Yellow patchy skin tones

[Timothy Eaton]

I have had this happen with straight up tungsten fixtures (juniors and seniors) through Chimeras on a commercial. Nothing unusual there. I had the sense that makeup may have been using a yellowish tint and asked them to check it. That didn't help much. Popped in a 1/4 CTB, which helped a bit, and I also changed up the look in the Epic. None of this had anything to do with tweaking in post. You could see this straight out of the camera (agency a little too dense to notice) on multiple monitors. In the end I came away with the distinct impression that the sensor was over-reacting to the tungsten sources on certain skin types. I have found the Epic sensor to be very sensitive to certain color aberrations.

Agency supervised post - DPs are often not a part of the process anymore - and nobody complained. Final result was fine, but it did give me some pause.

This only happened twice. My Epic is still hands down the best camera I have ever owned and I've owned a bunch of film and video cameras. Still a happy camper.

 

[Mike McLaughlin]

If anyone's interested, I've posted a couple R3D files. The yellow seems to happen when shooting at multiple color temps. The lighting I was using for the kitchen shots were kino's with tungsten bulbs.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t9hrbq8vpo68zyc/vnOR6o5Xm1

 

[Mark Pugh]

Tungsten kinos... Maybe not so good ones?
I've seen this the worst with warm compact fluorescents.
Basically there was nothing on the blue channel to grade with, but only in patches.
Have a look at the blue channel.
I think it's a missalignment between what the lighting fixture offers (spikes) and the frequencies that the camera can read to interpolate colors (different frequencies).

 

[Roger Singh]

I just did a quick grade with it... Just a quick one pass. (not a proper monitor, so bear in mind my white balance settings may be off)

From the looks of it, and I can be completely off track, but it looks like you try to manipulate the metadata too much.

The saturation was really high, and white balance was set too warm. I changed the white balance to 4200. Which is a bit odd because that's closer to regular fluorescent temps. Were you using genuine Kino bulbs?

Also, I think the look you're trying to achieve is something that should be done in post with secondary grading.


I suggest just resetting the metadata to default and try grading it with resolve.

Here's a good example of changing background and keeping natural skin tones. It's not a completely thorough tutorial, but gives you a good idea.

http://presynkt.com/2013/09/22/davinci-resolve-using-limiters/

 

[Mike P.]

OH SNAP… yeah, you definitely can NOT push the sensor saturation to 1.6… 1.33 max, and even then you'd better have some clean light and a well balanced image (I'm thinking outdoor sunlight).

PROTIP (not really, but something I've noticed): If you want to add tons of saturation use post-processing saturation, not the "raw"/sensor one. In RCXp this is the saturation in the alchemy group, but if you use any other saturation effect (in your finishing program or even your editor) it will hold together much better than maxing out the sensor one in RCXp. Even in your sample shots, take saturation back down to 1.0, and then in the alchemy/post-processing saturation max it out to 2.0. The colours are just as vibrant but there is less wonkiness.

EDIT: Oh, and certain make-ups (under certain lighting) can cause issues too. Was there anything different about this set-up compared to the others (assuming you only noticed the blotches in this scene)?

 

[Matt Ryan]

A couple of looks from Resolve. You pushed the saturation really, really hard at 1.6 in the sensor settings. I tend to use post saturation (in the post settings tab below the color wheels) at a 1.1 to 1.2 level max. This shot doesn't look like true kino tubes to me. Are they true kino flo tubes or an off brand? I would definitely say the shot is salvageable, especially by someone who knows what they are doing and how to get there. I probably could have done a key of the skin tones and adjusted further, but this is just a quick grade. I'm also going to guess that the make-up is the culprit of some of the blotchiness. There are quite a few brands that don't mix well with digital shot material, especially under mixed lighting conditions.

Here's same as above, but with the cosmo plugin dropped on. I didn't adjust any settings and left it standard. I think it helps a lot to smooth the skin and remove those splotches.

Removed majority of the blue backlight:

vs. Your originals:

Edit: sorry, I accidentally deleted my earlier post. Re-posting this.

 

[Bob Gundu]

The files are totally fine. Its your meta setting that are messing things up. Are these settings at the time of shooting or did you change them in redcine? Since the same mistake is made on all three clips, my guess is that someone made these changes in camera. Luckily it's RAW and it can be all zeroed back. The exposure is good on all clips and so is the colour once you neutralize the settings.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Here are your R3D's reset and balanced. This should help give you a starting point and remember if you want to add saturation, do it in the post tab and not the sensor section.

http://matthayslett.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Yellow-skin-white-balance.zip

 

[Matt Ryan]

What do you think Mike? Have you guys colored the film yet?

 

[Marc Wielage]

A couple of looks from Resolve.

Very good looks, Ryan. :thumbsup:

I agree: a lot of times, the fine-tuning needs to be left to post.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Very good looks, Ryan. :thumbsup:

I agree: a lot of times, the fine-tuning needs to be left to post.

Thanks Marc