Vortex Warm Cards and white balance on the FS cameras?

G

Gene Sung

Veteran
I saw a lighting tutorial and the speaker recommended these Warm Cards by Vortex Media for White Balancing. Since I do prefer a warmer color palette shifted more towards the reds and oranges, would this do the trick?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/809216-REG/Vortex_Media_WC3_WC3_WarmCards_3_0_White.html

Seems like the FS cameras skew a bit more towards the greens, would this skew things towards a warmer palette? Has anyone used something like this to white balance on the FS cameras?

They do seem pretty expensive for colored sheets of paper though :(
 
I always set white balance by Kelvin. That way you can just set it a few 100 degrees towards daylight and you will get a warmer picture (for example, using 3400K instead of 3200K) depending on what suits you.
 
Remember white balance has two elements R->B and G->M

You cannot (easily) dial in G->M on the FS100 and also when you click white balance you cannot tell what G->M has been set

Warm/Cool cards seem to have some value to me in that working under G->M shift lights (flouro) one can control the look

Also you may increase the chance of repeatability when returning to a location

For example it is often nice to mildly warm a kitchen scene or maybe cool a morgue scene

This means less grading and less degradation of the file

To me those cards look quite coloured however - like they might create quite a heavy cast

However all of the above may not really be woth doing as shooting 'white' and applying a small shift of colour in post does not seem to break the file too much..

S
 
I have always used Warm Cards from Vortex media with my Sony PMW-350 and now i use it with my FS-100 and i can tell you that it worth every penny and it's build very well,you will be very satisfed and you will end up using it all time, ALMOST in every situation...i used it here with the FS-100:
http://vimeo.com/42007113
Samer
 
Glad the secret's out. Yes, the Adjustable Kelvin function is very useful, and works well in horribly mixed lighting scenarios.

However, there's nothing like a WB from a proper WB card. Not a bit of paper, not some guy's white T-shirt or (ew) a supposedly white wall that may or may not be leaning towards magnolia.

I'm as guilty as everyone else to use the Adjustable Kelvin function, but I'm reminded of a little test I did ages ago before the ubiquity of grading and variable K - we had a common interview setup in an open plan office with a half-CTB tungsten soft key, mixed daylight and fluoro. We white balanced of a variety of sources, plus an 'expensive' white card from a white & warm set. A proper white card (whether it's the Vortex set or the DSC labs one which I still feel is slightly better) won hands down.

With all this 'shoot flat' and 'Picture Profile' mayhem, I've swung back to 'get it right in camera'. :)
 
Videoshot, that was a nice video and very well shot, and I really liked the white balance as it was definitely skewed towards the warm palette (my personal preference). I might just have to pick up a set. Thanks for posting the example
 
I am curious as to what a majority of you out there are using to white balance the FS100,
are you adjusting kelvin in camera or using cards white or 18% gray? Just curious.
 
Is there an easy to see what the Kelvin temp is that the FS100 chooses in auto white balance mode?

Right now to figure that out, I just keep adjusting the manual WB Kelvin until I see no change in the monitor when flipping back and forth between AWB and Kelvin manual balance.
 
gene_can_sing said:
I saw a lighting tutorial and the speaker recommended these Warm Cards by Vortex Media for White Balancing. Since I do prefer a warmer color palette shifted more towards the reds and oranges, would this do the trick?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/809216-REG/Vortex_Media_WC3_WC3_WarmCards_3_0_White.html

Seems like the FS cameras skew a bit more towards the greens, would this skew things towards a warmer palette? Has anyone used something like this to white balance on the FS cameras?

They do seem pretty expensive for colored sheets of paper though :(
Click to expand...

Oh.. YES !! I just PRINT that kind of cards on my Canon Pro9000 inkjet printer and they work perfect !!! :) You can get them from my server.. It's in TIFF format, CMYK color space ... Here the links:

http://www.sergecinema.com/temp/cool.tif

http://www.sergecinema.com/temp/warm.tif

Enjoy! :)
 
I don't min a bit of warming cooling in post. But I do mind a proper whit balance in the first place.
I always do a black balance at least once a day.
Than I WB every scene. When I have to move the camera to a different angle, I WB again.

I use this here(the greycard part of it) It has build in whit/warm/cool cards, a McBeth and a greycard: http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spydercheckr/

Frank
 
Kraut69 said:
Is there an easy to see what the Kelvin temp is that the FS100 chooses in auto white balance mode?
Click to expand...

When you hit the AWB button the kelvin is revealed for a few seconds - but what you dont see is the M->G shift which could be huge under flouros

S
 
BTW it could be worth considering the expodisc range of products

I find having an A4 grey card with me annoying - the expodisc less so

S
 
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