White Balance Limitation ?

F

FelixGER

Well-known member
I probably just found a big letdown!

When you look at the technical specifications of the FS100 in the camera section you find:


White Balance
Auto, Outdoor (5800K), indoor(3200K), One-push (Touch panel)

Uhm? No manual WB??

When you look at the NX5:

Auto, one-push auto (A/B positions), indoor (3200 K), outdoor (selectable level -7 to +7, approx. 500K/step), manual WB Temp (selectable 2300K to 15000K, 100K/step)




This can´t be...I need manual choice of Color Temperature...
 
Exactly like the DVX and the HVX and many other cameras do it.

OMG, you guys are really spoiled.

For decades the best movies where made with just 2 flavors of film stock - daylight and tungsten.
Nobody ever had a problem with that.
And now you come up and say "This can´t be...I need manual choice of Color Temperature..."

Come on....

Frank
 
Yeah and a hundred years ago movies were silent....
White Balance on film stook and white balance on video is a completely different thing. If it´s off on video and it´s not RAW, you can´t alter it easily


When a consumer photo camera can do it, I expect it on a prosumer cam.
Even the other NXCAM Camcorders have this feature. Z1, Z5, Z7, EX Series. Why not the FS100. I don´t get it. It´s just senseless to cut out this feature.
 
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It´s just sad. I´m working a lot with mixed lightning where I can´t use a push WB.
And the daylight setting is 5800K, way off the 5200-5400 I usually use.

On my last shoot I used tungsten lights with 1/2 ctb as key and unfiltered tungsten as fill with a WB of 4300 K. Not possible to do this on this cam. Not suitable for professional work, sorry.
 
LOL - I wonder how we all could survive - working in the business as professionals for the last 30 years - without manual WB, that goes from 2300K to 15000K, in 100K steps?

Probably I missed something.

Frank
 
I dont understand this childlike response....

Of course you can work around that. I also worked around the awful aliaing of the Canon 60D in the 3 month I used it.
I can understand that the FS100 doesn´t shoot 120fps @ 3k. That would double the price. But doing such a dumb software limitation....why?

What if i have two FS100 and want to shoot simultaneiously? How do I set them to the same color temp?


The cam is perfect! There is no other cam that has this noise free image, dynamic range, colors in this price range but this missing for granted taken feature destroys it all

...And I was so looking forward to buy this cam :(
Now I have no camera to buy but the F3 which I can´t afford right now
 
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FelixGER said:
Yeah and a hundred years ago movies were silent....
White Balance on film stook and white balance on video is a completely different thing. If it´s off on video and it´s not RAW, you can´t alter it easily
.
Click to expand...

What?
I color correct all kinds of footage that was not shot in a raw format and have never had a problem getting the look I desired.
 
Even in mixed lighting you have to decide what is going to be white. Put a white card under your white light and push the white balance, if using multiple cameras do all at the same time. I've shot this way for years and have never found the need to dial in a specific kelvin number. Unless you have a color meter you're guessing anyway, so you might as well let the camera guess for you. I would never trust the color rating of a commercial light fixture to program kelvin manually, there are some pretty wide variances. Also standard pre-sets are useful in order to get color washes for effect.
 
I think it's a pretty fair statement to ask if a company has a cheaper camera that has a particular useful feature, why doesn't a newer higher priced camera from the same manufacturer? The AF100 has selectable white balance and it's the same category as the FS100 as far as I am concerned.

That said, until a manual comes out that shows how the camera works, I'd say we just don't completely know what it is going to be capable of, one way or another. Yes, I think it would be a mistake to leave that out as I use it A LOT with my AF100 when working with other cameras. Yes, I can work around it if it does not, but as I said, it is completely valid for someone to question why it's not there if it is something they use.

I'd recommend contacting Sony if you really need to know before ordering, or, contact some of the people who have had hands on with this camera to see.
 
dop16mm said:
I've shot this way for years and have never found the need to dial in a specific kelvin number.
Click to expand...

Thing is: I also shot for several years and I never used anything but the manual kelvin selection (and Auto of course for running around documentary stuff). I never in my live did a white card white balance.

I´m just angry because it is a deliberate downgrade from sony to make the F3 better.

@Rick: I already wrote an email to the sony professional center Germany.
 
FelixGER said:
Thing is: I also shot for several years and I never used anything but the manual kelvin selection (and Auto of course for running around documentary stuff). I never in my live did a white card white balance.

I´m just angry because it is a deliberate downgrade from sony to make the F3 better.
Click to expand...

Unless you have proof that this is what Sony did, or has done, since no one knows for sure and it could just be misleading sales documentation (which happens a lot unfortunately) then I think it is safe to say that these types of assertions are uncalled for.
 
I completely agree

dial in WB is widely available for $600 in a DSLR

FYI Id be looking to get a few off white WB CARDS

S
 
Then the next steps would be

(1) Contact many of the shooters who used the FS100 and see what they saw. I had many questions about the FS100 and they answered them for me.

(2) Wait till the camera is released and ask someone. I pre-ordered awhile ago so I *should* get mine fairly quickly after release.

The other issue is the firmware on the preproduction units was probably not final either. Because of that, the answers you get to (1) might not be fully accurate. Given I'll be able to answer your question probably 15 minutes or so after I get mine, no reason not to wait and see.
 
Yes, I can understand that! :) You can also take this time to decide if you can work around it if you have to if in fact it becomes truth.
 
morgan_moore said:
I completely agree

dial in WB is widely available for $600 in a DSLR
Click to expand...

"dial in WB"

All it does is raising the db in the blue channel (causing even more noise there).
Something you can do also in post (often with less damage), when you CC anyway.

I do that every day and never had any problem.
On the contrary - in post you can not only raise the blue channel but correct also on the green-magenta axis.

I been shooting with the HVX (which comes with the same controls as the FS100) and several similar equipped cameras since years and so did others. Saying that without manual WB you can not shoot professionally is just not right.

But to each his own.

Frank
 
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I would think using something like a dsc color chart and proper lighting, would be the way to set the camera's color profile. It has a 6 color LUT built in.
 
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