Folks,

     Let your buddy Will talk to you for a moment about the biggest pain in my rear - Color Correcting.  Now, let me just start off by saying that I am using Premier Elements 3.0 and the tools for color correcting are almost non-existant.  Yes, I can mess with some things like Saturation, Brightness, Contrast, and Hue - but I have no idea what the hell I am doing.

The Preset
     For a recent trip to the Cleveland Auto-Rama I used my A1 and Stephen Dempsey's VIVIDRGB preset.  Keep in mind that this is an indoors event.  The colors were rich and vibrant and wonderful.  However, I did notice that the garrish paint jobs on some of the custom rides really gave me some oversaturated colors.  You know what?  That's fine.  These are bright, custom rides and a little color pop never hurt anyone.  Especially when the end result of my video work is basically just a music video. 

     For most shots I actually ended up boosting saturation and contrast, then dropping the brightness a bit.  I was/am happy with the results. Here is a link to my 2008 Cleveland Auto-Rama video

     Ok, fast forward two or three months and I have another car show to video tape.  My employers were so happy with the Auto-Rama video that they decided to send me to Chicago to video our sister company's spring car show.  (I work for Stylin' Trucks, and our sister company is JC Whitney Automotive.)

     So, wanting to expand my horizons and learn a little more about my camera and shooting video overall I switched the camera from VIVIDRGB to the PANALOOK preset.  I was under the impression that the colors were a little more subdued and that the image would have plenty of "play room" in post.

     So now that I'm checking my footage everything looks "washed out."  The colors are bland and don't "pop." You know what it looks like, old-time home movies from the 50's. All of the colors are desaturated and bland.

The Sun
     I am pretty unhappy with the results, though I'm not blaming the preset.  I think that the Sun is at fault.  It was ridiculously sunny out.  All day I had my aperture at the most closed position (going for "deep focus," read on), which if memory serves is 9.5 and I still had to flip on one of the in-cam ND filters.  Otherwise the image was just a blown-out white screen.

     What the hell am I supposed to do?  I've been trying to color-correct the footage but I'm working on Premier Elements 3.0 and the tools are very limited.  I want more color overall so I keep boosting saturation, but it just oversaturates the "opaque maroon" car that should be a "screaming red" hot rod. 

     Ok, I'm thinking that I want things brighter so I up the brightness.  Bad move.  This just takes all of the too-bright, washed-out vehicles and washes them out more, giving me lots of noise in the dark areas of the picture.  And believe me, there were super dark areas.  I never thought that going from bright sunlight to the barely-shaded engine compartment of a car would be such a big problem.  But if I'm directing the camera to point at the car's door, or some other external detail (which is way too bright) and swing over to see under the hood it's like I'm looking into a black, bottomless pit.  I can't see anything under the hood.

     Now I see why people like overcast days.  Not only did the bright sun give me a wicked sun burn, but all of my footage is garbage.  Ok, not all of it.  But a lot. Here's my first sample video from the JC Whitney Spring Show. I don't like it and abandonded the project after 1:20 in search of some color correcting help.

Shooting Style
     Also a factor is my style of shooting this time.  For my last video, I painstakingly (as I should) focused each shot.  However, I've been doing some reading and have read about a technique known as Deep Focus.  They way I understood it was basically, if you have a wide-angle lens (as I do, the WD-H72) and keep the aperture as closed as possible (which I did, it was very, very sunny out) that you would have very deep focus, meaning that objects close to the camera would be in focus and objects further away would also be in focus.  I was trying to add depth to the images so we see a great cruiser close to the camera but we can also see some other lovely auto in the background.

     Well, this "Deep Focus" technique that I was trying is apparently a bit more advanced than me because a lot of my shots have soft focus.  Not entirely out of focus, but soft nonetheless.  And in all actuality anyone outside of "the industry" probably wouldn't notice.  But I notice and it is annoying.  Let's chalk this up to being "over educated."  If I hadn't read about Deep Focus I never would have tried it and my stuff would be in focus.  But you live and you learn.

     I guess that's all for today.  Thoughts?

Update:
  I have a few more posts on this topic.  Here is Color Correcting #2, and Color Correcting #3.