Color Enhancing Questions with Video

I am shooting video with a Sony HDR-FX1. I am looking to experiment with trying to pull more color into my shots. ie. pulling more blues from the water color or surrounding vegitation, or reds out of canyon walls, etc. Even to pulling bright colors out more from a board or short graphic.

Any recommendations on ways to do it. Lenses, filters, settings... I am already getting good color but would like to make it "pop" a little more.

get a panasonic hvx200.













ok, only half-kidding, but have you tried color correction in post? have you tried bumping up saturation on cam (if you can)? a polarizing filter maybe?

(Message edited by dakid on May 26, 2008)

color correction in post did a pretty sweet job. I upped the saturation and moved the color scale slightly.

I usually run a polarizing filter. I will try bumping up the saturation on the camera as well, that's easy. I have used different filters to adjust color in still photos. I am assuming this would work in video as well.

The only thing I am fighting with the color correction is that it pulls all colors out stronger. How do I pull just the blues without the skin tones becoming overpowering?

For instance in this shot I am trying to pull the blue from the sky without making the skin tones overpowering.

Upload Wake 08.mov (108.7 k)

definitely use a UV filter for your camera. I've been filming for a VT wake club dvd that I'm making, and as son as I finally put the UV filter on, it's like all of the colors just snapped. The blues are bluer, the whites are whiter, and the greens are greener. It's pretty much awesome.

Does your NLE support secondary color correction? That's what you need to use.

You can adjust your colors ,with Channel mixer or Color Balance in your video effects panel in PP Pro2 ,You can add or subtract color levels this way with color balance with channel mixer you have more options to work with try playing with red or blue or green as adding colors can help your your final look or you can try magic bullet plug ins they have film filters as well as color correction plug ins it all depends on your NLE editing software Just adjust in moderation and you can find the sweet spot your looking for

Thanks for the info. This is opening up a whole new world to me. I have had the eye for what I wanted to do for a while but didn't know the terminology to even begin digging through this stuff in the editing program.

Right now I am only using IMovie, and although the capability of the program is more than I expected, I am now seeing its limitations.

Thanks,

Nick,

Are you sure a UV filter is all you're using? The reason I'm asking is I've owned a number of both consumer, prosumer and pro cameras over the years and I've never seen a UV filter affect the video at all in spite of the fact that I've used one on most of them for protective purposes. The limits of the imagers, the lens, the exposure level and of course the light quality play the biggest roles in getting good color based on my experience.

If all of the above are actually the same and you're really having that much success with a straight UV filter I'd love to see a side by side video of the same scene shot at the same time with the exposure locked, one side without and the other side with the UV onboard showing this huge difference you mentioned above.

I have noticed an improvement with a UV filter in the past. I don't know that it enriches color as much as it cuts that white/grey haze that can seem to take over your shot. Some of my best shots in a bright water environment I had with a UV and Polarizing filter stacked.

I am going to set-up either a youtube or wakepics account and post some links of examples.

Yeah, I'll see what I can do. It definitely helps that I'm filming from an HD camera, but at the same time, that doesn't really have an effect on the color itself. I'll take some pictures with the camera later tonight to see what the deal is. It might just be that at those specific moments I'm getting oddly good light in comparison to other times that I'm filming, so I'm not sure. It doesn't help that I've been winding up having to spend a lot of time filming in cloudy weather, which just screws everything up.

I do know that I've never played with the exposure or any other settings on the camera prior to filming though, since usually I hop on the boat and they start riding.