MacBeth Color Chart

[Carlos M. Icaza]

Hello,

 

Coming from a photography world, I have come to rely on color charts for post processing work to try go get the image to the way it was originally lit.

 

Now that I am working on several independent projects as a DP, I ask my clapper to hold a macbeth color chart in front of the lens for a period of 10 seconds prior to action and whenever we change lighting. Thus, allowing me in post, to color match scene to scene and giving me greater latitude for color correction processing digitally. I have not done any film work. I have done all my work in miniDV (XL-1).

 

 

Question, how often do you guys use a color chart and what suggestions do you have ? I am like overkilling a simple process? It has helped me out tremendously. Any thoughts suggestions ?

 

Thanks,

 

C.-

[David Mullen ASC]

I shoot a grey scale under flat, white light to judge the following scene. Color charts are too easy to misinterpret but most people can tell if a grey tone is off-colored.

 

Shooting under the actual lighting is problematic unless you are front-lighting the scene with white light. Or unless you are shooting under greenish flourescents and want the colorist to time out the green to neutral.

 

If you shoot a scene under a half-orange key deliberately and shoot your color chart under that lighting, how is the timer / colorist supposed to know what shade of orange that light that is? He might time out the orange color to make the chart look "correct". If you shoot a chart under white light and then the following scene is under half-orange light, then the exact shade of orange is obvious because you have a neutral frame of reference to compare it to.

 

Same goes for exposure -- what if you want your key to be a stop over or under? If that's the first thing the timer sees, they will assume the key is supposed to be at normal exposure and correct to that. So if you have a chart under the normal exposure (normal for how you are rating the film) and then the following scene is deliberately overexposed, then it's obvious.

 

Now all of this applies to shooting film for printing or transfer. As for video, I suppose your color bars serve as a "neutral" frame of reference to judge the scene against.

 

If you mean that you shoot a color chart under whatever the lighting is so that later if you need to recreate that color/ exposure, you have something of known color value to judge against, I can see that logic although that's not how I match colors. I usually remember what color-balance I used on the camera and what gels I used on the lights, but this is one reason why I don't use the white-balance function much, preferring to start with the preset balances so that later, I can come back knowing that I shot with the camera on Filter B, let's say, under "x" light with "x" gel on it.

[Carlos M. Icaza]

David,

 

Thank you very much on your reply. I Always learn something new on this board.

 

I kind of had the gut feeling about the gels, key light, etc as you describe. I'll start using a gray card from now on as part of the discipline and also will start to write all the lighting details about the scene being shot.

 

Thanks for your time as always,

 

Carlos.-