The i1 Filmmaker's Kit from x-rite consists out of a Color Checker Passport and a display calibrator.
A color management tool for both production and color correction.
So, let's have a deeper look at it and see how it can benefit your workflow
as a filmmaker.
Hey folks! Jordy here for cinecom.net
Color management takes place at three stages:
it starts with your camera and the way that you set your white balance and adjust your picture style,
then we have the calibration of the monitor that you're editing on
and finally, the color correction or grading process.
And this i1 filmmaker's kit from x-rite helps with all three of those stages.
Let's start with the first one: the color management of your camera.
the Color Checker Passport has four sides,
the first one is the focus chart.
of course, this one doesn't help with color management,
but it is very convenient for setting your focus right.
The next one is a white surface for setting your white balance.
This is actually a specific shade of white because of the signs behind it.
You could use a white paper, but results will not be the same
and will affect all the colors your camera interprets.
Unless you're shooting raw video, you should always know that when you hit record,
you're baking the color information in your video clip,
and a wrong white balance is often very hard, or even impossible to fix in post.
The next step is setting your exposure correct, and this chart will help you with that.
At this point you do need a measurement tool, preferably, a Waveform.
The Panasonic GH5 has that built-in,
but you can also hook up an external monitor that has this functionality.
I'm using the Small HD 500 series.
Just like the chart, we can see three levels in our waveform.
On the bottom we can find the shadows and on top the highlights.
You wanna put your highlights at 80 IRE and the shadows at 20 IRE,
the mid-tones should ideally come out at 40 IRE.
Once that this is done, we can start with the colors of the camera.
Now, what we'll do is calibrate the colors.
This is not necessary, but it does come with some advantages.
First of all, you're setting a neutral color balance, which is much easier to color grade in post,
because, like I said before, the color information is baked into your video clip.
The second advantage is when you need to match different cameras together.
And that is something that I want to try out in this video.
We have the Sony FS7 here,
and I'm bringing up my vector-scope, which represents the colors and their saturation.
You'll see that we have different spikes and that they're all going to a certain value.
Those values are red, green, blue, yellow, cyan and magenta.
There's also one line between red and yellow that represents the skin tones.
Now, all these values in the vector-scope come back in the color checker,
which is why they're pointing to those directions.
On the bottom we have those different colors and the palette above
represents the different skin tones.
Now, the FS7 has a lot of controls to make sure
that each rendered color comes out exactly on the vector-scope.
Having Slog 3 selected I'm going through the matrix settings,
where I can offset the color values to match the color values
from the chart to the vector-scope.
So, this camera is calibrated now.
It's pretty easy because we have so much options.
Now, what I want to do is calibrate the Sony a6500 ii,
a simple SLR camera that doesn't have so much options.
Just like before, I make sure I set my white balance and exposure correctly
before I start calibrating the colors.
Something I also temporarily did with the FS7 was setting its saturation to maximum,
that way the vector-scope peaks and we can see our results better.
Just don't forget to decrease your saturation again on the end.
So, in the 6500 we have the option to go through the color modes,
and I found Still or Movie to be the most neutral.
If your colors are off you can try to rotate the balance with the Phase.
Having only these options it's much harder to really calibrate it,
but it does give me a good sense of where the colors might be off.
That way I know where to compensate in post-production.
But, looking at the results, they actually come in pretty close.
The FS7 does have better skin tones,
but that's expected, considering the price difference, of course.
Next up is calibrating our monitor.
In the kit we'll find a USB device and some software.
The process is very simple, once you hit Calibrate, you'll see different instructions.
Basically it measures the surrounding lights and the colors of your display
and it will make a profile for that.
Now, since monitors shift their colors after a while,
it's recommended to recalibrate your screen after a couple of months.
Once that calibration is done, we can take our video clips into post-production.
If you're working with Resolve or Final Cut X,
you can actually take a sample from the color checker and the program will do the rest.
I'll have a link in description below that shows you how to do that.
Premiere Pro is not supported yet unfortunately, so we'll have to color correct the clips ourselves.
Make sure you have a shot of your Color Checker Passport
in the same lighting conditions of your talent.
First off, I'll mask out the three step target to get a clear view inside the waveform.
Just like we do in camera, I'm setting the highlights at 80 IRE,
mid-tones at 40 IRE and shadows at 20 IRE,
using the Lumetri tools.
Here we've got a clip that has off colors,
I'm drawing a mask around the color checker so that I'm soloing that out.
And that way I can only see those colors in the vector-scope.
Just like I would do within the camera,
I increase the saturation for a better view.
then I would take the white balance sample which should fix already a lot of the issues.
Next, I would go into the RGB curves to position the graph to the middle,
and finally I take the secondary color corrector
to sample a specific color that is still off.
That way I can change the hue of the cyan in this example,
and making sure it points to the cyan in the vector-scope.
In this case it points too much to the magenta side,
so I'll add a little green to compensate.
Seeing the results, I do notice it's not perfect,
but we're definitely more in the right direction.
I can now look at the image and perhaps solo out the skin tones
to do additional color corrections on.
To find out more about this kit you can follow the first link in the description below.
Also, make sure to watch some additional videos that I've put in the description too.
Thank you so much for watching again,
and stay creative.