What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading?

Brian Drysdale · February 8th, 2020, 06:08 PM

The colourists are doing more work than you are Ryan with their scenes. Your test would be unusable in a film because you'd need to keep the clothing consistent throughout the film.

Sometimes you have to give up on something because you don't have the resources to do it and a poor quality job will distract from more important aspects of the film.

I don't know why you're going over this stuff again, since it was gone over and over again in another thread,

Ryan Elder · February 9th, 2020, 01:36 AM

Oh it's just in the other thread, certain variables were not mentioned that I wanted to go over, such as the how I was recently told that a camera with a better codec was better for separating skin tones, which is what I was asking about in the OP.

However, if the change in codec does not make that much of a difference, than I could try to make the background blue or teal while shooting. But if I do that and I am not allowed to paint the walls, then should I just light the walls blue, while keeping the skin tones separate?

Paul R Johnson · February 9th, 2020, 02:05 AM

I think I finally understand the confusion. Think for a moment what you are doing. You have taken the skin tone thing out of context. You want to change the colour of certain parts of the indivudal frames - a photoshop style process. We're not talking about subtle changes to colour balance and toning - we're talking about image processing, and pretty severe processing at that! You want to preserve the skin colour. That means big changes to make the heavy adjustment you have made go back. The amount of colour information in the data stream is already limited in the digitisation process - we get the best detail in the luminence and the colour is just at a sufficient level. Tweak too much and you lose the differences in colour, and putting them back creates colour noise. The 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 difference just allows more scope.Better colour quality, if you like.

Maybe an analogy would be to use audio. You put is a radical and crazy eq with a 32 band eq. You then feed that to another 32 band eq and try to recreate the original with the same cut and boost the other way. You'd get something similar, but noisy and far less 'quality'. This is what you are having trouble with the experiment. 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 do the mangling differently - but what you are doing is just wrong, compromised, pointless or just plain daft!

If you go to somebodies venue you CANNOT even consider starting to repaint the walls. You can't think about changing it electronically. You just light it so their skin tones and clothes look as good as you can. If clothes are important, then that is the costume department. If the walls are that critical, then your budget will allow repaining, and then probably restoration. If you don't have the money - choose a different location, or put up with it. You don't tell the client you can change the colour in post, because you can't do it properly.

Lots of people who need chroma keying see the differences in 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 in the sharpness of areas of changing colour - where the green becomes not green. That does make a difference to the keying. A small one perhaps, but measureable. You are just doing silly things.

Light the scene properly, or accept what you get. I don't think you should treat colour as something you can replace in post.

Ryan Elder · February 9th, 2020, 02:17 AM

Oh okay thanks. But when watching tutorials on color grading, they are actually able to change the color in post though. In this tutorial:

The background is actually grey on the walls in the real location and they changed the color to a teal look. So what you are saying that the background cannot be changed in post, they actually did it though. He separated the skin tones, and changes the background walls from grey to teal at around 11:20 into the clip. So if it can't be done in post, than how does he do it?

At 1:20 into the video, he also shows a scene from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. The original shot of the woman walking down the street, the streets are grey and her coat is grey. Then it shows how it was graded to teal in post. So not even a multi-million dollar movie like Ghost Protocol, could afford to make the streets and clothes teal. The person in the video says notice how the neutral colors have changed to teal in post production. So even a movie like that was forced to use neutral colors instead of teal it seems.

Brian Drysdale · February 9th, 2020, 02:56 AM

You're going to have do that with the entire film. Care has to be taken with costume selection and to a certain extent you need to light as if you're shooting in black and white, since you no longer have a full range of colours (basically two)..

That means you need to use the lighting to create separation, so flat lighting. as in your two martial arts guys is best avoided. because the scene can look "dead" extremely quickly because the textures etc are being lost.

I can see little point in you to keep on asking here about the process, you've got a video that explains the use of nodes etc to get neutral whites. It's a matter of you understanding the processes in Resolve and testing them out. The last time I looked, the program has a 1200 page manual, plus there are books on digital colour correction, which goes into more detail than is possible in a forum.

Ryan Elder · February 9th, 2020, 02:58 AM

Oh okay thanks. What I could do is ask a DP to light so that the skin can be separated in post later, as long as a DP can light that way, and maybe just leave it up to them? And yes, I tried to follow the videos instructions, just kept getting noise in the footage when I do it.

Paul R Johnson · February 9th, 2020, 03:09 AM

NO NO NO - That is not what I'm saying. It is perfectly possible to do almost anything - the question is in the detail. Just look at the thumbnail for that video. The colour, the definition, the lighting, the contrast - but most of all, the skill of the operator. Presented with lower definition material, more noise, and a poorer source material in general, then the result would be as you discovered - less good.

Show me a you tube video where there was zero budget and beginner calibre crew where it works and doesn't look like it's been fiddled with!

You are taking things to excess. In that video, the colour shifts he carefully calculates and inserts are subtle - the skin tones get enhanced just a bit, and the cyan (which is what teal is) gets deepened. The video world seems to be preoccupied with this effect because it makes pinky colours more obvious.

Subtlety, care, love and attention to detail. You just made it a feature. Subtlety isn't on your agenda. Yours is effect vs their realism.

From what I know of colourists, their job is not to repair faulty shooting, it's to make good video even nicer to watch.

Please don't reply starting "OK thanks, but ......."

Ryan Elder · February 9th, 2020, 03:13 AM

Oh okay. Sorry if I start a lot of my posts that way.

How come a movie like Ghost Protocol doesn't just get the actress a teal colored coat, or actually paint the street teal, instead of doing in post then, since they have so much money?

So for my next project where I want a teal background from the actors, let's say I light white walls to be darker than the skin tones. Will this help get the background to be able to be graded to teal and will it work, or could it?

Brian Drysdale · February 9th, 2020, 03:29 AM

You seem to be stuck, this effect appears to be a style to get something like the visual style of the old black and white thrillers for an audience that won't sit and watch a black and white film. Turn off the colour on your TV and see what it looks like.

Unless you've got the lighting resources to get tonal separation, as in a black and white film, don't go down this route. You usually do have the walls with a bit less exposure than the characters, however, white walls will reflect back any light that hits them. That is an issue that the DP has to address and it can eat up the lighting time.

Paul R Johnson · February 9th, 2020, 03:30 AM

They do NOT paint things cyan, because it's not pigment it's a shift in colour balance. We are talking subtle Ryan. Do you not watch these videos and try to understand? It's not about the colour, it's about the colour 'world'. Infinite shades, and with black and white we change contrast to make the light stand out from the dark. In colour we shift one part of the scene one way, and the rest the other. Moving something neutral towards green would make magenta the right complimentary colour. You could dye a coat a tiny bit blue/green, and put some more makeup on the actress. Painting the street would not remotely work, and would look cartoonish. Think subtle - this is what the colourist is doing. You changing a T-shirt from blue to green, or a grey wall to blue is an effect. This much change creates the blandness in the colour range and the noise.

If you have light, white walls, then that's going to look false doing it by adding that much gain and change. You seem to totally misunderstand what they are doing. How exactly would you light a wall to be darker than skin? Skin is not white. It is less in every colour component and luminosity. If you want the wall darker - do NOT light it, light the subject!

You also need to ask yourself WHY you would want to tint it cyan. Certainly not for realism. I suggest you stick to things critical to moviemaking - like real basics (composition, story, camerawork and audio capture) and when you have mastered these, move onto the subtle stuff. It's like a doctor getting paranoid about the neatness of their stitching, without learning how to actually remove the appendix!

Ryan Elder · February 9th, 2020, 03:36 AM

Oh it's just that since my next project is more of the thriller suspense genre, I though that coloring the background a more cyan/blue would give it a more cold feel and is what I want for that genre, if that makes sense? I could just light the white walls then and not use a fill light, or at least a very dim one, if that's better? And yes, I am not going for realism but a more cinematic experience.

Brian Drysdale · February 9th, 2020, 03:58 AM

There are other methods of getting a cooler look, it depends if your film is more about style or realism, if it's an action film or more about the dialogue. Just because other films use something, it doesn't mean it's right for your film, there's no magic bullet for a suspenseful thriller.

Ryan Elder · February 9th, 2020, 04:12 AM

Yeah that's true, I just feel that the cold steel blue look would be best for this next thriller project.

Brian Drysdale · February 9th, 2020, 04:21 AM

The choice is yours, I suspect this has gone as far it can in a forum, it's up to you to do the full tests with the gear that will actually be used, otherwise this will end up going around in circles in the forum.

Pete Cofrancesco · February 9th, 2020, 08:38 AM

So Ryan what are you really asking us? Clearly you want to do this orange/teal effect. You’re are going to need at least a 10bit 4:2:2 capable camera. You will also need to lean how to do this in Resolve.

Honestly if you can master this I think you would be better off as colorist than a director.

February 8th, 2020, 06:08 PM	#46
Brian Drysdale Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Belfast, UK Posts: 6,143	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? The colourists are doing more work than you are Ryan with their scenes. Your test would be unusable in a film because you'd need to keep the clothing consistent throughout the film. Sometimes you have to give up on something because you don't have the resources to do it and a poor quality job will distract from more important aspects of the film. I don't know why you're going over this stuff again, since it was gone over and over again in another thread,

February 9th, 2020, 01:36 AM	#47
Ryan Elder also known as Ryan Wray Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Saskatoon, Canada Posts: 2,880	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? Oh it's just in the other thread, certain variables were not mentioned that I wanted to go over, such as the how I was recently told that a camera with a better codec was better for separating skin tones, which is what I was asking about in the OP. However, if the change in codec does not make that much of a difference, than I could try to make the background blue or teal while shooting. But if I do that and I am not allowed to paint the walls, then should I just light the walls blue, while keeping the skin tones separate?

February 9th, 2020, 02:05 AM	#48
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,015	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? I think I finally understand the confusion. Think for a moment what you are doing. You have taken the skin tone thing out of context. You want to change the colour of certain parts of the indivudal frames - a photoshop style process. We're not talking about subtle changes to colour balance and toning - we're talking about image processing, and pretty severe processing at that! You want to preserve the skin colour. That means big changes to make the heavy adjustment you have made go back. The amount of colour information in the data stream is already limited in the digitisation process - we get the best detail in the luminence and the colour is just at a sufficient level. Tweak too much and you lose the differences in colour, and putting them back creates colour noise. The 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 difference just allows more scope.Better colour quality, if you like. Maybe an analogy would be to use audio. You put is a radical and crazy eq with a 32 band eq. You then feed that to another 32 band eq and try to recreate the original with the same cut and boost the other way. You'd get something similar, but noisy and far less 'quality'. This is what you are having trouble with the experiment. 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 do the mangling differently - but what you are doing is just wrong, compromised, pointless or just plain daft! If you go to somebodies venue you CANNOT even consider starting to repaint the walls. You can't think about changing it electronically. You just light it so their skin tones and clothes look as good as you can. If clothes are important, then that is the costume department. If the walls are that critical, then your budget will allow repaining, and then probably restoration. If you don't have the money - choose a different location, or put up with it. You don't tell the client you can change the colour in post, because you can't do it properly. Lots of people who need chroma keying see the differences in 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 in the sharpness of areas of changing colour - where the green becomes not green. That does make a difference to the keying. A small one perhaps, but measureable. You are just doing silly things. Light the scene properly, or accept what you get. I don't think you should treat colour as something you can replace in post.

February 9th, 2020, 02:17 AM	#49
Ryan Elder also known as Ryan Wray Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Saskatoon, Canada Posts: 2,880	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? Oh okay thanks. But when watching tutorials on color grading, they are actually able to change the color in post though. In this tutorial: The Summer Blockbuster Colour Grading Tutorial - YouTube The background is actually grey on the walls in the real location and they changed the color to a teal look. So what you are saying that the background cannot be changed in post, they actually did it though. He separated the skin tones, and changes the background walls from grey to teal at around 11:20 into the clip. So if it can't be done in post, than how does he do it? At 1:20 into the video, he also shows a scene from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. The original shot of the woman walking down the street, the streets are grey and her coat is grey. Then it shows how it was graded to teal in post. So not even a multi-million dollar movie like Ghost Protocol, could afford to make the streets and clothes teal. The person in the video says notice how the neutral colors have changed to teal in post production. So even a movie like that was forced to use neutral colors instead of teal it seems.

February 9th, 2020, 02:56 AM	#50
Brian Drysdale Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Belfast, UK Posts: 6,143	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? You're going to have do that with the entire film. Care has to be taken with costume selection and to a certain extent you need to light as if you're shooting in black and white, since you no longer have a full range of colours (basically two).. That means you need to use the lighting to create separation, so flat lighting. as in your two martial arts guys is best avoided. because the scene can look "dead" extremely quickly because the textures etc are being lost. I can see little point in you to keep on asking here about the process, you've got a video that explains the use of nodes etc to get neutral whites. It's a matter of you understanding the processes in Resolve and testing them out. The last time I looked, the program has a 1200 page manual, plus there are books on digital colour correction, which goes into more detail than is possible in a forum.

February 9th, 2020, 02:58 AM	#51
Ryan Elder also known as Ryan Wray Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Saskatoon, Canada Posts: 2,880	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? Oh okay thanks. What I could do is ask a DP to light so that the skin can be separated in post later, as long as a DP can light that way, and maybe just leave it up to them? And yes, I tried to follow the videos instructions, just kept getting noise in the footage when I do it.

February 9th, 2020, 03:09 AM	#52
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,015	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? NO NO NO - That is not what I'm saying. It is perfectly possible to do almost anything - the question is in the detail. Just look at the thumbnail for that video. The colour, the definition, the lighting, the contrast - but most of all, the skill of the operator. Presented with lower definition material, more noise, and a poorer source material in general, then the result would be as you discovered - less good. Show me a you tube video where there was zero budget and beginner calibre crew where it works and doesn't look like it's been fiddled with! You are taking things to excess. In that video, the colour shifts he carefully calculates and inserts are subtle - the skin tones get enhanced just a bit, and the cyan (which is what teal is) gets deepened. The video world seems to be preoccupied with this effect because it makes pinky colours more obvious. Subtlety, care, love and attention to detail. You just made it a feature. Subtlety isn't on your agenda. Yours is effect vs their realism. From what I know of colourists, their job is not to repair faulty shooting, it's to make good video even nicer to watch. Please don't reply starting "OK thanks, but ......."

February 9th, 2020, 03:13 AM	#53
Ryan Elder also known as Ryan Wray Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Saskatoon, Canada Posts: 2,880	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? Oh okay. Sorry if I start a lot of my posts that way. How come a movie like Ghost Protocol doesn't just get the actress a teal colored coat, or actually paint the street teal, instead of doing in post then, since they have so much money? So for my next project where I want a teal background from the actors, let's say I light white walls to be darker than the skin tones. Will this help get the background to be able to be graded to teal and will it work, or could it?

February 9th, 2020, 03:29 AM	#54
Brian Drysdale Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Belfast, UK Posts: 6,143	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? You seem to be stuck, this effect appears to be a style to get something like the visual style of the old black and white thrillers for an audience that won't sit and watch a black and white film. Turn off the colour on your TV and see what it looks like. Unless you've got the lighting resources to get tonal separation, as in a black and white film, don't go down this route. You usually do have the walls with a bit less exposure than the characters, however, white walls will reflect back any light that hits them. That is an issue that the DP has to address and it can eat up the lighting time.

February 9th, 2020, 03:30 AM	#55
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,015	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? They do NOT paint things cyan, because it's not pigment it's a shift in colour balance. We are talking subtle Ryan. Do you not watch these videos and try to understand? It's not about the colour, it's about the colour 'world'. Infinite shades, and with black and white we change contrast to make the light stand out from the dark. In colour we shift one part of the scene one way, and the rest the other. Moving something neutral towards green would make magenta the right complimentary colour. You could dye a coat a tiny bit blue/green, and put some more makeup on the actress. Painting the street would not remotely work, and would look cartoonish. Think subtle - this is what the colourist is doing. You changing a T-shirt from blue to green, or a grey wall to blue is an effect. This much change creates the blandness in the colour range and the noise. If you have light, white walls, then that's going to look false doing it by adding that much gain and change. You seem to totally misunderstand what they are doing. How exactly would you light a wall to be darker than skin? Skin is not white. It is less in every colour component and luminosity. If you want the wall darker - do NOT light it, light the subject! You also need to ask yourself WHY you would want to tint it cyan. Certainly not for realism. I suggest you stick to things critical to moviemaking - like real basics (composition, story, camerawork and audio capture) and when you have mastered these, move onto the subtle stuff. It's like a doctor getting paranoid about the neatness of their stitching, without learning how to actually remove the appendix!

February 9th, 2020, 03:36 AM	#56
Ryan Elder also known as Ryan Wray Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Saskatoon, Canada Posts: 2,880	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? Oh it's just that since my next project is more of the thriller suspense genre, I though that coloring the background a more cyan/blue would give it a more cold feel and is what I want for that genre, if that makes sense? I could just light the white walls then and not use a fill light, or at least a very dim one, if that's better? And yes, I am not going for realism but a more cinematic experience.

February 9th, 2020, 03:58 AM	#57
Brian Drysdale Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Belfast, UK Posts: 6,143	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? There are other methods of getting a cooler look, it depends if your film is more about style or realism, if it's an action film or more about the dialogue. Just because other films use something, it doesn't mean it's right for your film, there's no magic bullet for a suspenseful thriller.

February 9th, 2020, 04:12 AM	#58
Ryan Elder also known as Ryan Wray Join Date: Nov 2017 Location: Saskatoon, Canada Posts: 2,880	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? Yeah that's true, I just feel that the cold steel blue look would be best for this next thriller project.

February 9th, 2020, 04:21 AM	#59
Brian Drysdale Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Belfast, UK Posts: 6,143	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? The choice is yours, I suspect this has gone as far it can in a forum, it's up to you to do the full tests with the gear that will actually be used, otherwise this will end up going around in circles in the forum.

February 9th, 2020, 08:38 AM	#60
Pete Cofrancesco Inner Circle Join Date: May 2004 Location: USA Posts: 2,995	Re: What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading? So Ryan what are you really asking us? Clearly you want to do this orange/teal effect. You’re are going to need at least a 10bit 4:2:2 capable camera. You will also need to lean how to do this in Resolve. Honestly if you can master this I think you would be better off as colorist than a director.