GH2 Yellow skin tones in certain conditions (bright sunshine) - anyone else seeing this?

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xocomil

Well-known member
Just learning to shoot with my new GH2 and a strange thing happened while shooting yesterday. Filmed a guy (darkish skin) in both bright tropical sunshine and the shade. Adjusted the white balance using degrees Kelvin (as I always did with my GH1) but when I looked at it on my lcd last night he has a horrible jaundiced look to him (which he doesn't in real life).

Went outside with my wife just now to test (again, bright sun and then in the shade) and again very unflattering. I had to go to the 4 way color balance adjustment (which I haven't really done often) and bring the range way over to the red side to get a more natural color.

I never had this issue with my GH1, nor have I had the issue filming in overcast conditions or indoors with the GH2. Very strange ...

Settings are Smooth, contrast/sharpness/nr -2, saturation 0).

Filming in 720p60 with hack - 32mbps.

Thanks for any advice.

Also, does anyone here use record highlights? Not sure how I like it ...
 
You're overexposing the skin tones. When you overexpose skin, the red channel clips, so it throws off the balance between red, green, and blue -- you can't get any more red, but you're getting too much green and blue (and green+blue = yellow). Cut your exposure back and it'll look much better.

And yes, I always always use the record highlights feature -- and you should, ideally, never ever see it. The idea with that is if you see the flashing in the screen, you're blowing out that footage -- and blowout = nasty, so ideally you shouldn't ever see the flashing black/white at all.

I think both your questions are related to the same thing - overexposing.
 
Thank you for the explanation Barry. Does the record highlights function then act like 100% zebras? Or is that not a good way to look at it.

I got pretty good at exposing the GH1 using a combination of histogram + eyeballing it, but have been having a more difficult time with the GH2 (obvious from my post).

Any recommendations on attaining proper exposure with the GH2, especially when interviewing people outdoors in less controlled circumstances? Spot metering? Histogram? A combination?

And please bear in mind I'm a self-shooting journalist working out of my backpack in the tropics (so no studio lighting, etc).

Thanks!
 
if youre shooting outdoors with a DSLR, you pretty much always need some degree of ND filter

the problem with shooting dark skinned people especially outdoors. is youre often going to have to blow out the scenery to get the skin properly exposed.
so you'll need ND filters AND external lights

: (
 
xocomil said:
Thank you for the explanation Barry. Does the record highlights function then act like 100% zebras?
Click to expand...
That's exactly the right way to look at it. Except you should think of it as 105%, because when that shows up, it's already clipped.

Any recommendations on attaining proper exposure with the GH2, especially when interviewing people outdoors in less controlled circumstances? Spot metering? Histogram? A combination?
Click to expand...
Well, that's one of the issues of trying to shoot with a stills camera, is that it just doesn't have the range of exposure tools that a video camera does. ND filters are absolutely mandatory in sunlight, and yeah, use the histogram and try to keep it white; that's when the camera thinks it's at proper exposure. And never let the flashing black/white show up on anything (unless, as wgzn said, you're shooting dark-skinned people outdoors; in cases like that you may have to let the sky blow out).

Use a mode other than CINEMA for a smoother rolloff to overexposure and lessened yellowing on overexposed skin.
 
I've come to really love the ND faders. I have to buy a few more for some of my other lenses and some stepdown adapters, but they are so reasonably priced it's not too bad to just grab one for each lens. I tell ya, makes shooting outdoors so much more simplified than having a bunch of NDs which you have to keep messing with. I think that I'd rather have a matte box and stackable filters if that were the case....
 
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