Honest critique of color grading

Alright so overall I definitely like it, but there also some things i would work on. I really liked the saturation of the sky and tye dyed shirt and any other bright colours, but my biggest beef would be the slight blurriness and overblown contrast around the horizon line. I know that its a dark grouping of trees against such bright exposed snow so maybe there is nothing you could have down about that but it was what bothered me most. One other thing to watch is that is a few shots as the skier gets farther away from the camera they start to loose contrast, lighten and blur (this was happening more particularly with less bright outerwear)

Oh man, it hurts me sometimes haha.



As for the contrast, high contrasts out of camera + high contrast post = what happened. I thought it might me too much but i rolled with it. I need to start shooting flat scene files.

ya man just make sure your shooting with a high nd filter and don't worry about shooting the shot a little darker that you wanted to and then just fix it on the computer

like MATT said, I think that it helps make the colours pop more. I would maybe tone down the correction just a little bit, and if you could take down the vignetting. It gets really annoying after a while.

Yeah another thing i kinda just went for, wasn't sure but just rolled with it. i like the look but not sure if its exactly what i want

I like it, but the snow was way to overexposed at most times. Not shure if that because of the CG, or camera settings. Also, the vignette was a little bit to strong and dominant. But I like the blue-ish look.

This. I really liked the use of over correcting the colours

As far as vignetting goes I think the reason it gets a bit weird with this edit is how saturated the sky is. Therefore the change from such a bright blue makes the corners a little too prominent, either tone down the vignetting our just lessen the saturation.

i know alot of people on here like the super vibrant look you can get from over exposing a bit.  Im not a fan personally.  Other then that my biggest gipe was the vignetting, just seemed unneeded in the edit and kinda felt like you were hopping on the vignett everything wagon that seems to be getting popular.

Just curious (never shot with one) but does the hvx have zebra stripes?  I know alot of people who shoot that cam seem to have the over exposed look... with a little zebra action you can get that correct right from the get go if your looking for true color.

I really liked the colours, just not really a fan of the vig.

Yeah, my shots weren't overexposed it was from the post color grading.

Oversaturated, too much contrast and vignetting is lame.

yeah the vig is a wee bit harsh, use vig more as an egdeing. evan williams always has a really nice vig in all of his edits..

Dale Talkington Spring Edit from Evan Williams on Vimeo.

Let me start by saying that I like your footage more when you take the effort to grade it. Make use of that 4:2:2 color space son!

Maybe just a personal thing here, but vignetting looks bad 100% of the time. It's a dead giveaway of over-grading footage shot with zoom lens. Also, crushed blacks = horrible. The only thing that bothers me more than vignetting is crushed blacks to the point of clipping. the reason why many rookies crush the blacks is to make everything else pop, but they inadvertently make the blacks invisible by eliminating all detail. A basic knowledge of color theory can fix this.

Was the saturation done in-camera, or in post? You can make the luminance and saturation of your subjects pop by following a few basic rules:
-if surrounding colors are complimentary, the inner colors will pop. This means if your trees (blacks) are cyan, and your snow/sky (mids/highlights) are complimentary (in this case magenta), then the contrasting values "pop" out. Keep in mind color bias as well (magenta can be replaced by analogous colors like red or orange). This will give your subjects more presence without crushing the blacks or boosting the saturation.
-The relative temperature of your surrounding colors determines the relative temperature of your neutral values. Simply put, if you put a colorless grey over a warm white, the grey will suddenly look warm, despite the fact that it is colorless.


Keep in mind that when you grade footage, you are compressing data. To get the least amount of noise, and the most amount of detail, you have to approach the task logically to achieve desired results with the least amount of tweaking. Going crazy on the levels and saturation generally leave horrendous grading artifacts, which is why I recommend approaching this using color theory to your advantage. Once you have that done, you really only have to make a very minor level adjustment, if at all.

Are you using output histograms for your grading at all? That should fix all the clipping problems from post work. 35mm film has been rated at having roughly 13 stops of light (if I remember correctly). It also has a very contrasty look, with plenty of detail in those dark blacks, and bright whites. This is why we all wish we could shoot 35mm, but since we can't, you have to take a different approach and acknowledge the fact that your CCDs do not pick up nearly enough stops of light to match 35mm. To compensate, go easy on the blacks. Let me repeat: go easy on the blacks. The goal is to get them as dark as possible whilst still keeping detail. Otherwise half your image looks like a silhouette/shitty indie film.

About shooting flat:
It's a great way to increase latency in flat light. You should be lighting it physically, but if you can't, it's wise to make the image as malleable as possible. You have an advantage here Evan, because you have the ability to shoot in 4:2:2 and edit in ProRes.
I personally feel that it is unnecessary to shoot flat in good light. By doing this, you're basically saying "fuck you, beautiful natural light. I'm going to make my own colors with a computer by stretching data to no end! Remember that grading is compressing data, and you should avoid it whenever possible by shooting it right in the first place. This is the reason why major productions spend millions of dollars on lighting equipment and technicians. Computers simply don't take the place of physical reality.

First off, I don't film, I shoot photos and I use film anyway so I'm not as familiar with dynamic range of video camera's chips. I do know it less than film... duh. So don't e-kill me for trying. But wouldn't the snow need to be overexposed to allow the rider to be properly lit. Maybe not, since he may have enough light on him from the snow to allow some detail in the snow to be captured wile still keeping the rider form being dark. Especially with brighter colored jackets and such. I guess I just answered my own question... Uhhhh anyway.

On the lines of vig, I agree that it was overdone here. most of the time it's kinda just like, why'd they decide to add it. It's normally a quality of a lens that engineers try to get rid of, you know. Like you just mimicked a 20 lens when your is worth far more than that, yet sometimes it works. I guess it evokes some sort of feeling about the image, maybe surreal? Probably different for different people, but in the go pro edit posted above that's kinda what I though and it worked there. The colors also complimented that. Same with photos, I've shot some where I'll add a slight amount or leave light falloff becuase I think it works. Other times it takes away from the image because it was an imperfection of the lens. I think it was softer in that go pro video. If your familiar with photoshop it's like they took the circle lasso and had a higher feather value than yours.

On colors, I'm not familiar with the process but I'll say the clouds are very vibrant. The sky goes from cyan to blue, which I see a lot when kids boost the photos saturation/contrast too much. I think it looks beter in a video then in a photo, and I really don't mind it here. Did you use a polarizer? I guess if the color change could be gotten rid of but the clouds could keep their vibrancy then go for it. I agree with the above kid on not crushing the blacks too much. If it's anything like levels and curves in ps you'd probably get proper looking contrast without looking ridiculous. I don't know if it's my screen, but the tie dye kid sometimes had like no detail in his pants, sometimes he did though.

I like the general look of it, I'd much rather see it like this than really flat and not vibrant. Especially on a nice sunny day, it just completes the atmosphere.

I have them up in my final cut but i have no idea how to read them or use them.

First thing I would do is lose the diffusion effect. It gives the footage that glow, which is kinda weird for skiing. Once you do that, it'll be a lot darker and more contrasty, so you'll have to play with the levels a bit. Read up on the color scopes and see how they work. Kinda tricky but there's a lot of info about video color theory for final cut out there.

my saturation and blacks being crushed was in camera



so best strategy for color grading would be to film with what settings? neutral/flat?

for color grading, definitely.

sky looked strange

Its wild, the sky was actually REALLY blue up there, like the dark blue isnt that off from what it really was.

A little over done like most said.  I've found shooting in the superflat picture style on my t2i and slightly grading does the trick.  The blacks aren't crushed and still have detail.

I thought they were good colors and they added to the edit but they weren't anything special.

Shooting flat is only good if the light sucks to begin with, because you will HAVE to stretch it in post. If it is good light, such as Mt. Hood, there is zero reason to shoot flat because you have plenty of natural light to work with. This means you can shoot it the way you want. However, if the blacks were that crushed in camera, you seriously need to ease up on them. If you're losing THAT much detail in-camera, then you should definitely be a little more modest about it. Everything I said about grading and color stops applies if you want to do it in-camera.

I shot with my Master Ped on -7 for about 4 years, until I did some histogram tests in various lighting. Now I shoot with my Master Ped on -1, and use the above color theory to make my subjects pop, so that I hardly ever have to tweak the levels at all, and I still have "receding blacks" with full detail. I've found my footage looks much more like film, instead of crushing the blacks like 98% of people with no knowledge of color do. Seriously, if there is one rule you broke here, its those god damn blacks!

Output histograms are just like the in-camera histogram on the hpx170, only the graph is a representation of the image after grading (output), as opposed to the native footage being shot. You can google it and figure it out if you don't understand, it's very simple.

Sounds like ill just switch my master ped then, i believe im at -5.

great edit i loved the colors the sky was beautiful...

thank you for a great watch.