Make the DSLR footage less 'greenish'

[Twan Peeters]

Hi there,

 

I'm a relative inexperienced colour-grader and I am having some issues with my footage. I was wondering if someone here could give me some advice to improve the outcome of the colourgrade! The problem is that I think that the colours look really 'greenish' in the end.

 

Now as you can see, the raw footage that came out of the camera is really yellow. I balanced my camera by making a picture of a white sheet of paper and setting the white balance to custom (On a Canon 60D with Cinestyle). I think I should have just put the white balance to White Fluorescent Lightning.

 

 

So the first thing I did was brighten the image up a bit with Colorista.

 

 

Then I used Curves to add the contrast that I want. This makes the image even more yellow.

 

 

To make the image colder again I added a 'cooling filter' by using Magic Bullet Looks. Normally this works perfect to do minor white balance adjustments, but in this case it seems to make the image really greenish.

 

 

I hope someone can give me advice on how to fix this! From now on I won't be using 'custom whitebalance' on my DSLR anymore..

 

Cheers,

Twan

Edited May 27, 2014 by Twan Peeters

[Phil Rhodes]

Doesn't look to be too much wrong with that - the interior is warm, but then the exterior through the window is slightly cool. Neither is beyond correction.

 

Can I ask why you were using Cinestyle? It's designed for some fairly specific circumstances, and may provoke problems in others (such as needing to add a lot of contrast).

 

P

[Stuart Brereton]

 

 

Can I ask why you were using Cinestyle?

Because it makes a DSLR look like an Alexa, Phil. Everyone knows that!

:)

[Phil Rhodes]

Mutter, grumble.

[Stuart Brereton]

Mutter, grumble.

My experience of Cinestyle is that by the time you have pushed the blacks back down to get rid of the noise and added back a reasonable amount of contrast, where you end up looks suspiciously like the Neutral setting.

[Phil Rhodes]

With lots of extra quilting and macroblocks, yes.

[Twan Peeters]

Thank you all for the fast responses!!

 

Doesn't look to be too much wrong with that - the interior is warm, but then the exterior through the window is slightly cool. Neither is beyond correction.

 

Can I ask why you were using Cinestyle? It's designed for some fairly specific circumstances, and may provoke problems in others (such as needing to add a lot of contrast).

 

P

 

I don't know.. The look did not really satisfy me and seemed very unnatural to me. Maybe it's because the available light in the classroom was horrible to begin with!

 

I started using Cinestyle because people advised me too, since it prevents completely crushed blacks. Also I like to use the plugin Filmconvert on my footage to give it a more cinematic look. Cinestyle seems to work nicely together with Filmconvert. But if you have any advise on other color profiles I'm always searching for better options!

 

Because it makes a DSLR look like an Alexa, Phil. Everyone knows that!

:)

 

Well it does seem to help to give my footage a more cinematic look in the end :)

 

My experience of Cinestyle is that by the time you have pushed the blacks back down to get rid of the noise and added back a reasonable amount of contrast, where you end up looks suspiciously like the Neutral setting.

 

I do agree.. A lot of times my footage ends up in a way that would be sort of the same as the neutral color profile. I'm still trying to find the most efficient way of filming and editing. Cinestyle works for now.

 

Is it true that Cinestyle gives your footage more noise? Lately I think my footage has way more noise than it used to have, but I don't know what is causing this.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Twan Peeters

[Phil Rhodes]

It does look a bit like the sort of yellowish light from "warm white" fluorescent light (whether that's compact fluorescent or tubes, or whatever). White balancing sometimes doesn't help with this - it'll get as close as it can, but there are often large gaps in the output spectrum of cheap fluorescent lighting which are difficult or impossible to correct for.

 

Any very low contrast preset will increase noise, or at least compression artifacts. The low-contrast output of high-end cameras like Alexa and F65 is useful because they record to very lightly compressed or uncompressed recordings. A DSLR like yours, by default, records heavily compressed footage. If you record a low-contrast image that way, then add contrast back in to make it look normal later, you will naturally exacerbate the appearance of compression artifacts.

 

Low-contrast or log-style presets only make sense for cameras with low compression. With a DSLR, unless you are able to run Magic Lantern and record raw, you need to get closer to the final look in camera.

 

When I shoot with cameras like yours, I use the "natural" or "neutral" picture style, and decrease the contrast and sharpness by a click or two, then do the best I can to make things look right in camera.

 

P

[Twan Peeters]

Thanks a lot for your help and tips Phil, this is really helpful.

 

I did not know this about Cinestyle, but then I do not really understand why so much people out there are using this all the time. Even a lot of professionals swear by Cinestyle. I will switch more often to the neutral filter from know on. Thank you!

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

I do not really understand why so much people out there are using this all the time

 

Sometimes it is useful if you are already using a log workflow and want to drop DSLR stuff into it conveniently (but it will still exacerbate compression artifacts).

 

Unfortunately I think a lot of people use it because it is produced by a famous company and because it superficially makes footage look more like the output from an Alexa or something like that - but it really doesn't.

 

P

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I have to slightly disagree with my good friend Phil. I often used cinestyle back when I shot on the 60D, a lot. However, we didn't use it the "right" way. Instead, me being me, I would load it up and then light to how it looked on the monitor. This gave me results which I and the director were pleased with when we treated cine-style as something to be lit to on set, and not something to be pushed and prodded in post-- which is how I think most use it. And again, it's a matter of preference. Was it noisier than had we not used cinestyle? Perhaps, but it was something which I found "ok" for my needs.

[Phil Rhodes]

Well, if you're not grading it back down again to darken the shadows, you won't suffer the noise penalty.

 

Didn't it look a bit pumped up though?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

It did, I just lit for contrast often, harder lighting and lighter diffusion than is popular. Sometimes even, gasp, a direct PAR!

[Twan Peeters]

 

Sometimes it is useful if you are already using a log workflow and want to drop DSLR stuff into it conveniently (but it will still exacerbate compression artifacts).

 

That makes sense.

 

 

(...)Instead, me being me, I would load it up and then light to how it looked on the monitor. This gave me results which I and the director were pleased with when we treated cine-style as something to be lit to on set, and not something to be pushed and prodded in post-- which is how I think most use it.

 

So do I understand this correct that you lit the whole scene with Cinestyle and make it perfect before the post-production, without really colorgrading it in the end?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Correct. There is almost always a light grade somewhere; but we tried to get it all in camera. This wasn't too much of an issue either it just took knowing what we had and what we were doing.

[Stuart Brereton]

Instead, me being me, I would load it up and then light to how it looked on the monitor.

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but what did you gain from working that way?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

They couldn't as easily undo how it looked later on ;)

 

But truthfully, it was something the director was keen on playing with, the cinestyle that is. And he trusts me and I him, and I said to him that we could either spend time later on doing a bunch of color corrections, or we could get it as good as we could get it on the day and in theory the cinestyle would give us a little more room to manipulate later on. He himself was a little bit remiss about the standard color profiles on the [his] camera.

Also it comes down a lot to just how I happen to think. I like knowing I'll be able to do this or that later on, and I like having a wider dynamic range, but no matter what the camera is I would much rather treat it like there will be no color correction later on, and get it as close to golden as I can. Perhaps that's a side-effect of lower budgets when even if you do get a color correction, it is often of dubious quality.

I suppose the simple answer is that it better allowed me to work in a way which I worked when I would shoot film. Know there is some extra wiggle room, if needed-- though no much-- but keep me from getting too lazy on lighting just because it's flatter on the box.

[Stuart Brereton]

I still don't understand. If you were monitoring the output of the camera, and lighting to your desired contrast from that, then Cinestyle was giving you nothing that you couldn't have achieved by using Neutral or Standard picture style and lighting flatter.

 

If you'd been using a camera that allowed you to monitor a different colorspace or gamma than it was recording, such as REC709/RAW, I could understand the benefit, but as dSLRs don't offer that facility, I don't see the advantage of your approach.

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Maybe it didn't; but when we were there, it looked better than did the neutral or standard, both on the monitor and -v-what we'd shot before.
it wasn't that we were trying to light it to look like some other picture style, we were lighting it so look "right" for the project on the monitor, so there'd be less of a need for color correction later on, as opposed to the notion of shooting it "flat"and then making it all up later on in the color correction.

Did it actually gain me anything, possibly not, but it was what worked on that particular shoot.

Also one can't always light flatter, especially on a tiny budget w/o a proper crew. We're talking g/e in the back of a prius type stuff here, not 12x12s and some kinos to tame things.