missed the white balance on a shoot. In fact, I would gladly trade the color viewfinders on all of my cameras for B&W viewfinders with twice the resolution. There is no reason I need to see color in my EVF during a shoot, no reason at all. It is useless information. Learn to white balance properly and know when to white balance, and all will be well.
 
Doug Jensen said:
But having a B&W viewfinder forced us in the "dark ages" to have excellent discipline regarding white balance and even exposure. I honestly cannot remember a single instance of having missed the white balance on a shoot. In fact, I would gladly trade the color viewfinders on all of my cameras for B&W viewfinders with twice the resolution. There is no reason I need to see color in my EVF during a shoot, no reason at all. It is useless information. Learn to white balance properly and know when to white balance, and all will be well.
Click to expand...

"We" were much more disciplined back then... In general "we" have gotten lazy, because of so many of the "conveniences" and "features" that we have now, especially the crutch of "we'll just shoot log and do it all in post". Nothing wrong with shooting log in the right situations, but some people treat it like they don't have to light or do any other basics of good photography and think it's like RAW. I'm from the school of 'do it right in camera'. There was no "fix it in post". So much of what I did in the Beta days(and even into HD/VariCam days) aired within hours(max) of when it was shot, and back then, networks still had standards and if your video wasn't right, you weren't going to be shooting for them for long.

But, you'll have to pry my color VF out of my cold, dead hand. ; )
 
Ok... I would go back to the "dark ages" of the bw vf with true 4k! Also, when I first started shooting slog in vf, I felt it was a tiny bit like the old days - seeing your footage in glorious color only after playing back on that fancy deck to deck editing machine.
 
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