Category Archives: Color Correction

Shooting video at night under the red street lights

Tutorial: how to remove the red color from the street lights at nightHave you ever shot video at night, especially in cities, only to realize later on that your picture looks all red, orange, or yellow? This is due to the sodium vapor street lights, also known as broken spectrum lights.

This post brings you a short color correction tutorial, which teaches you how to fix your night shots to remove the red color cast and make them look more natural.

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Eliminate the blue cast in shadows or from daylight

There’s a dreaded situation regarding colors and lighting, which happens when you mix sunlight with other color temperatures. For example:

  • Shooting outdoors with both direct sunlight and some shaded areas: the shade may appear slightly blue compared to the warm sun.
  • Shooting indoors under incandescent lighting (using INDOOR White Balance) with some daylight flowing in at the same time through a window: daylight typically appears blue compared to artificial light.

Professionals would address such issue by color-balancing everything with 5500K-calibrated light sources, or setting some blue gel on the incandescent light source, or avoiding the situation altogether. That’s not practical for the casual videographer / hobbyist as you just can’t buy a whole set of lighting gear, let alone carry it around the world when travelling. Fortunately, there’s a work-around solution only a few clicks away if you have higher-end editing software such as Apple Final Cut Studio, EDIUS Pro, or Adobe Premiere Pro.

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Shoot for the editor or shoot for the colorist?

I have been following with much interest the ongoing efforts by expert RED users in learning how to use this camera and let it live to its promise of digital-film-for-the-indies. Most unexpectedly however, it also triggered in my mind some lateral thoughts about ordinary videographing – how can we shoot video towards a more rewarding and fulfilling picture experience.

This opens up a whole range of possibilities for the hobbyist or the apprentice videographer alike.

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