Don’t make this same white balance mistake that I have been making for months.
Sometimes I leave my white balance card down in the basement (my studio area) and I am too lazy to go an get it and I use a white piece of paper from my office instead. Well that has been a mistake I have been using for many months now.
Watch this video and notice the big difference in color temperature between the two white objects.
As an extra bonus I compare picture styles at the end of this video (sorry for the poor audio at the end). The downloaded super flat picture style.
What was the site where you got that cinemalook from?
@Utah http://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/canon-7d-picture-style-with-cine-gamma-s-curve-free-download/
the reason for the difference is probably from the reflection that the paper has. this causes a slight color cast making it not white.
Dave
I use the Lastolite version of your graycard, or maybe you use the same than me.
I have used the gray side for white balance and depending on the subject some times I have get more accurate color balancing with the gray side, in my personal experience the readings with the white side are a little bluish, Again depending on the subject.
As far as picture Style I found the extra flat too flat, I found this picture style at Canon Japan
http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/picturestyle/file/studio-portrait.html
And when you bring down contrast to 0 or 1 with this Portrait Studio the dynamic range is great
and doesn’t flat so much the image.
Nice ending
@Ajit I was going to redo it with a better ending but my light from outside changed and would have changed the look.
Dave,
I have read a lot that people use white coffee filters for setting a custom white balancing on the fly (some use it as standard) with really great results. Who would have “thunk?”
Tina
Dave, I check in periodically and I have to say thank you for the tutorials you do. Very helpful for me!!
My question is, have you or anyone reading your site had experience shooting video in monochrome and if so what changes they may have made in the settings.
I am producing a small film that will be shot in B&W and we want to match the film look as if it were really shot in the 60′s with all the grain that film back then provided.
Any pointers or directios to look are much appreciated.
Ben
An old film cameraman I knew set his white balance (on a betacam SP camera) at midday and just left it. Made all his stuff sort of warm (he called it golden), but you know it was pretty bullet proof, he never got it far wrong. Of course these days cameras are much more colour sensitive, especially in mixed sources (like flouro and halogen etc).
@Ben – Personally, I’d shoot it normally and then remove the color, and add grain in post. Try Magic Bullet Looks, for example. My reasoning behind this is twofold:
1.) You can always subtract things from your raw footage, but it’s much harder to add.
2.) The wonderful thing about digital video shooting and NLE is that you have the option to produce more than one version of the same piece. You may find that a different colorization ends up being more compelling.
I frequently produce a main piece, and this inevitably has me dropping good footage or parts of interviews for economy. The ease at which a piece can be put together means that I can produce additional smaller pieces that are focused on some of the things I had to triage. While this is not a direct comparison to your situation, you may find that different versions using alternate color schemes will be a benefit to the overall project.
Hey Dave, excellent post. I ran into a similar issue using a white balance lens cap. I got a bit lazy and was using my white balance lens cap on everything and ended up causing a lot of problems when color grading my footage. Switched back to a good old white balance card and everything looked much better. I finally realized just how important it is to get an accurate WB with these cameras.
is there a way to download the eos software that came on the disk for the computer. lost mine =(
@Adrian I don’t think so, sorry.
yes you can from the canon website