FS5: White Balance on the FS5

[scorsesefan]

Color correcting a feature doc I shot on the FS5/A7III right now and I'm having some difficulties with colors in general and particularly skin tones.

A lot of run n' gun stuff under mixed lighting where I relied on WB presets and I'm kind of paying the price now in post. The FS5 in particular seems to have a green/yellow bias that I didn't see when I was shooting Canon.

For future reference: Do you guys manually WB with gray cards, white cards, color charts or WB lens caps?

For now: Any tips on CC mixed lighting situations? (I'm working in Premiere Pro)

Thanks

 

[Doug Jensen]

For future reference: Do you guys manually WB with gray cards, white cards, color charts or WB lens caps?

I always white balance using a white card or WarmCard under any man-made lighting. It is the only way to ensure correct colors from instruments (and mixtures) of unknown color temperatures.
Sorry, I don't have any advice about how to fix it now.

 

[OnSet]

Color correcting a feature doc I shot on the FS5/A7III right now and I'm having some difficulties with colors in general and particularly skin tones.

A lot of run n' gun stuff under mixed lighting where I relied on WB presets and I'm kind of paying the price now in post. The FS5 in particular seems to have a green/yellow bias that I didn't see when I was shooting Canon.

For future reference: Do you guys manually WB with gray cards, white cards, color charts or WB lens caps?

For now: Any tips on CC mixed lighting situations? (I'm working in Premiere Pro)

Thanks

First -- make sure that you're looking at your color output on a good monitor that's properly adjusted for color.

Mixed lighting can produce a number of challenges -- but the first thing you need to do is determine a basic overall color look- which means working with the basic color controls in Lumetri to do what white balancing would have done on set. That means working with your color temperature (blue/orange) and tint (green/magenta) sliders. That's basically doing in post what white balancing the camera on a card would have done. I might start by adjusting all my shots in the scene with this color correction. Then I'll work from there on a shot-by-shot basis

Of course this can only get you so far, and the real issue with mixed lighting is that different colors come from different (and sometimes strange) angles -- and when you get to the skintones an overhead fluorescent fixture with a lot of yellow/green might be mixed with window light from one side and lamp light from the other. Are you complaining because the camera actually shows these colors accurately when they look ugly on the face? Ok. But 'ugly' is subjective - so you need to figure out what you don't like! So one thing I may do is find an area of the face where the color doesn't match and then select just that area and do a secondary color correct on the selected area. Here's where you're actually 'fixing' the parts of the face where the color looks wrong. You may end up needing to run a couple of secondaries on different areas if there are different problem colors. Yes, it's a bunch of extra work -- and yes, it's probably a bit easier to do in Resolve, particularly being able to save and copy specific adjustment nodes -- but it can make a world of difference.
It's the cases where 'mixed colors' mean different colors of light coming from different directions where using secondaries can really help. (And in adjusting the secondaries, you also may find it useful to drop your the chroma a little to help smooth out the differences.)
(Of course when you start needing to do some major adjustments it's really helpful if your source material is 10-bit 422 or better)

 

[scorsesefan]

Thanks for the advice, guys... I'm sort of old school in that I learned on the "obsolete" Premiere Pro corrections tools -- primarily the color wheel and RGB curves. I need to dive into the Lumetri panel...

 

[LennyLevy]

If you still have bnoth cameras, you might try shooting a chart on both to get a general idea of the basic difference. I basically agree with On Set . First do a basic corrections for Luminance Gain Gamma and Black levels, then go on to color temp and saturation perhaps tint. The "color match" Lumetri panel will match a flesh tone using the 3 way color . That all should get you close and the color match might allow you to skip the basic corrections. The "color match" might not help at all though. - YMMV. After that though you'll probably need to do one or maybe a few secondaries. PITA for every shot but probably some corrections will be consistent. Mixed lighting can be a bear though especially if the cameras are getting different angles.
Next time play with the cameras ahead of time and try to find close settings to begin with.