Do you use custom presets? Or True Color of White Balance?

[Jay Cash]

Obviously Im late to the game with my Canon XHA1- but I bought this camera second hand for less than 1,500 and I was taking it out of the packaging.

I will be using this camera at a wedding this weekend...

Should I sample some custom presets as found on this dvinfo.net forum?

Or is it safer to just white balance and use the true color, and do any color correcting in post?

I really want to make the colors pop like many of you do for your wedding videos.


Any advice? I feel like it may be safer to do any color enhancing in post!? What do you say?

[Chip Thome]

I am not familiar with the Canon, but it sounds like you are describing what on a DVX is called a Scene File, setting to enhance the colors. I asked a friend who had extensive DVX experience what he used, and he sent me one list of presets he used often for his weddings. They were mild "enhancements" mostly to skin tones and made blues pop too. He was able to send me to one online vid he did with this Scene File, so I had a good idea going in what to expect. If it hadn't been for Shaun's extensive experience with the DVX and this Scene File, I wouldn't have gambled on it for the first time with an important gig. Doing it in post is reversible, which it sounds as though you are leaning toward anyway.

[Philip Howells]

Jay, of all the things you have to worry about getting right on your first few gigs, my view is that "popping colour" (which if you mean over-saturated colour may not be as desirable as you appear to think) is one of the lesser ones.

In your situation I'd aim for good exposure, good focus, good framing, steady camera work and, above all, good sound. If you give your bride all those (and manage to throw in a few knowing glances and whispered endearments if you're lucky) she'll love you forever and never dream of asking why the colour wasn't popping.

[Tom Hardwick]

I'm right with Philip. You've bought a second-hand, very complex, very mechanical, pretty cheap camcorder Jay. If I were in your shoes and about to film a wedding with it this end, I'd be much more concerned in testing, testing, testing it, just to get familliar with the controls and to make sure everything works smoothly and perfectly.

Leave the camera on its defaults but use as much manual control as you can - especially of the WB and exposure. You can tweek as much as you like in post as long as you've come home with the highest quality footage availble.

tom.

[Dimitris Mantalias]

Personally I prefer the "as-is" camcorder settings. Then in post, I can do things the way I want to. Thankfully there are many tools to do whatever you think of.

[Ciprian Ganciulescu]

As a owner af a Canon XH-A1 for some years now and shooting weddings I have come to the conclusion that "for me" the best way to use the presets is to set the light, gamma, NR and basically leave the colors alone. If i mess with the colors on this camera it would be hard to make a correct WB as I've noticed, but iv I make a good WB I ca make the colors pop in post very easy and much better than what the camera is doing. You should try to "calibrate" the camera on some presets using different lighting conditions, on an external monitor not on the LCD VF, and make it as clean as possible then you'll have a blast in post.
Good luck!

P.S. And also you should try doing some kind o Black Balance on a WFM and scope (ex Adobe On Location), this was pretty interesting and with good results for me.