Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: ynp on December 27, 2009, 02:42:56 pm

Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: ynp on December 27, 2009, 02:42:56 pm
Sorry if I am sending to a wrong forum. I need an advice from the more experienced members, who familiar with the copying work.

I am shooting in a distant area of Russia and my Macbook failed. I cannot use the Sinarback 54H with my computer, cannot locate a Mac here (It is a PC country) and I have to finish 11 paintings tomorrow.
We are shooting with hot tungsten lights at 3200K with cross polarization.
I  have my Leica m8 with a couple of lenses and a blue 80a filter and I plan to finish the work with the Leica.

I have two options:
1)  shoot outside in the winter daylight. I do not like the idea, I am in Northern Russia now and it is too cold outside  
2) shoot inside with my Lowels set up with the 80a filter.

If I decide to proceed inside, is there a simple way to calibrate the m8 (I have the 24 ColorCheker with me and a PC with broadband connection).

Thank you,
Yevgeny
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: ThierryH on December 27, 2009, 02:53:15 pm
Quote from: ynp
Sorry if I am sending to a wrong forum. I need an advice from the more experienced members, who familiar with the copying work.

I am shooting in a distant area of Russia and my Macbook failed. I cannot use the Sinarback 54H with my computer, cannot locate a Mac here (It is a PC country) and I have to finish 11 paintings tomorrow.
We are shooting with hot tungsten lights at 3200K with cross polarization.
I  have my Leica m8 with a couple of lenses and a blue 80a filter and I plan to finish the work with the Leica.

I have two options:
1)  shoot outside in the winter daylight. I do not like the idea, I am in Northern Russia now and it is too cold outside  
2) shoot inside with my Lowels set up with the 80a filter.

If I decide to proceed inside, is there a simple way to calibrate the m8 (I have the 24 ColorCheker with me and a PC with broadband connection).

Thank you,
Yevgeny

Dear Yevgeny,

By using the colour checker (or any 18% neutral grey card) you are on the safe side and almost sure to have the right colour/white balance. Simply shoot it with one of your setup, under the light conditions you are shooting, and use that 18% neutral grey area in the checker to neutralize/balance (click on it with the "neutral picker" which should be available in the soft or later in the soft you are used to.

Best regards,
Thierry
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: ynp on December 27, 2009, 03:09:24 pm
Dear Thierry,

Thank you. You are always here to help  
OK, I will try to get away without the calibration tonight. I just hope that the blue filter will balance the blue channel.... and I will have the right purples.

Kind regards,
Yevgeny
Quote from: ThierryH
Dear Yevgeny,

By using the colour checker (or any 18% neutral grey card) you are on the safe side and almost sure to have the right colour/white balance. Simply shoot it with one of your setup, under the light conditions you are shooting, and use that 18% neutral grey area in the checker to neutralize/balance (click on it with the "neutral picker" which should be available in the soft or later in the soft you are used to.

Best regards,
Thierry
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: yaya on December 27, 2009, 04:24:04 pm
Quote from: ynp
Dear Thierry,

Thank you. You are always here to help  
OK, I will try to get away without the calibration tonight. I just hope that the blue filter will balance the blue channel.... and I will have the right purples.

Kind regards,
Yevgeny

Be sure to shoot the chart (and your subject) without the 80a filter as well. Remember that these filters were made for film and that film had a certain "fixed" temperature.

A digital camera, while still responding differently to different lights, is much more tolerable to changes in light temp and using the chart will often remove the need for the filter.

Yair
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: LiamStrain on December 28, 2009, 12:42:03 am
Shoot raw. You can manually fix the wb @ roughly 3400 for in camera processing (and will help get it close "in camera" before bringing them up on the computer)
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: Chris Livsey on December 28, 2009, 09:19:22 am
Quote from: LiamStrain
Shoot raw. You can manually fix the wb @ roughly 3400 for in camera processing (and will help get it close "in camera" before bringing them up on the computer)
Just curious, and I've seen this stated before, why is it any advantage to be close when the RAW is going to be balanced against a fixed reference in shot ?
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: teddillard on December 28, 2009, 09:56:39 am
Quote from: Chris Livsey
Just curious, and I've seen this stated before, why is it any advantage to be close when the RAW is going to be balanced against a fixed reference in shot ?

To put it in the simplest terms, you're tracking the colors around the space less- you start closer to where you want to be.  That said, the filter adds it's own problems, if it were me I'd just set to Tungsten and have at it.  You can always to both, I guess.

FWIW, I've used the X-rite Passport profiling software quite a bit now, and it works great.  You could use your ColorChecker target to build a profile that Lightroom and ACR uses to map the colors.  Under the copy setup, it would be an ideal use for that.  

I did a 3 part blog story on it, here's the link to that, in there is the link to the free software from X-Rite.
http://www.h2hreviews.com/blog/X-Rite-Passport--Part-2-.html (http://www.h2hreviews.com/blog/X-Rite-Passport--Part-2-.html)
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: ynp on December 28, 2009, 11:26:39 am
Hello all!

I am still in the Russian wilderness, waiting for my flight.
Thank you all for help and advice. Thanks for the BMs who PMed me with some web links. With your help I realized that I could make the calibrations
afterwards and I will try the DNG Profiler and Passport software for Lightroom when I am back.

Now I have several 24 ColorChecker shots (with my 80a and 80b filters) and I will try to make the calibrations when at home.

Several things learned:
1) LL  MFD &Film forum is a great place
2) LL site has all the info (Michael's reviews and forum discussions) I needed in my situation.
3) Leica m8 is a wonderful little camera, for my purposes it wont work without a good tethering solution. I need something else for backup.
4) I am still a strong believer in filters for copying work with hot lights. I will check the m8 calibrations with and without the
conversion filters and we will see. With my ancient  CaptureShop and its brilliant  24 CC Calibration  I am spoiled and calibrate almost
every shooting scene  
5) If XRite Passport or Adobe profiler work as advertised, I will rethink my choice of  one shot copying cameras for A4 output (catalogues).

Thanks again,
Yevgeny
Title: Need Help: calibration or correct white balance
Post by: ynp on December 28, 2009, 11:34:32 am
Thank you. Very nice review.
Yevgeny
Quote from: teddillard
To put it in the simplest terms, you're tracking the colors around the space less- you start closer to where you want to be.  That said, the filter adds it's own problems, if it were me I'd just set to Tungsten and have at it.  You can always to both, I guess.

FWIW, I've used the X-rite Passport profiling software quite a bit now, and it works great.  You could use your ColorChecker target to build a profile that Lightroom and ACR uses to map the colors.  Under the copy setup, it would be an ideal use for that.  

I did a 3 part blog story on it, here's the link to that, in there is the link to the free software from X-Rite.
http://www.h2hreviews.com/blog/X-Rite-Passport--Part-2-.html (http://www.h2hreviews.com/blog/X-Rite-Passport--Part-2-.html)