Random Color Changes
 

I've begun to notice something odd. Every so often, including in manual exposure mode, the colors on the picture start to change, going from saturated to less saturated, back and forth. It's occasional, and it's subtle, but it's definitely there. What might this be? Bad filter? Bad tapes? Something wrong with the camera?

Peter,
My guess is that you're using Auto White Balance and that the camera is confused on its white weight. If so, either use one of the presets or manually set your white balance (preferable).

Peter

Interesting...I was recently viewing some footage taken on a friends sony tr-17 and I watched as the footage fluctuated in saturation, quite randomly, not in response to any color or white balance change. I've never seen this on my gl2, with auto wb on or not...but it is a phenomenon that puzzles me, and I'm not sure what would cause it...(and I don't think it's white balance.)

Barry

Where are you seeing the color change? In the view finder, on monitor or both? I've seen color cycling with bad termination of video and bad cables. If it's doing it in the VF and recording it to tape consistently and its repeatable, I would send it in to Canon with a copy of the tape showing the problem. If it was a one time occurrence I would chalk it up as a bad WB setting or mixed light source that couldn't be corrected properly.

Jeff

It is the white balance. Exactly like Ken said, it was on Auto and when I do it manually it's fine.

I have to say in general I don't like the GL2's automatic settings. But at lesat manually I can get the picture perfect (and with a little color grading in Premier).

Which is another funny tidbit - I used to think that film looked so much better color-wise because of the medium. Then I watched the featurette on the Lord of the Rings DVD about Digital Color Grading, and learned how to do the same thing with my footage. It's real cool and because the Canon picks up such rich colors, I can color grade with no problem at all and make the scene look perfect (cold and blue, warm and red, green and brown, whatever)