C100: White balancing to fluorescent lights

[therager]

I've been doing a lot of run n gun and doc style shooting lately with the C100. I've been having problems white balancing to fluorescent lights found in a lot of buildings. A lot of times the footage looks green or yellow in the LCD (which I dont trust completely) and in the editing suite later on. I usually don't have time to mess around with the custom picture profiles and tweak the color when the shot is happening, so I need a quick way to get close to white. I really miss the fluorescent preset on a DSLR (the C100 replaced my 7D)
Im not a fan of the auto balance and the white balance to a white card yields mixed results under these lights.
It's easy enough to time out the green cast but wondering how others approach this problem. Any tips are appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[andykwilkinson]

I do a lot of corporate shoots in offices. Typically office fluorescents are around 4100 to 4200 Kelvin. You could try just setting the C100's white balance setting to that Kelvin (very easy to do in the menu). Then with white balance locked to that, shoot away as needed. Just beware any shots close to big windows (depending upon what the weather is doing outside), but again, it's seconds to tweak the white balance setting if needed.

I much prefer the white balancing setup on my C100 to the one on my EX3 and 7D.

 

[Guest]

They should introduce another auto white balance setting for warm tinted fluorescent lighting. The green spike is still there, even with the tint. And AAALLLLL hotels are using these things now. It kills documentary shooting having to compensate separately for those bulbs in particular, and then switching back quickly.

 

[mhood]

I much prefer the white balancing setup on my C100 to the one on my EX3 and 7D.

I must admit that it is sometimes difficult to fill the screen with white to grab a WB with my C100. My 7D didn't require a screen full of white and I could use my digital target to expose to my histogram and set custom WB.

 

[RZE]

I do a lot of corporate shoots in offices. Typically office fluorescents are around 4100 to 4200 Kelvin. You could try just setting the C100's white balance setting to that Kelvin (very easy to do in the menu). Then with white balance locked to that, shoot away as needed. Just beware any shots close to big windows (depending upon what the weather is doing outside), but again, it's seconds to tweak the white balance setting if needed.

I much prefer the white balancing setup on my C100 to the one on my EX3 and 7D.

Green tints have nothing to do with the kelvin range, the kelvin is a blue amber offset, if you want to eliminate green cast you have to adjust the green magenta offset. The c300 and the c100 in their factory settings have a green cast when mathematically white balanced already. Its no big deal almost all digital cameras do this. I don't think that your cast issues are as much about the fluorescent light, but more so the camera. A simple tweaking of the the color balance parameters eliminates green casts quite well, but your colorist will not be able to use RGB parades to ensure white balance in post.

 

[dustylense]

I must admit that it is sometimes difficult to fill the screen with white to grab a WB with my C100. My 7D didn't require a screen full of white and I could use my digital target to expose to my histogram and set custom WB.

Tear up a small piece of B&W printed newspaper and put it in your back pocket.

 

[mtnski]

Maybe an ignorant question but, why does the paper need to be printed?

 

[therager]

A simple tweaking of the the color balance parameters eliminates green casts quite well, but your colorist will not be able to use RGB parades to ensure white balance in post.

Can you expand on this? I understand the part about tweaking the color balance, but how will the colorist be affected by this?
I really wish there was an easy way to balance to these lights as I hate to miss a shot while I try to eliminate color casts. I suppose I could make a preset with green already tweaked, Ill have to experiment, but so far ive not been pleased with the results of tweaking with the color cast in camera.

 

[dustylense]

Maybe an ignorant question but, why does the paper need to be printed?

Just saying to use B&W print (no color for obvious reasons). News paper because it's cheap and everywhere.

 

[Shawnvfx]

Green tints have nothing to do with the kelvin range, the kelvin is a blue amber offset, if you want to eliminate green cast you have to adjust the green magenta offset. The c300 and the c100 in their factory settings have a green cast when mathematically white balanced already. Its no big deal almost all digital cameras do this. I don't think that your cast issues are as much about the fluorescent light, but more so the camera. A simple tweaking of the the color balance parameters eliminates green casts quite well, but your colorist will not be able to use RGB parades to ensure white balance in post.

same here,green spikes is so porminent, its always there no matter what I do

thats Why Ive posted a question saying is there a WB shift function on C100 like the 5D does

Seems like nobody gives a S***

 

[RZE]

Can you expand on this? I understand the part about tweaking the color balance, but how will the colorist be affected by this?
I really wish there was an easy way to balance to these lights as I hate to miss a shot while I try to eliminate color casts. I suppose I could make a preset with green already tweaked, Ill have to experiment, but so far ive not been pleased with the results of tweaking with the color cast in camera.

I'll try to explain this briefly, true white mathematically is equally values of Red Blue and Green, The RGB values would be something like 90,90,90 after white balancing in theory. However there is some sort of inaccuracy in the C300 and C100 that when you mathematically balance the image visually looks green and not true white. To get it to look right you have to offset the White balance basically skewing white balance RGB values until it looks visually right. What is visually right is not mathematically right with these cameras. Colorist usually first balance the image by equalizing RGB values for objects that are supposed to be true black grey or white. That will reintroduce the green cast if the operator had set a white balance offset in camera.

I believe the setting that I use are +4 Magenta +1 Amber. The results aren't perfect but it counteracts the white balance issue for the most part. I keep those settings all the time since the green cast is present in tungsten and daylight balances.

 

[Dino]

I use the White Balance trims in the CP menu. Typically add red or reduce green a couple of clicks after auto white balancing. This is with a C300, but I've done it with a C100 when matching to a C300 as well, except in that case it was blue channel trim, probably due to lensing differences.