B&W/Desaturate in camera?
 

Hey guys, I am doing a shoot in a week that the final product will be in black and white. I would just desaturate it in post, except that I am not doing the post. Plus, it would be nice to see how my lighting looks in B&W on my on-set monitor

That being said, I tried tonight to desaturate in camera by turning down the color gain, but that didn't totally remove all the color. Does anyone know if there are other settings I can use with the color gain to desaturate?

Thanks,

Matthew

Color Gain will totally desaturate, but you have to turn it all the way down to MIN or OFF.

Tried that, but the color yellow was still coming through--at least that's what I was seeing on the LCD.

If I can't get it any more desaturated, then I'll live with that and they can finish the last little bit of desaturating in post, but I'd still like to know exactly what I am giving them.

Matthew

Matthew -
My camera is totally de-saturated when the color gain is completely down. You could try taking the green channel out of the camera into a monitor and reduce the monitor's color gain, too. This should give you a monochrome pix at any rate.
Ken Maxwell

color gain to off should be 100% without color.

If you see color, something is not right.

Humm, worked this time. Must have only gotten it to min instead of off last time.

Thanks,

Matthew

Can you simply turn down the chroma on your on-set monitor, or does it have a black-and-white mode? The reason I say this is because there are different ways you can desaturate footage in post based on using different color channels that yield results that look more like black-and-white film stocks. It might be nice to have those options in post by shooting in color but monitoring in black-and-white.

Todd Norris
Director of Photography/Editor

I would do that if *I* was doing the post production on this piece. However, I am not and considering the other stuff I've seen come out of this company, I want to make sure I get them the best possible footage, because they will degrade it quite a bit in post...sigh....

Matthew