T2i What did I do wrong?!

Hawk Teflon

Hawk Teflon

Veteran
Camera: T2i
Lens: Tokina 17-50mm
Lighting: 300 & 600 watt Arri lights

The piano is one color... however, not in the shot below:

WTFPiano.jpg


What did I do wrong? What do I need to do to correct this for later shoots?
 
What Ive noticed on the 5d is you can exacerbate this occurring by having high exposure on the possible "bad" areas. In this case youve got a lot of spill from that practical hitting the piano, using a lower wattage bulb would reduce it enough so that it doesnt detract from your shot.

Also seems to be a light source down that small hall behind the woman that's hitting the top of the door there causing this to happen as well.

I think overall, from a lighting perspective theres too much spill in the shot. Cut that down and you would almost resolve all the issues with the moire/aliasing.
 
I didn't even see the aliasing on the door frame...

You think the color contamination is from excessive practical light, then? That would make sense in that the camera is looking for too much detail, since little is lost in shadow, but the little shadow seams where the lamp can't fill are causing the camera to create aliased images.

I was wondering, too, if it might stem from a white balancing problem, like if the camera was balanced on the practical, which it looks like it is, but the reflected light off the piano was a different temperature, so the camera had a hard time picking up color detail...but that doesn't really explain the door frame.
 
There are ways to minimize it from the camera's capture. Learning to shoot around it, as mentioned above, is key. However the default settings don't help.

Make a custom image setting (Picture Style), and turn the sharpness all the way down!

I have ours setup as follows:
Sharpness - 0 (All the way left)
Contrast - All the way left
Saturation - Half-way left
Color Tone - 0 (Middle)

Fine tune to taste.

The post-capture sharpening by default really enhances the moire/aliasing issues and it's shocking what a difference cranking it all down can make to smooth out the images. The above settings (which I gathered from others' experiences) can be used as a starting point.

It's worth a shot at the very least.
 
jscottprice said:
To answer your question, if you have 10 minutes, check this out:

http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/article.php/20

A quality post on the aliasing problem with the HDSLRs and how to avoid it. Aliasing is probably THE biggest problem with the 550D, 5DII, 7D, etc.
Click to expand...

That is of course a great article by Barry Green.

But again, I want to add, that sharp focus and aliasing in my experience is also dependant on the level of light on the possible "bad areas" as it relates to Hawks issue. Off focus would have helped him as Barry suggests but in addition to that, in a controllable environment reducing the amount of light hitting the object, so you dont have bright highlights on reflective surfaces etc will also help.

A three fold approach could be to, defocus the area / reduce the light on the reflective surface / use a commercially available dulling spray (also known as matte spray) as it removes the reflectiveness from the surface) - be careful with spraying this on expensive items.
 
Wow, this is all great information. I'd read up on the aliasing, and knew what to look for for that, but I was unaware of the "moire" (I'm pronouncing that "Mo-ear" ... is that right?) and what it does. I wasn't looking for it in the field monitor, and only saw it on the 5th pass or so while editing. Does that show up in monitors, or do you just have to know how to avoid it? It was so small that the T2i screen would have made it even tinier. The Monitor would have helped, but is it harder to see since it only outputs to 480p?

I'll tell you what: This short has been nothing but one big headache. Fortunately, though, i've learned a lot.
 
Hawk Teflon said:
I'll tell you what: This short has been nothing but one big headache. Fortunately, though, i've learned a lot.
Click to expand...

This sentence sums up more student films, more shorts, more backyard projects than can be counted. It's funny how the script and continuity and story become less and less relevant as you run into 18^pi technical problems during production :)

If there is ANYTHING you take away from a project, let it be the knowledge you didn't have before that you will carry into the next to make better projects.

I've spent the entire summer shooting on my 7D trying to learn everything I can about it. I thought I knew what I was doing, went out to shoot a short documentary on the "old town" district of my city, and when I started to edit, I cried a little. What you think will be director's reel-worthy footage turns out to be not much more than garbage. But the single MOST important thing is that now I know why it happened.

Every little technical aspect, every idiosyncrasy with your equipment, will make you that much better a filmmaker when you master it.

If there's anything I know now, it's the above and that there are countless others going through the same growing pains.

At least you have a kickass website to help you through the process :D
 
dont shoot so much wides,change your storyboards.This shot doesnt look interesting anyway,like camcorder.
 
I think just different lighting would change the shot, drastically. But Hawk has also come here with an image he hasn't color corrected, I would assume, since he found this problem in post and is looking for help to fix it.

Also, it looks like he had to make the best out of what he had for a location (stuff piling up in the corner, in the kitchen), which is a touch distracting and which better lighting would help dim while making the characters pop out.

I'm not cinematographer or gaffer, so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about with lighting, but I would say the image is a bit over-lit. For example, the actor in orange has too strong a key light, in this case hitting his back, that burns out his shirt a little. This makes it difficult to figure out who is important in the shot.

Of course, we aren't watching your film, so it's hard to tell who we should be watching, but I would assume the actress entering the scene is what our eye should fix on. In that case, a little less light on the other actors and an aforementioned bulb change for your practicals would bring our attention to her.


A little off-topic, but it's just my 2c.
 
These dslrs have less resolution /sharpness than hdv already and turning the sharpness right down you might as well use a sd cam.
 
flinty said:
These dslrs have less resolution /sharpness than hdv already and turning the sharpness right down you might as well use a sd cam.
Click to expand...

Y'know, this DSLR vs. (beta, DV, whatever) based on sharpness issue comes up almost daily. I suppose from people who aren't into DSLRs.

You don't get one of these for sharpness; first & foremost it's the look of the footage.

And dialing the in-camera down all the way is still plenty sharp. If I want it to look like "video", I'll use a video camera.

Frame grabs from the weekend - plenty sharp for me as-is, and AE does a nice job if I want it harder:

1282142434.jpg


1282142380.jpg
 
jscottprice said:
I'm not cinematographer or gaffer, so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about with lighting, but I would say the image is a bit over-lit. For example, the actor in orange has too strong a key light, in this case hitting his back, that burns out his shirt a little. This makes it difficult to figure out who is important in the shot.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I honestly didn't want to use this shot at all. It was a wide safety for a little bit later. However, one of the biggest headaches of the shoot was that the guy running audio didn't capture every scene. Even though I hear my voice asking, "Rolling sound?" with a polite, "Sound rolling." before the shot ... there was no sound. 5 takes in a ROW were not captured. Possibly 20 to 25% of the audio was not captured. On top of that, the H4N levels were too low. So low that I have to duplicate the audio layers 3 times and bump them to +12 to hear anything. It was a vicious lesson I learned that night. But, it was a volunteer based crew, so I was gambling and lost.
 
Michael Carter said:
Y'know, this DSLR vs. (beta, DV, whatever) based on sharpness issue comes up almost daily. I suppose from people who aren't into DSLRs.

You don't get one of these for sharpness; first & foremost it's the look of the footage.

And dialing the in-camera down all the way is still plenty sharp. If I want it to look like "video", I'll use a video camera.

Frame grabs from the weekend - plenty sharp for me as-is, and AE does a nice job if I want it harder:

1282142434.jpg


1282142380.jpg
Click to expand...

Fine you use yours on the lowest sharpness setting i prefer at least half way each to their own, perhaps always using hdv with sharp footage i dont want to miss too much of it.What i dont do is tell others how they should use their cams, i will and have taken plenty of advice on general technical use of course and expect to be in a minority on this.
 
Hawk Teflon said:
Camera: T2i
Lens: Tokina 17-50mm
Lighting: 300 & 600 watt Arri lights

The piano is one color... however, not in the shot below:

WTFPiano.jpg


What did I do wrong? What do I need to do to correct this for later shoots?
Click to expand...

If you must use this shot, you can load it into photoshop as open as smart object and use noise reduction, it will at least turn the color moire to b&w, much less distracting.
 
PSA1 said:
If you must use this shot, you can load it into photoshop as open as smart object and use noise reduction, it will at least turn the color moire to b&w, much less distracting.
Click to expand...

I don't know what any of that means. Would a noise reduction in AE be comparable?
 
Don't know, I don't have AE, the only noise reduction program I have is photoshop and it does great with video for stuff like this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top