Desaturation

[willowRage]

There are scenes to be shot in DV in which I want the color to be washed out or the overall image desaturated. I wondered if there is a way to achieve this with light. A gray filter comes to mind but that may simply decrease the luminosity and not change the saturation.

 

Does anyone know of a way to achieve this effect with out having to do it digitally in the editing phase?

[Alvin Pingol]

There are such things as desaturation filters, but I don't know how well they work. Tiffen makes one, I believe, but it is meant for film. It can be used for video, though. If I'm not to be mistaken, the filter has a slight color cast that, when timed out during coloring, ends up desaturating everything else without affecting hue too much.

 

The best way would probably be to use a contrast filter. Ultracons I find work well. I have a grade 3 that I put on when shooting overcast days to further emphasize the flat, grey look (I take advantage of overcast days. Maybe I'm just weird :P ). A grade 3 desaturates quite a bit, and they come standard in grades 1 through 5.

 

I'm sure any contrast filter will do, though.

 

 

EDIT: Also, you can try desaturated art direction and wardrobe. E.g., don't let anyone wear a deep red sweater while standing in a garden, etc.

[Rob_Kraetsch]

As far as lighting goes, if you keep it sidey or more backlit with a bit of atmosphere you can suck quite a bit of color out. Of course, this can effect the emotional impact of your lighting scheme, so you really have to ask yourself if it's right for what you're doing.

 

Our own (Not that we can really claim him) M. David Mullen ASC shot a beautiful desaturated film called Northfork which you can read about in the May '03 American Cinematographer or in this article. Some of the techniques he used with the lighting, atmosphere and diffusion filters are one's you could use as well.

 

Best of luck with the shoot!

 

-Rob Kraetsch

[Michael Nash]

One of the biggest advantages to working in digital is the ease of manipulating color. Many professional and pro-sumer cameras have a simple "saturation" control in the menu. I understand you're looking for techniques you can use in front of the lens, but don't underestimate this huge advantage of digital. For one thing, taking AWAY color in post generally reduces the artifacts and noise associated with digital color correction.

 

I've done stuff on video with a combination of Ultracon filters and desaturation/black crushing in the camera menu that's created a beautiful painterly effect. The combination of optical and digital controls makes for a look that's not exclusively electronic looking and exceeds what you could do with electronics alone.

 

But regarding lighting specifically, if you keep your on-camera colors fairly monochrome and white balance or light with a complimentary color, the overall effect becomes pretty destaurated looking. For example, a set and wardrobe that's almost exclusively mild warm tones (similar to skin), when balanced blue will end up looking kind of drab, simply because the red wavelenghts are minimized and there aren't any blue tones in the shot to pop out. The actual color isn't really desaturated, there just aren't any strongly saturated colors present.

 

Other techniques to desaturate color on-camera have been discussed extensively here, so check the archives.

[TJ Williams]

Micheal's point about digital color removal is very well taken.

 

The camera consideration regarding lighting may be to assure that the scene has adequate separation lighting and the grey scale of the various parts of the scene sufficiently defined by different levels of illumination in a word Shot/lit like B&W photography then digitally color reduced. This may be the combination of lighting and digital technology that lead you to an improved look.