White Balance Questions/Stupidity

[lasondas]

What follows is stupid, I know, but it was my first film, and with all the things going on, on the subject of White Balance, I used what I usually despise: denial.

I bought a DVX-100a to film a short I wrote, and maybe hit the white balance once, then filmed the whole thing (total 70 hours). In shadow, sunlight, overcast, inside, sunrise, sunset mostly natural light except for the inside.

There is two scenes where each character looks very pale and "blue".

i'm not saying it doesn't need color correction, but there wasn't too many terrible/unusable aspects (it's a first film guerilla shot, so it's got plenty other problems), and sometimes the shots are true and beautiful.

Why might that be?
Is what you see in the LCD what you get, or can our eyes not pick up the differences?
Possibly did I have it set on AWB, and that let me squeak on by?

I'm going to bring the white card and constantly manually set it from now on, but I thought maybe some of you would have feedback.

Thanks,

Art

 

[dolph2000]

What you see is what you get. I normally don't WB that much. Only under strange conditions like those tube lights (don;t know the english word for that) which can be green or other strange colors.
When the picture is nice, it is nice, don't do anything about it. If looks strange than you could WB. For example you WB a sunset, it won't has its nice warm orange color. Make some tests and you will see what you like

 

[HybridCreations]

Those tube lights are called Fluorescents and yes they can cause white balance problems, especially when using an indoor (3200k) preset. Basic rule, indoors, around 3200k.......outdoors, anywhere from 5600k (bright mid-day sunlight) to 10000k (deep shadow). You should probably white balance anytime you change lighting conditions, although what Dolph2000 says about sunsets is true. The light from a sunset is much lower in color temperature (can be as low as 3000k, maybe even less) so you'd probably want to stick with a 5600k preset (to get that nice orange glow). There are many threads on color temperatures on this site, so I'd recommend doing a search to familiarize yourself further.
Oh one more thing, "What you see on the LCD is what you get" but only to a certain extent. The LCD is not a color precise monitor, it cannot be set to to read "true". A good external monitor (With blue check and color adjustments) is the best way to really know that what you are shooting is what you are going to end up with. Plus, the LCD and the viewfinder on the DVX is overscanned, so there is an extra rim around the image that you will not see on the camera, that you will see in post. Be wary of this as you may have unwanted objects in view (Booms, lights, flags, etc.) and never know it until you get to post.
-Ryan