In this video i'm going to share how to get the best looking skin tone on sony cameras
like the A7IV the FX3 and also the A7sIII I'll be sharing my favorite profile settings and my
personal secret to getting that extra pop through color grading i'm also going to clear up the
misconceptions around white balance and how it affects creative floods since the launch of the
A7sIII i've been experimenting with these cameras trying out different picture profiles with my main
focus on skin tones after various comparisons i've come to identify the three best profiles
s-log3 s-cinetone and picture profile turned off the funny thing is that number two and
three doesn't even come close to number one when it comes down purely to what looks best
s-log3 wins every time two reasons I'm pro slog 3 is number one the dynamic range is far superior to
any other picture profile and second because of the variety of options you have in post
from one click luts to color space transform and various film stock emulations shooting in log
consistently gives me the best looking visuals i use the default pp8 setting with SGamut3.cine
with the detail dial down to -7 by default and my advice is to keep it there my argument against
baked in profiles like s-cinetone and pp-off is that i don't really see it as a quicker turnaround
yet you lose quite a bit of dynamic range with one click luts and color space transform it's so quick
and easy to duplicate the conversion into all your clips and any additional tweaks would need to be
made to the baked-in profiles anyway but choosing a picture profile is only part of the process
the real secret to beautiful skin tone is and always have been white balance now some will
argue that white balancing will make your images too neutral and take away the creative look and
you're not wrong but there's only three scenarios where this is true number one if you go for an
intentional look like for example the matrix where the skin tones are mostly green unnaturally green.
Here correcting the image completely goes against the creative intent of the overall
theme set out in the matrix universe number two when the lighting in the scene makes the white
balance impossible or impractical like during a golden sunset or working with colored lights
and then most important number three when using one click solutions like phantom lights but not
knowing where to draw the line between white balance and the creative look intended by the
creator and this will be the main focus of this tutorial how do i balance for skin tones without
my visuals looking too neutral or destroying the creative look the number one reason skin tones
look bad is because the mid tones are not properly balanced and slapping on your favorite light won't
magically fix this i'm using davinci resolve but the language is the same in premiere pro
and final cut we'll start with joel famularo's neutral lut although i still need to adjust
contrast this image is perfectly white balanced indicated in three places since we're dealing
with skin tone the first place i'm going to look is on the vectorscope when isolating the skin with
a qualifier you can see that it's right on the fleshline if you have any intention of getting
beautiful natural skin tone the vectorscope is a non-negotiable one of my favorite things about
davinci resolve is the ability to see my skin tone with this little circle by just hovering
over an area on the skin and if it's in the center i know it's on the money the skin tone indicator
is accurate on all skin regardless of race and for darker skin i just switch it to the lows
for a more accurate display opening the waveform reveals the state of the highlights at the top
and the shadows at the bottom i made the model wear something that's pure black and pure white
to illustrate how the highlights and the shadows work on the waveform when i cool down the image
you can see how they split apart in rgb colors and how they pop back into place into white when you
reset it perfect balance having a reference of pure black and pure white a middle grey god or
a colour checker is ideal for not only capturing the white balance on site but also to tweak it
in post if it's not perfectly captured in camera i call these anchor points but what happens when you
apply a creative light like utopia or jamaica in this example nothing really because of the perfect
white balance of the neutral clip when you compare the images next to each other even though they all
look different the skin tone is still accurate on the vector scope success right well maybe in this
case the real challenge comes in when you start dealing with color casts caused by low quality nd
filters or light reflecting off surfaces in this case green bouncing back from all the foliage in
the frame even though i used the same method to capture the white balance in camera we're
still getting some excess green in the midtones indicated on the fleshline in an ideal scenario
where you have your anchor points correction is quick and easy but even if you don't have pure
black or pure white just having skin tone is as simple as dragging the midtones to the fleshline
and voila problem solved well it depends if you like the look if you want to warm up the image do
it in the mid tones just keep it in line with the skin tone indicator ultimately you're not bound to
neutrality as long as you're intentional with your choice another option is to isolate the skin tone
using the HSL qualifier and to do the final tweaks there in other words only correcting
the skin tone but leaving the rest of the image untouched in some scenarios i like to add a
slight popular face by boosting the luminosity in the mid tones but be careful not to overdo it
getting a perfect key can be tricky so sometimes you'll need to mask it to exclude other elements
in a frame but all the good editors have a tracking feature so even if your subject moves
it's not the most difficult task but it's totally worth the extra step especially in the commercial
and glamour space if you have any more questions feel free to drop it in the comments below and
i'll do my best to answer thanks so much for watching and i'll see you on the next one