C100 and white balance
 

This question probably applies to any camera but since I shoot with C100 I thought I would ask specifically about C100. I can never get the white balance right. Custom white balance doesn't always work for me either when there are mixed light sources. Is this something I can learn to do right in the camera? Is there a way I can get better at setting white balance? Or is this something everyone struggles with? Do I simply resort to post processing?

Re: C100 and white balance
 

What are you doing to white balance? What are you pointing your camera at? What do you have your camera's WB set to? What button do you push to do the balance?

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Hey Kathy,
It is often a compromise to get a good white balance in the field in mixed color temp situations. Question does you camera look correct under controlled situations or is the white balance off all the time. In this case this could be a set up issue or even something wrong with the camera. Also could be the viewfinder is not calibrated to what the camera is recording leading you to poor conclusions of what the camera is actually recording.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

In a mixed environment you can only balance to one of the sources. IMHO the best you can do:
Balance to whatever source is most prevalent for skin tones. Try to control the action (if possible) so that faces are illuminated by that source!

In my experience it's the skin tones that matter most. Backlight & backgrounds - let them go warm or cold.

Don't know what you're shooting, but having a soft light with you that can balance to daylight can be a lifesaver when dealing with interiors that have some daylight in them. If you can light at all...

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Because I"m often pressed for time I like working with a expodisc, I just stand on the spot what I"m about to shoot and point the camera to the spot where my camera is going to be placed and then whitebalance which works well enough to have a startpoint to tweak further in post if needed.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

One issue that the C100 MK1 has that trips up, say, the users of Sony cameras, is that the frame needs to filled with your white or grey target, an that target needs to be in the light that your subject will be in, And facing the camera - or where it SHOULD be.

This is because you really don't want to be changing lenses to do a WB, so you need to move the camera to a position close to the target so it fills the wretched frame (growl, mutter, mutter).

Most cameras I have used in the past have a centre weighted WB approach, so so long as you get something white in the centre bit (e.g. 30-50% of the frame) you're fine. Sony's EX1/3 and PMW line are pretty tolerant and even almost intelligent in doing what one could call an 'ambient white set' (just push the button an the camera does an okay to pretty fair job).

The final forehead-slap moment on the C100's Mk1's custom white set is the built-in LCD monitor is not trustworthy to judge colour balance, being way too blue/cyan to what you' see on the actual recording.

Sadly there is a real difference between using a white set rather than dialing in a Kelvin value, but the latter gives you consistency and speed of change under rapidly changing conditions. It's your call when to use proper taget based white set or manual entered Kelvin values.

FWIW, all my lit setups are using a custom WB, all 'Run & Gun' stuff uses manually entered K, based on previous experience and if I have use of my Ninja Blade.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Meaning... what? What is it about your captures that you object to? And how are you judging white balance?

When working in mixed lighting, a custom white balance is almost mandatory. Setting a numerical K value, like 3000K, sets just one axis -- the orange-blue axis. It doesn't do anything at all for the green-magenta axis since that's not included in the "classical definition" of white balance. But most modern cameras now include quite a lot more than simple orange-blue corrections in a custom white balance. In particular, they tend to include the magenta-green axis because of the green spikes in discharge lighting. They do this to improve skin tones under crappy building fluorescent lighting, etc.

Best way to custom white balance is to use a calibrated gray card. Don't white balance with a white card. Use a gray card. This puts the exposure in the middle of the range that the sensor can handle, so that none of the color channels are anywhere near clipping. This should give you your best correction in the skin tone range. If you do use a white card, adjust your exposure so that the camera puts the white card in the middle of its range (effectively turning it into a gray card).

Once you've done this, you've done about all you can do at capture. This should (but won't always) get rid of most of your color casts. What's left for post is mostly secondary corrections (make a certain red less orange, or a certain green more blue, etc.).

One thing - never believe your on-board LCD screen or VF. If you want to make judgements of color quality in the field at capture time, you'll have to bring a calibrated production monitor to the field to use for that. The camera LCD isn't going to be accurate enough, or big enough, and it's not going to be calibrated.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Yes its hard to believe but the custom white balance is not always your best option with this camera. I use it most of the time, but there are times when one of the presets does a better job. I made a post not that long ago about my C100 turning the color teal into the color blue when doing a custom white balance, and this was under studio lighting!. Overall its a great camera and I am VERY happy with it. But when it comes to the white balance its not always cut and dry.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Well, of course there are situations where you shouldn't white balance. Say with colored lighting. That wouldn't be smart.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Personally when dealing with mixed sources with the C100, and run and gun, I've found the AWB to work pretty well.... usually better than me. Which I rarely did with my 5D, or my other cameras. If I do see something off, I'll flip it over to the kelvin scale and take over, but AWB hasn't been too bad for the most part. I've been one-manning two cameras, audio, lighting and interviews... in a rushed environment - so it is nice to have help, and if I have it on AWB and change locations or reverse the shot, I don't have to remember to adjust WB.

When I shoot two cams, I'll get the AWB temp, and lock it there, and set my other cam to the same.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Pointing my camera at a person. The WB is set to whatever K I think it should be but I'm just always wrong. I set the balance by dialing K degrees.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

That's the thing I can't tell by looking at the screen so I simply set it to whatever I think it should be but then I look on the computer and it's always wrong

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Can you describe how you do this again? I guess I don't know what the expodisc is and how it works. I understand what you do until you say "and then whitebalance".

Re: C100 and white balance
 

But doesn't the AWB change mid-shoot if you are outside for example and the lighting changes?

Re: C100 and white balance
 

If I'm shooting at night outside with lots of different lights (I'm going to a festival of lights) and I want to shoot a person let's say walking by all these different light sources. How do I set my white balance?

Re: C100 and white balance
 

You can find several videos on youtube explaining how to do this, just search for expodisc.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Depends on what the basis for the lights is. Tungsten based, I'd set to 3200 manually and leave it there. If they are LED based lights, then 5500 or so.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Yes... you can see the kelvin temperature scale change if the lighting changes... But if the light changes, you have to re-balance anyways. In this case you're just trusting it to the camera... If you're locked in at 3200 and you walk outside and shoot without manually changing over... look out.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

But if you're trying to shoot a scenario that involves colored lighting (take, for instance, a tungsten bulb at 3200 kelvin with a gel in front of it to give a desired color effect) then it will probably be inaccurate. The intent of putting a gel in front of the light is to give a color, you don't want the camera to interpret that color as white, you want it to interpret it as red.

That can be the issue with AWB.

I shot a concert a few months ago and there were normal tungsten lights and then colored lights for effect. I manually white balanced against the normal tungsten fixture and not with the card pointed towards one of the colored lights because that would have skewed the colors in a way that was neither accurate or pleasing.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Agreed... there are some situations where you just have to dial it in and live with it. I found the worst lighting to be those streetlights that you couldn't stop from being yellow no matter what.

In your case Kathy, it seems like you can choose what you want the look to be. I the primary dominant source is the lanterns, I would expect that the sources may be mixed or LED (cooler) If they were candles they would be fairly warm.

If you're shooting to a ninja in pro res, I would think that you would have a fair amount of room to tweak it later. I haven't had to push colors too much yet. Not so sure with the internal AVCHD. I know that with the 5D2, I had to get it pretty close in camera, because the footage didn't like to be pushed too far at all.

You could run around to all the lanterns or lights and gel them blue ;-)

I would expect that if anything, you will have a lot of low light noise to deal with as well as temperature issues.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Hey Kathy,
What you want to get used to is how the camera looks on your computer compared to the on camera display. Do you have an external field monitor you use? This is usually better for judging color than the camera viewfinders. You have to come up with something you trust to make decisions in the field which work when you are in the edit. You may find everything needs a bit of adjustment.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Yeah, noise will be an issue, but for my purpose anything up to 6400 with noise reduction in post is fine.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Yeah, I will have to do some tests. I do have a field monitor, but for my next shoot I won't be bringing it as I will be mostly shooting outdoors, will probably shoot on a monopod so I want to keep the camera light.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

I'll ask a generic question. Is there any kind of white balance issue which can't be fixed in post?
Also does anyone have a chart with all the possible light sources one may encounter while filming and their K temperatures? I could google it but all the ones I find are not exactly what I'm looking for.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Get this http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/716956-REG/WhiBal_WB7_RC_G7_White_Balance_Reference.html, fill the frame with it while it is positioned in the light you will be shooting under, and manually white balance. That will work every time.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Thank you.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

OK, here is a clip I just did. I shot it in WDR. Overall it looks like crap. I the colors are off, it looks kind of grainy. I hardly ever feel like I got great footage out of this camera. What am I doing wrong???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPcB...ature=youtu.be

Re: C100 and white balance
 

You are shooting indoors with what is probably fluorescent overhead lighting, but next to a window, which has a much different Kelvin temperature. You have a shaft of light cutting against the iMac screen which looks very unpleasant, and the location you have of the camera has the human subject butting against the left side of the frame with the iMac on the right and nothing between the two. Thus, your composition is also poor and brings down the pleasantness of the shot in general.

And that says nothing of the motion of the camera as the operator seems very unsure of where they want the camera to go.

It's a combination of things, but if you want to focus on the primary issue, it's that you can't shoot right next to a window when the primary light source for your subject will be a fluorescent-lit person.

Simply put, you have to reset everything about this shot in order to make it work.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

HAHA Gary, this is not a real shoot. These are test shots in the worse case scenario. I would never use this subject, this framing etc. I am often forced to shoot in this combination of light so that's why I asked about the quality of the footage NOT the composition. This was just a first guy sitting at a desk that I grabbed as my test subject.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

I think it's a lot harder to separate all the elements of a shot in order to focus on one specific thing. Just because it's a test doesn't mean it has to look like that overall.

My tests still follow proper composition and camera movement, even the ones no one else ever sees.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

OK sorry I am not doing good tests.
Here is another one I did. This is what I would consider good white balance. No people, just straight on tripod test. Is this what I should expect from this camera?

Re: C100 and white balance
 

The snow is white. That's good. Outside of that, this shot doesn't say a whole lot.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Ok I just care about white balance. So this would be ok. Thanks.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

There is almost no white balance issue that can't be fixed to some degree but it helps to start in the right direction if your not shooting raw. Some people have the skill to make almost anything watchable. Doesn't mean it couldn't have been better if you started with a good image to begin with. The exceptions to this are light sources which have such strange spectrum that the other colors are not big enough in the signal to adjust in the correction.
The clip you showed in the office was in very difficult lighting situations to come up with a good compromise. The snowy scene doesn't reveal very much except the camera looks fairly normal. It might help to increase the contrast a little in the settings as every thing looked a little light on my computer.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

White balance must show good skin tones - everything starts there. There's a lot of things the eye will forgive, but when skin doesn't look like skin not much else matters. Develop an eye for this!

In the office test shot, there are two colors of light. In my opinion this particular situation can be OK for many shots, in that the window light (cold source) is just showing as a backlight or kicker, depending, giving some colder highlights. Then there's some window light bouncing off the monitor he's looking at, that I think is making the area around his eye blueish, but a little tilt on the monitor might fix that.

One thing to avoid in such shots is actually showing the window, in most weather it will be dramatically blown out when you expose for faces.

But this white balance is much too yellow and warm; the base/fill light that is providing the primary illumination of his face is nice and soft... but so warm. The WB needs to match the primary source for his face (and skin tones!).

Fix that first, then see how things look with the blueish back highlights from the window. Do a custom white balance, not the Kelvin wheel. Hold the white or grey card or paper so that your body is shielding it from the sun, it's only illuminated by the room lights.

That's going to tell you the most about the camera's ability to WB to match a scene.

In this kind of scene, best results come from choosing one of the sources and WB to it, then shoot so skin tones are mostly front-lit by that source. Most commonly, subjects/characters are closer to windows than the camera is; in that situation you WB to the room lights that are providing the front light of the subject.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Kathy,

Gary rightly points out a few things... then you say that that wasn't the footage that you were talking about. There are people here sincerely trying to help you with WB.

The office shot was clearly shot under florescents out a window... that's a shot to avoid on any day (unless an alien was shaking hands with the president - and you don't have time to move them away from the window). Move your subject to the other side of the office and use the daylight as a key, and use some bounce for a fill (or a dimmable 5600k light). You should be able to kill the florescents (at least one bank).

I did a shoot recently with a 5600k fresnel 'faking' sunlight coming in a window on a wall in behind the talent, and lit the interview subject at 3200 to give them a little color.

And your snow shot should be a straight 5600 or there abouts.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

The composition and movement of the camera was criticized while that was not the intention of that quick test shot, it was to know how to whitebalance that particular shot. Ofcourse you can make it all picture perfect but this is a tricky situation to get a right whitebalance because you have different color temperatures to consider, in some occasions you just have to be able to deal with that and get the color right, my opinion still remains that a expodisc is the easiest and fastest way to get a whitebalance you can work with afterwards.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

The snow scene was 6200, Auto WB.

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Thanks, Noa.

Is this one better?

Re: C100 and white balance
 

Kathy,

If you're forced to shoot in that kind of light, you could pick up a couple decent daylight balanced, dimmable LED panels, and a bounce card or two and kill the florescents. I have some nice Ikan 576 that run off v-mount batteries. Quick, easy, run cool and and quiet, and they are bi-color (variable from 3200-5600).

Noa... I just picked up an expodisc to try out. I'll let you know what I think. Thanks for the tip.