Color correcting/grading

Moe Othman

Moe Othman

I've Got It
Hey everyone,

I've been doing videos for a while now, and i use Final Cut Pro X, and a Canon T3i rebel, and 2 soft boxes for lighting.

My issue is, in the camera default settings, i looked Horrible, my skin had this weird yellowish tint, like some zombie in the The Walking Dead lol. So i played around with my camera settings to make the scene brighter, and i changed the saturation settings to add more of a "pinkish" glow to remove the yellow off my face. ( i seriously look dead in default settings, i dont know why lmao)

But i notice after editing, i end up having to add even more color changes via FCP with increasing the brightness and saturation settings slightly.

AND then i even use the youtube color settings, i add +1 to lighting, and sometimes +1 to saturation color.

And after all that, my skin looks as close as possible to how i actually look in person.

Does everyone do this? or is it just me? I know 100% more popular played around with their color/brightness settings ( it's obvious), but i could never seem to get it right, and it's very irritating.

Could someone help me out here please? lol. ( btw, i also have Magic Bullet Pro, which is AMAZING for color changes etc, but im really bad at using it, so i never do.( i have no idea how to use it correctly)

Thank You!!
 
You should be able to obtain a good natural look in camera, what are your current setting when shooting?
- White Balance setting.
- Picture Profile.
- Aperture/ISO/Shutter Speed.

Also, which model of softbox are you using? If you are using fluorescent lights, then use the "Daylight" white balance setting in the camera with the neutral picture profile, this should give a pretty natural good looking image with no weird colors. Are you mixing the lights with other sources of light when shooting?
 
yardblesspro said:
You should be able to obtain a good natural look in camera, what are your current setting when shooting?
- White Balance setting.
- Picture Profile.
- Aperture/ISO/Shutter Speed.

Also, which model of softbox are you using? If you are using fluorescent lights, then use the "Daylight" white balance setting in the camera with the neutral picture profile, this should give a pretty natural good looking image with no weird colors. Are you mixing the lights with other sources of light when shooting?
Click to expand...

My white balance is on Auto.
My Color tone settings & Contrast is all the way down towards the more " pinkish" area, because on normal settings, i just look yellow.
My ISO is Auto, and my aperture was 125, and i made it 30 just now, and that made a good positive difference. and my shutter speed is just fine.

I just tested it now, when i put my color settings on Auto, my skin looked yellowish, ( literally like a pale yellow/zombie tint ( if you know what i mean by that lmao), and when i went back to the settings i created, my face went back to being white/pink, which is my skin tone in reality.
 
I understand, here are some of our setting we use when shooting with the T3i:

- 24fps and 1/50 shutter speed or 30fps and 1/60 shutter speed.
- Picture Profie: Neutral with sharpness all the way down and saturation -2. (Can be a bit different but neutral is a good profile)
- White Balance: Daylight for fluorescent video bulbs. Check out online how to do a manual white balance, can be very helpful for your overall colors.
- Aperture: Depends on the shot.
- ISO: Manual mode, try to keep it as low as possible for cleaner video and try not to go over 800 (can create too much grain).
 
If you are using any kind of phosphorescent lighting, you will get a yellowish tint sometimes. The light temp of standard indoor lighting is around 2700k. You want closer to 5500k daylight balance. This will give you a natural colour and make colour correction much easier in post. You can get these daylight balanced bulbs from Amazon and other places. Don't mix different types of lighting as that can also cause problems later. Hope this helps! :))
 
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