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CANONSCHOOL
ou’ll often hear the
term ‘colour grading’
or simply ‘grading’
mentioned when filmmakers
are talking about the
post-production of movies.
This is essentially fancy
filmmaking parlance for
colour correction. It’s the
same thing that you might do
with a photo, and usually
involves adjusting the white
balance, saturation, contrast
and other picture parameters,
fine-tuning the colour palette to
enhance the mood and achieve
a distinctive look, then making
sure all the clips match so
there’s a seamless transition
from one shot to the next.
If you want to carry out a
similar process with your ownvideos then it’ll be easier to do
this using a file that’s had the
least amount of processing
applied in-camera – or none at
all. Unless you’re shooting on a
top-end Canon, such as the
EOS-1D X Mark III, however, you
will be unable to record movies
in a Raw format. Instead, clips
are more like moving JPEGs,
with the Picture Style, WB and
other processing parameters
applied to each frame of the
movie before it’s saved.
In order to get a ‘flat’ base
image to work from, try settingthe Neutral
Picture Style.
This gives you
subdued colours
and low levels of
contrast that allows more
delicate details to be captured
and gives more scope for
colour adjustments later. You
can also download a ‘Video
Camera X Series Look’ Picture
Style from https://global.
canon/en/imaging/
picturestyle/, which gives you
a look that’s closer to Canon’s
X Series of pro camcorders.Accurate colours in movies
Choose the Neutral Picture Style if you plan to process your video clips
MOVIES AND COLOURS
PICTURE NOISE is the well-known
trade-off of raising a camera’s ISO
setting so that you can take a picture
in low light. But did you know that
colour also suffers as you raise the
sensitivity? You’ll be hard-pressed to
spot any changes if you stick to
relatively low settings, but once you
enter the camera’s upper range of
ISO sensitivities, colours will become
weaker and you’ll eventually see
colour shifts in the image. To be fair,though, you’re more likely to notice
the noise first, but it’s relatively easy
to do something about this;
correcting colours takes more time.
As always, if you’re shooting a
Raw file then you get a bit more
headroom for making corrections
when you process the image later.
But if you’re shooting a JPEG or a
movie, then it’s another reason to
stick with lower ISO settings as often
as you logically can.How ISO affects colours
Stick to lower sensitivities for the best picture qualityISO^400 ISO^102 ,^400
Pre^ plan^
your^ colours^
If you’re^ going^ to^ share^ clips^
straight^ from^ the^ camera,^
choose^ your^ preferred^ Picture^
Style,^ such^ as^ Landscape^
shown^ here^ above