My First Color Correction

[koolpenguin89]

So, a while back i downloaded a bunch of HV20 test footage to see the quality of the camera (i still havent bought it, but its what im saving for.) The other day i bought final cut, and tonight i was looking through that old footage and saw that this video was improperly white balanced.

Long story short, i loaded it into FCPs color corrector, and one thing led to another, so i ended up an hour later with footage i had tried to make emulate film.

This is my first ever attempt at color correcting:hv20-smilie15: (color grading? is that the same term?) so try not to flame me too hard. Enjoy:hv20-smilie81:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y9ruidcbZQ

[astrogreek]

The clip illustrates one of my main concerns with the HV20 - the poor skin tones. It is generally difficult or impossible to correct completely the colors in post. I believe it is partly caused by incomplete IR-blocking; I will get an UV/IR blocking filter to test this.

[seunosewa]

Poor skin tones. I don't understand. Can you show us HV20 frame grabs (not graded) that demonstrate the problem of poor skin tone?

[RicanJoe]

Poor skin tones. I don't understand. Can you show us HV20 frame grabs (not graded) that demonstrate the problem of poor skin tone? Look at the video:hv20-smilie77:

[CJDaniels]

Skin tone is very yellow, in the top one if that is the corrected one.

[koolpenguin89]

Ya, the top one is my attempt at correcting (a label would have cleared that up, sorry.) It is more yellow, but in my opinion, yellow looks alot more natural than the red/pink tones the kids skin had before i tweaked it. Then again, that might just be me. What do others think? does anyone have any suggestions on how to do it better?

[astrogreek]

Here's my try at color correction. I took one frame from the clip, opened it in Photoshop, and used a plugin called Skintune from Phototune (the adjusted image is on top).

[Duke]

The bottom picture is so far off, I have to ask. Did you use any of the white balance settings appropriate for the light? Did you try manual white balance?

Depending on your settings halogen looks more yellow, flourecent looks more green, outdoor light looks more blue, etc. Also, you can plus or minus your color in the menu.

The skin tone is a combination of the three factors.
Duke

[koolpenguin89]

Astrogreek, i like the way it looks. Do you know if they have similair plugins for video that would work with FCP?

Duke, the footage wasnt shot by me (i dont even have an HV20...yet) I found the clip on this site when i was looking for sample footage. I just happened to use this clip for my CC because it was so off balanced. Also, thanks for the info on lighting.

[astrogreek]

The clip illustrates one of my main concerns with the HV20 - the poor skin tones. It is generally difficult or impossible to correct completely the colors in post. I believe it is partly caused by incomplete IR-blocking; I will get an UV/IR blocking filter to test this.

OK, I have made some tests with an IR-blocking filter, and with an IR-pass filter (which blocks everything except IR) to see how much IR-leak there is and if it causes any problems. The short answer is: it does not.

The long answer: the HV20 does leak some IR, but the amount is so small that it has no real effect on the results under normal conditions. I could see no difference in the image with and without the IR-blocking filter under incandescent lights or in daylight, in shade or in the sun. The filter is a Baader UV/IR filter, with high transmission and sharp cutoffs.

Wolfgang's HDV-blog http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.fxsupport.de%2f01_Canon_HV2 0.html suggests that an IR-blocking filter does indeed affect and improve the colors, but I believe that is because he used a filter that apparently also removes a bit of the red.