Lighting for IMAG - Color temperature

[TheReverendDave]

We just began IMAG at our church. Generally, things are going well and looking great. We've gotten comments that our video coloring doesn't match the live coloring. We have 4 naked Ellipsodial lights (yellowish) and cameras set at 3.2k, so I'm not surprised.

We purchased filters to counteract the lights natural yellow color. After install, coloring on the cams was set to 5.6k and looked great! However, two things bother about this. 1, the lighting seems significantly dimmer which generally means we need more lights :/ Obviously a side effect of the filters. 2, I don't know what it is, but live the lighting just looks bland and "colorless". Where our pastor had great colored flesh tones, now he appears almost ghostly.

Now I've been to top tier IMAG churches (Fellowship Church,tx and others), and I never felt that way about their lighting. What do y'all do to combat the color matching issue as well as light the stage in an engaging way for live speaking?

[waynehoskins]

What I've seen done that works well is lighting for live and white-balancing video accordingly. When done well, both look good.

[Esoteric]

You always light (within reason) for live and then balance the cameras to your lighting.

Mike

[TheReverendDave]

To be specific, I'm talking specifically about changing stage wash/fill color, so that when the cameras are white balanced to the speaker on stage, colors from light sources behind him aren't off. Basically, you look up at the live video on the big screens, and then look at the colors on stage, and they are not the same. Our projectors are poor, but generally the purply/pink comes out dark blueish/purple, for example.

I and our production department are in strong agreement with light for live first. It's just that staff and many others can plainly see the discrepancy between live light color, and on screen light color.

We also have cams with only a push button white balance. Which is fine, we've tried syncing cams to the stage wash lighting with no improvements. Dialing in a specific K value would be great, but not really an option.

[Esoteric]

Oh! That is a problem with the cameras. Most non professional level cameras will have a terrible time with that purple/magenta color. Cameras just do not have the range of color that the human eye has. I have yet to find a non-professional camera that can distinguish between magenta and blue.

Mike

[zactommo]

Generally when you are color balancing a camera, you are balanced to get the skin colors correct. Thats the most important think, so from the video perspective, getting the skin tone to look natural would be more important than the background being a true rendition (provided the colors in the background don't look unusual, or out of place)

[Esoteric]

That is what we do.

In fact, I have worked with some of the largest churches in my area, and they always had a problem with Magenta/Blue, and Green/Teal can even be a problem. The most important thing is to always get skin tones correct, and then choose a color for the sermon that you can render correctly.

Mike

[tdangelo]

Reverend Dave,

Have you confirmed that the projectors are reproducing color faithfully?

If you put up color bars (or a Macbeth chart) on a computer, through your switcher/scaler with stage lights off, what happens? Do the projection screens look like your computer monitor?

If you then view the same color bars (or a Macbeth chart) from a computer, through your switcher/scaler with stage lights _on_, what happens? Do the projection screens look like your computer monitor?

Next, for cameras, does the coloremitry of the cameras look right on your camera repeat, preview or program monitor(s) at the control position? Are the color of cameras on the projectors the same as at control? Different?

I think the first thing you need to do is insure that the projectors are faithfully reproducing what is coming out of your switcher regardless of the lighting condition on-stage and in the house. Then you can tweak in the camera to look as good as possible. If the camera is not auto white balancing for best color reproduction it is possible to fool the camera by forcing it to white balance on a object which is not pure white. A white card which is naturally warm will make your camera look cold. Conversely a white card which is naturally cold will make your camera look warm.

I disagree about lighting for the eye as opposed to lighting for the camera because the camera (even models that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars) cannot reproduce what your eye can see. If you want images to look good on video (whether projection, foyer monitors, DVDs, etc.) the lighting has to work within the limitations of the video system.

It sounds to me that your problem might be solved by a little more attention being spent to insure that all components are tweaked the same.

- Tom D’Angelo
- New York City

[Esoteric]

See Tom, in the case of houses of worship I just can't agree. The live view is the most important. As long as the skin tones on the iMAG are acceptable then everything else is gravy (desirable, but expendable if the live experience will suffer).

Now IF you can get the video perfect without effecting the live experience (by having a perfectly flat, even front wash for example) then so be it. But if you must choose between altering the live experience to make the video better or having video slightly off, then I choose the live experience 10 times out of 10.

Of course 9 times out of 10 video "problems" can be solved without effecting the live experience with a little bit of planning and creative thinking. And in this case you are 100% correct that you must ensure that the projectors are faithfully reproducing what is coming out of the switcher. Sometimes we forget to mention the first step.

Mike

[nevmoor]

You might want to see if your projectors have a color temp setting also. Sometimes there are "cinema" "cool" or "warm" settings

[TheReverendDave]

Our switching room has a window into the auditorium so we can see that the the switching feed doesn't match the live colors. The projector's lack of color fidelity also increase the problem. We've had them balanced before by a pro, but the projectors themselves are color flawed. I knew it when I first saw them powered up, but we didn't have time or funds to fix it then.

[tdangelo]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

See Tom, in the case of houses of worship I just can't agree. The live view is the most important.

Mike,

Why must one make a compromise of “most important” verses “less important?” Why can’t the projection be “right,” all sources to projection be “right” and therefore the lighting be “right?”

At the end of the day the human eye/brain will always be more forgiving and capable than an electronic medium. Therefore if you want the video to look “right” one must work within the limitations of the medium. This cannot be done by lighting the stage for the audience. The audience has a different set of requirements.

At the end of the day lighting that looks good on camera (assuming that the sources, switcher and projections are dialed in) WILL look good on-stage. However lighting that looks good to the audience may not look good on camera even if the sources, switcher and projection are dialed in. If the sources, switcher and projections are not dialed in, it’s a losing battle from the start and that is the point I was trying to get across to Reverend Dave.

I once attended a church whose projection was set-up as to crop the top of every image. Instead of fixing the projectors they framed every camera shot to have excessive head room. Of course, on the web and on DVD sales it all looked quite silly and unprofessional although the compromise looked ok to the live audience. They could have had their cake and eaten it too if they would have just fixed the problem instead of the symptom. Reverend Dave has to figure out what the problem is … he already knows what the symptom is.