thanks to all the big brains
 

i am very happy also, and am using this preset pretty much all the time.
i'm very glad there is so much knowledge available here, and shared so graciously.
If left to my own devices, i'd still think that 'frame rate' meant the amount of innocent people in jail...

I just finished shooting a project with the following pre-sets and now starting to tweak a bit. I was attempting to match the DVX and then made some adjustments of my own. I've noticed my red are slightly pink and I am not picking up the blacks (more often than not they just dont register). I shoot a lot of documentary footage in low light and would like to adjust for that.

does anyone have suggestions?

GAM CINE1
KNE AUTO
BLK STRETCH
PED -1
SET -1
SHP -3
HDF MIDDLE
DHV 0
COR 2
NR1 OFF
NR2 OFF
CMX 2
CGN -1
CPH 0
RGN -1
GGN -1
BGN -1
RGM 0
RBM 0
GRM 0
GBM 0
BRM 0
BGM 0

Blue cast at TC
 

I want to refresh this topic. I'm new owner of XH A1s. I also notice blue cast at TrueColour preset. Here are my shots with fabric preset and TC.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3279/img0113syb.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/8641/img0114wcr.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/2732/img0115q.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/2012/img0116fgx.jpg

What to do with it?

Artur,

Did you manually white balance before shooting?

I set manually, automatically and pre-defined. I shoot in daylight and tungsten. Always the same: blue cast. I can post other shots if needed.
Sorry, if my english is poor.

Artur,

Your english is fine....do not worry.(Nawalaneic was my mother's last name, but I know very little polish)

Did you also notice the blue when you manually white-balance? After white balance..white should be white. You have a picture with white curtains that look blue. If you properly white balanced, the curtains should be white. Yes?

I use truecolor preset and do not see the blue.....maybe I should look harder at my work.

Hi,
Thanks for reply. Images above are auto WB. Curtains and window are white. Here are some shots took this evening at tungsten light. Manually white balanced.

Last name your mother was probably Nawalaniec. It's typical polish name :-)

Edit: I noticed that using Auto level function in my PhotoImpactXL produce almost white balancing images. It means nothing of course.

Artur,

I will test and upload pics. I will manully white balance.

Artur,

Thank you for correcting my spelling. I believe Nawalaniec means "Baker's son"

Here is a comparison of "no preset"(LEFT) and "truecolor"(RIGHT). The white board is a painter's canves that I used to manully white balance. I will let you look and see if the blue is there. (NOTE: I had to increase the db setting on truecolor....low lighting in the room....it made the pic a bit lighter)

My white balance procedure:
1. Select a custom preset; and VERIFY custom preset is "ON".
2. Zoom in on white board. (I do not focus)
3. Press white balance button until it stops blinking.

If you don't see the blue in my pics, you might want to check the trucolor set up to make sure all values are correct in the setup.

Hope this helps, Artur.

Regards,
Michael

Hello Michael,

Thanks for help. I'm at work in office now and will test it at home later.

My procedure:
1. manually white balance on white page without any preset
2. turn preset on
3. shot
Do I something wrong? Does any preset influent on white balance? I thought every preset manages an image AFTER white balancing.

I see slight blue cast on your Truecolor's shot. Take it to your graphic aplication and test it by eyedropper. I will do it too.
My shots has been taken without gain.
And last but not least: Nawalaniec doesn't mean "baker's son" :-) It's difficult to explain what it means. This word probably origins from verb "nawalać" which has many meanings.
Sorry, I think polish and write english - I hope you won't cry of angry or laugh :-)
BTW: my last name "Śmiech" means "laughter".

Artur,
Change your procedure.

1.TURN ON PRESET
2.WHITE BALANCE ....I think that is your problem.
3.SHOOT

Thanks, Michael!
It's 3 p.m. I finished work and go home to test it. I do as you wrote.

It's 6 p.m. I'm at home and did your procedure. It's all the same. I will try to modificate this preset. Did you noticed that black parts are black and only white tend to blue? Upload images, put them into Photoshop (or similar) and use eyedropper.

One thing to be aware of is that auto-WB and manual temperature dial-in can produce very different results. WB definitely adjusts more than the single color temp.

On that note, I get a blue cast when using WB with truecolor, but not when manually dialing in the temperature.

These shots was taken at small halogen lamp on my office-desk (20W of power).

Hello Michael,

Here are your shots I meassured in my PhotoImpactXL. There is slight blue cast yet :-(

Why don't you guys just connect your A1 to a calibrated monitor and make adjustments to the preset (-blue and/or +red, etc). Some experience this slight blue cast (me included) and some don't. Like I said, I did... and corrected it with adjustments.

I haven't one but I'll try to do it with my Samsung SyncMaster 957DF. Certain difficultness is multitude of adjustments such as RG Gain, GR Gain etc. Did you noticed blacks are black and whites are blue in my shots?

Bill,

Do you mind sharing your adjusted settings?

Thanks in advance.

Reviving an old thread: I, too, would be interested in what "adjustments" were made. Last night I experimented extensively under tungsten lighting using the current TRUCOLOR preset (i.e., the corrected one, not the original). I white-balanced using a professional card, holding it at various angles to the light to ensure that I wasn't getting variations in WB depending on orientation (shadows, etc.).

Danged if I couldn't get rid of what looked like a blue cast in the whites, looking, for instance, at a sheet of paper with my naked eye and through the LCD viewfinder simultaneously. I white balanced probably a dozen times: same result. In fact, the entire picture looked a bit cold no matter what I did, suggesting that my various attempts to white balance were "correct", and at least invariable.

For grins I clicked over to auto-WB and the image warmed immediately and slightly to remove the blue cast, yielding whites that really looked white and an image that didn't seem warm but just right. What gives? Why couldn't I attain the same pleasing image with an accurate manual white balance?

If it weren't for this troubling (to me) aspect of TRUCOLOR and my apparent inability to compensate for it, I would use the present as my default. Any ideas from folks who have experimented more?

Steve

Steven,

When I tried this preset a while back, I got a same blue cast as well. I don't believe it's a white balance issue either. I have never seen anything specific on what settings can compensate for it. I would like for someone to post those as well. On a side note, do you think the colors on this preset look a bit saturated?

No, I don't think the colors look too saturated. I chose this preset for the express purpose of obtaining accurate, and the most, color information so I could grade in post. I believe that was the original intent of the author of this preset. Therefore, I'm not too concerned about what the raw footage looks like, so long as its accurate, e.g., with no blue cast!

WB'ing comes second nature to me now, and so I, too, suspect that I'm not WB'ing incorrectly. Unfortunately, I'm just a serious hobbyist with a high end LCD monitor, not a calibrated production monitor ($$). I suppose if I had the latter, I could find out just what tweaks in the camera would remove the slight blue cast. Since I don't, I revived the thread for my selfish purpose of finding out what might have worked for others similarly situated (frustrated).

Steve

I changed RGB settings to 0,0,0 and something else. Now the white is exactly white. My version is below.

That was a fast response! Thanks very much, Artur. Could I trouble you to post a list of your revised settings in a reply here?

Steve

EDIT: I suppose your reply also would clarify for me what "RGB" is, if this does not refer to the three separate gain settings for R, G, and B, respectively.

Sorry I missed this originally. It's been so long ago I may have made further adjustments that suited my needs, but here they are:

GAM N
KNE M
BLK P
PED -4
SET -1
SHP -1
HDF M (default)
DHV 0 (default)
COR 0
NR1 0
NR2 0
CMX N
CGN 8
CPH 0
RGN -1
GGN -2
BGN -3
RGM 10
RBM -12
GRM 6
GBM 0
BRM 12
BGM -3

Yes, RGB are separate channels of Red, Green, Blue.

Parameter Original value My value
GAM Gamma N N
KNE Knee M L
BLK Black P S
PED Pedestal -9 0
SET Setup -9 -4
SHP Sharpness -9 -4
HDF Hor.Detail M (default) M (default)
DHV Detail HV Balance 0 (default) 0 (default)
COR Coring 0 -2
NR1 Noise Reduction 1 0 0
NR2 Noise Reduction 2 0 0
CMX Color Matrix N N
CGN Color Gain 0 0
CPH Color Phase 0 0
RGN Red Gain -7 0
GGN Green Gain 3 0
BGN Blue Gain 12 0
RGM Red Green Matrix 40 40
RBM Red Blue Matrix -12 -12
GRM Green Red Matrix 6 6
GBM Green Blue Matrix 0 0
BRM Blue Red Matrix 12 12
BGM Blue Green Matrix -3 -3

Bill, Artur:

Many thanks for the quick replies. I'm going to give these revised TRUCOLOR settings a try this evening. Artur, your earlier posts of pictures showing white paper illuminated by a desk lamp under various WB settings looked exactly like my results from last night. Thus, I'm encouraged that a solution is in sight!

Steve

Comparison of Original TruColor with Bill's and Artur's Variations
 

After testing this evening, it is evident that both Bill's and Artur's variations of the TruColor preset definitively get rid of the blue cast that I observe with the original TruColor preset. I conducted three tests following the procedure below each time I changed values in the TruColor preset.

Test:

1. Selected one of the variations for the preset.
2. Correctly locked exposure: no overblown whites or underexposed blacks. I did not change exposure over the duration of my three tests.
3. Manually focused on and white balanced on my professional WB card.
4. Took a few seconds of footage. Brought into Vegas, slapped on a title, exported to Adobe Photoshop Elements, and used the eyedropper tool to get RGB values for my WB card.

Results:

1. Original TruColor is most definitely blue. Subjectively and objectively (RGB) this is clearly the case.

2. Artur's variation seems almost reddish by comparison. Also, the blacks in this variation have more details, but also quite a bit of noise that I could see easily in Photoshop. Otherwise, the image looks pretty danged good.

3. Bill's variation struck me as the most neutral with no detectable color cast, even though the RGB values are essentially identical to Artur's. The blacks are much less noisy, however, and more akin to what TruColor offers, in my subjective opinion. Bill's and Artur's variations use different pedestal and and black settings, which likely account somewhat for the differences I observe in the black regions.

As you can see, the tests were under artificial (halogen) lighting. I'd like to try out the variations outdoors in daylight, where I tend to shoot the most footage. For now, I really like Bill's version.

My thanks to both gentlemen for posting their efforts.

Steve

Thank you for comparison, Steve. I can see my settings give some reddish cast opposite to Bill's. I will try his preset in tungsten and daylight. I use my TC's version indoor only. At this reason I raised PED and SET to get more details of blacks. I left RG, GR, BG etc. the same of Paolo Ciccone. I lowered KNE at L to avoid overexpose the whites.

Very useful
 

I like Bill's too.
I had noticed the blue cast in the original setting and thought to just work it out in post, but Bill's much better.
I 'm wondering what the original poster thinks about this?
L.

You know, Larry, I tried doing the same in post. In my hands, however, the footage always looked a bit "off", no matter how hard I adjusted hue, WB, or other things. Maybe I just have poor skills. For instance, I shot a lot of baseball games, and the grass field and foliage beyond the field always looked a sick blue-green (e.g., not a nice blue-green like Kentucky blue grass :) ). I just could not get rid of the blue cast entirely without making other parts of the image looking too reddish.

It is plain from the previous many pages of this thread that the OP was quite active and was adamant that TruColor gave no blue cast whatsoever. I got the feeling the OP felt that to the extent that a blue cast does exist on a given camera, however, then perhaps that camera needs calibration. His blog indicates that he does not have an A1, suggesting that this project was a one-off not to be visited again. Still, like you, I'd be interested in reading his thoughts.

Steve

Yes, Artur, I suspected that was the reason for your PED and SET settings. After I applied NeatVideo noise reduction to footage that I shot with your preset, the footage looked very clean and pleasing, aside from the reddish cast that I observed in the conditons I outlined above.

Steve

What's funny is... I noticed on the last set of photos Steve posted there's discrepancy between the thumbnail representations and the images opened... but only on the LCD connected to this PC

Thumbnails:
original TC has the blue cast many have noticed.
the other two, mine and Artur's look fine.

Opened images displayed:
original TC looks great. No blue! White is white! :D
mine and Artur's white's have a reddish cast! :D

Bring these into PS CS2 using the "auto levels" or "auto color" on all three, the original isn't altered much and looks quite good, while mine and Artur's will get noticeably washed out looking. :D

I know this isn't a correct method of comparison, but it was a funny observation.

Haha! That is strange! For grins, I just repeated what you did, minus importing into an NLE for adjustments. Below is a screen grab of my picture post above that is juxtaposed to the three opened images on the right, shown in their respective windows, and positioned in roughly the same orientation. I can't see any difference between thumbnails and opened images on my monitor.

Steve

We're all just FUBAR'd :D

I used the trucolor preset for my latest tourism project. Very happy with the vibrant colors

YouTube - Adventure Activities - Macarthur Region

And what do you say for that? I suppose the wings are white?

Artur beat me to it. Your images have that dreaded blue cast, Mark...unless, of course, that's the look you're after.

BTW, nice video. I like the shot walking out of the hangar. Very "Top Gun."

Steve

Thanks for the test Artur. I was using the factory preset previously, so was impressed with the more vivid colors of trucolor. I didn't pick up the blue cast, wings were white. Back to the drawing board :(

There is something strange. Greys and blacks are nearer to right values. Whites tend to blue, isn't it? Take a look at this:

Why, Mark? It\'s done for you. Try the slightly revised preset in post #144 of this thread. I did and it completely removed the blue cast whilst maintaining the other colors wonderfully. I\'ve been shooting outdoors with it and I can say that the footage straight from the A1 looks just terrific.

Steve