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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Red One MX article and Ted @ Red Interview

Thanks All.

Ted left a nice little bit of info on Proxy module intentions near the end of teh interview.

Many thanks to TED, JIM and JARRED and RED for their help on this as well.

David
 
This is really an informative article
Thanks to all
 
I'm really having a hard time getting my head around this "White balance after every new lighting setup" advice being given by Ted and Jim.

Most of the times you don't want white to be pure white. So other than a more general tungsten vs. daylight setting, I don't see the logic in white balancing before every setup.

I KNOW WB is only metadata, but Ted and Jim have been vocal proponents of frequent WBing. So it must have more importance than just potentially useless metadata that you'll probably just throwaway, and I'm just not getting it.

If anyone could care to shed any light (no pun intended) on this, I'm all ears (non sequitur intended, LOL!)?
 
Peter Moretti said:
I'm really having a hard time getting my head around this "White balance after every new lighting setup" advice being given by Ted and Jim.

Most of the times you don't want white to be pure white. So other than a more general tungsten vs. daylight setting, I don't see the logic in white balancing before every setup.

I KNOW WB is only metadata, but Ted and Jim have been vocal proponents of frequent WBing. So it must have more importance than just potentially useless metadata that you'll probably just throwaway, and I'm just not getting it.

If anyone could care to shed any light (no pun intended) on this, I'm all ears (non sequitur intended, LOL!)?
Click to expand...

Peter,

Here is the specific example Jim gives in the tips thread.

http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=540713&postcount=17


Many people go with a standard 32K or 56K WB set up in many different lighting conditions. I think that the stress on WB is to have an initial balance of Red Green and Blue to provide the most accurate "baseline" image.

You will also notice that if you do WB on a chart for example that the tint will move pretty substantially in one direction.

I saw some footage recently that was 56K standard and there was a lot of pavement in the scene. The concrete took on a very green tone. Applying a WB to that image in RCX brought the RGB more "on top of each other" and really evened out the tone in the pavement.

A WB most importantly sets a White point as a reference, telling us what is actually "white" in the scene. This is a good baseline to be starting with.

Sure we can experiment and go for looks, but presets are very rough guidelines.

I also know that a lot of technology went into BUild 30 to ensure accurate WB so that you have an excellent reference point to begin with. The RED WB is much more accurate that many Color temperature meters out there. You can be sure that the RED camera is one of the most accurate Color temperature meters you can find.

Also, white balancing on a grey chart is actually the best way to WB the camera.

David
 
He seems to be saying that white balancing in Redcine-x is important, before exporting. He's not talking about white balancing in camera.
Click to expand...

That's true, but the example posted is pretty close in color temp... If there were a more drastic change between lighting set-ups, you could run into the problem of inadvertently clipping a channel in raw if you aren't vigilant about checking the histogram, etc.

I think that anytime you're given a rule, it's a starting point. Obviously, if you are trying to achieve something in camera by tweaking the white balance to warm or cool your image, you can. It's fine to break rules, as long as you know why you are doing it.

Also, the article listed above is a 'best practices' article. It's certainly a 'best practice' to check the white balance occasionally. It's also not a bad starting point for generating a look in camera. See what the camera thinks the temp is, then use your warm or cool cards to start shifting in the look you're after, then dial it in to exactly what you're after... Just keep an eye on your exposure tools!

Now you'd think that a good DP would be checking his or her exposure on every shot, but I think Red got burned by negative press over a lot of over-exposed footage on earlier builds. I think Ted is just trying to give sound advice to those that are new to exposure on the Red, and white balance is the first step. I've seen a lot of red footage exposed for the mids, allowing the hi-lights to clip, when a much nicer final image could have been generated by exposing for the hi-lights and lifting the mids in post. (or better yet, adding fill light on set!)
 
Rick Darge said:
How come?
Click to expand...


18% grey outdoors is a bit better because it reflects less light and it is a known value. We can assume that a grey chart has a known value, whereas a piece of white paper is not a known value.

If you shoot a chart in the setup then you can just click on one of the chips in post or on the camera to get your WB set. If the white is blown out it might not read as accurately, but it is still an acceptable way to WB.

Basically a chart reflects a known value (it calibrated) whereas a white shirt or something is (kind of) white.

David
 
Mark Pugh said:
He seems to be saying that white balancing in Redcine-x is important, before exporting. He's not talking about white balancing in camera.
Click to expand...

THAT would make sense to me. But it's not what he's saying. He's talking about actually WBing the camera.

"To be able to land the best possible images and move them through post correctly, we recommend white balancing the camera for the lighting setup that you're doing." And he continues to talk about white balancing the camera.

I fully understand that before going out of RedCine-X you want to get the color balance you want while not clipping any of the channels (if possible), b/c you are going from RAW to RGB.

Maybe what Ted is saying is that doing a camera WB after lighting changes will give you a good guess for the RedCine-X WB point. But I've been told by a few colorist that they don't like frequent WB changes b/c the points are never accurate anyway and just make it harder to use the grade they did for the previous setup for the current one. They called it "chasing white balance."
 
David Battistella said:
Peter,

Here is the specific example Jim gives in the tips thread.

http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=540713&postcount=17


Many people go with a standard 32K or 56K WB set up in many different lighting conditions. I think that the stress on WB is to have an initial balance of Red Green and Blue to provide the most accurate "baseline" image.

You will also notice that if you do WB on a chart for example that the tint will move pretty substantially in one direction.

I saw some footage recently that was 56K standard and there was a lot of pavement in the scene. The concrete took on a very green tone. Applying a WB to that image in RCX brought the RGB more "on top of each other" and really evened out the tone in the pavement.

A WB most importantly sets a White point as a reference, telling us what is actually "white" in the scene. This is a good baseline to be starting with.

Sure we can experiment and go for looks, but presets are very rough guidelines.

I also know that a lot of technology went into BUild 30 to ensure accurate WB so that you have an excellent reference point to begin with. The RED WB is much more accurate that many Color temperature meters out there. You can be sure that the RED camera is one of the most accurate Color temperature meters you can find.

Also, white balancing on a grey chart is actually the best way to WB the camera.

David
Click to expand...

David,

Thank you for the post and for the example. BTW, Jim's post is really about not clipping when doing WB in RedCine-X (not so much WBing the camera).

But what you seem to be saying is that custom and frequent WBing is good thing to do. And if I follow you correctly, that would apply equally to other cameras and not just the Red. So perhaps camera WB down to preference and intended look, and the methodology is not unique to shooting with Red.

I've always held to the idea that you use 32K and 56K as much as possible. I'll do a custom WB and if I like that look appreciably more than 32K (or 56K if it's outdoors) I'll use custom. But nine times out of ten, the standard WB setting will work what I deem is good enough. So I'll stick w/ the preset b/c I feel it will be easier to deal with in post and not remove as much of the uniqueness of the shot. But perhaps this rationale needs to be reevaluated by me.
 
Peter,

One strategy I have seen and I do often is to do the WB and then dial in the round number.

For example: the WB of an outdoor scene is 5237 so I will dial in 5300 so that it is a round number. Many times I leave tungsten scenes at 3200, but often I use an 1/8th blue in tungsten to boost the teperature up to around the 4500 range so that becomes the tungsen default (this is less nessesary with the M-X).

The point is to keep things at round numbers for notes, logging, etc. Often my outdoor WB is 6300 just to warm up the picture.

All of this is nice with RED because the descision is not permanent, but when baking in WB it is very important to WB the scenes to get the most out of the image and make it easier to correct.

The Colorist has a valid point in keeping the CC at a fixed number for a scene because it does make a difference when applying grades over several scenes and shots.

Noe of this matters with RED because you shoot RAW and can reset the WB across all shots before the grade. I usually set up a few basic primary's for this purpose.

But if you are using a tape based camera or DSLR you should not WB every scene because that will create the "hunting" scenario your CC pal is telling you about.

The beauty of RAW in my opinion.

David
 
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