Help understanding colour grading etc

Started by Roman, October 13, 2012, 02:56:18 AM

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Roman

Hey guys,

Took some footage yesterday in varying light conditions, where I'm at the mercy of natural lighting.

Panning with a fisheye lense means that there's no way I could use any additional lighting or anything without it being in the shot (not that I've got any, haha)

And generally was optimising towards the lowest shutter speed possible, for maximum detail on fast moving objects.

I've been trying a few different things to make the colours look natural/good, but not quite there yet.

Shooting in the 'neutral' picture style with a few different lenses on a 600D

(mainly Kit 55-250mm, Samyang 8mm, Sigma 24mm F1.8 )

In Sony vegas loading:

Colour curves, Brightness and contrast, Sharpen, saturation.

I've generally adjusted the brightness slightly up or down to suit, sharpened it, and then eyeballed saturation and colour curves so it's not too blue (As I probably had whitebalance orienting towards blue while shooting, woops)

However I've not managed to find something that looks good, and if I'm using the fisheye lense or the stock lense, they seem to give slightly different colouring to start with.

In the footage below the colouring etc isnt consistent between clips, because I've just still been trying to find a 'look' that I like. Then try to make the rest of it consistent with this when I'm happy with something.

I think at around the 25 second mark is what has come out the best so far...
Although I realise that shooting into the sun, away from the sun, in overcast etc its not going to be possible to make it completely consistent I guess. Will keep this in mind for next time.

Is 'Neutral' good to use, or are there alternatives which are better? I dont have any 3rd party picture styles loaded, thought I'd try get my head around the normal ones first.

I'm also thinking I might try 1080p next time and ditch the 60fps in favour of better clarity etc.

If anyone can impart some of their knowledge and experience for some good ways to shoot initially or grade colours afterwards, or any other constructive advice it would be much appreciated!

Thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYC6N7Fzz7U

Malcolm Debono

For consistency, remember to set manual white balance. In post, you should first try to get your clips to look consistent. When that's done, give them the final look you're after.

I mainly use Premiere CS6, and I do this by first adjusting each clip individually to match the others (when necessary) using the 3-way colour corrector and the RGB curves. I then create an adjustment layer over all the clips and apply the effects for the look I'm after (e.g. fast colour corrector and unsharp mask) to that layer so that it's applied to all clips beneath it.

As you mentioned, you won't get consistency if you're shooting in different lighting conditions.

When it comes to picture style, I'm currently using flaat10p (search it on google). It stands between Cinestyle and Neutral Flat. I'm using the one based on portrait rather than neutral because it makes skin tones look better.

Unless you need the 60/50fps for slo-mo, always shoot in 1080p. You'll get a better picture overall (besides the higher resolution).

Hope this helps! :) Let me know if you need more info.
Wedding & event cinematographer
C100 & 6D shooter
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Roman

Hey thanks Malcolm, that's a great help.

I'll look into that picture style.

I had a go at doing what you said.

I found a clip that I liked the look of, and then split all of my footage into the groups of differing lighting conditions and then tried to tweak them to match as best I could:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwKO74cwl78&feature=g-all-lik

I've learnt a whole heap about what to do/dont do for next time, so looking forward to getting out there again :)

I think next time I'll shoot in 1080p with the goal of making a 720p or 480p video (what most people probably watch it at on youtube)

So that I've got lots of leeway for shooting really wide so I dont risk missing anything off the edge of the shot, and then cropping it with panning later if need be.