[eddypolak]

I have a new Canon HF100. It's my first camcorder although I am a keen stills photographer. I mention the novice status because I might be being a bit naive here.

The problem is that in bright conditions pure reds are recorded as pink. To cut out a lot of possibilities note that the footage appears this way right out of the camera if I take the SD card and play the AVHDs on my PS3 and out via HDMI.

In post processing (iMovie 09) I can't get rid of the pink-ness without making the rest of the colours hideous. Similarly, during recording it is also helps to reduce the exposure by a few clicks but a good red is only achieved via massive underexposure. White balance settings appear to make no difference.

As I have read that the camera performance is generally excellent I am surprised at this. Am I just expecting too much from a camera of this price? I should emphasise that reds don't look a bit 'pinkish' they actually look pink - it's not a subtle effect.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Badger0-0]

I don't know anything about it, but just having read on the net, apparently making sure it's in "cine" mode, improves the image.

Fortunately, Canon has a "CINE" mode for people who are more serious about their image quality. It basically turns down the saturation dial to a more normal level. Unfortunately, the dreadful manual is horribly confusing about this and I actually learned this valuable fact from an online forum. Take my advice and leave your camera in CINE mode for the best image quality.

The brave new world of High Tech, High Def - Canon VIXIA HF100 Flash Media Camcorder - Epinions.com

Don't know if that'll help, but worth a try?

[eddypolak]

Yes, that is worth a try. I had noticed there was cine mode option but didn't think of it in the context of this issue. I'll let you know...

Thanks

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

I have a new Canon HF100. It's my first camcorder although I am a keen stills photographer. I mention the novice status because I might be being a bit naive here.

The problem is that in bright conditions pure reds are recorded as pink. To cut out a lot of possibilities note that the footage appears this way right out of the camera if I take the SD card and play the AVHDs on my PS3 and out via HDMI.

In post processing (iMovie 09) I can't get rid of the pink-ness without making the rest of the colours hideous. Similarly, during recording it is also helps to reduce the exposure by a few clicks but a good red is only achieved via massive underexposure. White balance settings appear to make no difference.

As I have read that the camera performance is generally excellent I am surprised at this. Am I just expecting too much from a camera of this price? I should emphasise that reds don't look a bit 'pinkish' they actually look pink - it's not a subtle effect.

Any advice would be appreciated.

It does not sound right,no modern cams reds should be as bad as that

[eddypolak]

I hope it's not faulty as this was one of the famous £199 Curry's specials and a refund would not quite do it!

[eddypolak]

I tried Cine Mode. It is indeed different and quite a bit better than the default mode, so thanks for the idea. Testing with a large scale car model the pure red bodywork comes out errr...orange. That at least is to my eyes less objectionable than pink! Also within iMovie I can correct to get something that's quite acceptably close to the real world. But it's it's still pretty time consuming and tricky to achieve. I also notice that really small changes to 'exposure can have dramatic effects to colours. This whole experience is just not like working with stills. However this relative success is really only with my model in subdued light. In bright sunlight it's still defeats me to get a realistic red.

I think it is unlikely that this kind of 'fault' is specific to my unit so I will have to put up with it - unless anyone out there knows better! After all, getting a refund will only yield enough cash for an entry level SD recorder, and I can't believe that would be a good move!

[A n d r e w]

Red is the worst colour to get right. Even pricier camcorders can struggle with it. Definitely much more of a problem than with stills.

[Badger0-0]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

I tried Cine Mode. It is indeed different and quite a bit better than the default mode, so thanks for the idea. Testing with a large scale car model the pure red bodywork comes out errr...orange. That at least is to my eyes less objectionable than pink! Also within iMovie I can correct to get something that's quite acceptably close to the real world. But it's it's still pretty time consuming and tricky to achieve. I also notice that really small changes to 'exposure can have dramatic effects to colours. This whole experience is just not like working with stills. However this relative success is really only with my model in subdued light. In bright sunlight it's still defeats me to get a realistic red.

I think it is unlikely that this kind of 'fault' is specific to my unit so I will have to put up with it - unless anyone out there knows better! After all, getting a refund will only yield enough cash for an entry level SD recorder, and I can't believe that would be a good move!

Well, my only experience of a modern camcorder was one I bought my daughter for chrimbo a couple of years ago.
It was highly recommended by one of the members on here (red sox?).

Whilst I have no doubt it was a good choice at the price point, I must admit, I thought the colours were poor.

I just thought that's how they are.
It was also a Canon.

[JefUK]

If your colours are that far out then there is something wrong with it. The colours from my HF100 are as good, or better, than any other camcorder that I have owned or used. Reds are faithfully reproduced.

[chrishull3]

Agree with jefuk above i have not had a cam for many years that could not produce good reds, i find manual is best left to difficult situations and have used auto or outdoor settings, my present fx7 and hv30 give great reds using the outdoor setting, no way should you have to fiddle around with cine mode etc.

[eddypolak]

Thank you for the responses! However there does not seem to be much concensus on what colour fidelity to expect. As all posters are clearly speaking from experience and are knowledgeable I an not sure what to conclude. It does put me in a quandery given the crazy cheap price I got the camera for. If i'd bought full price i'd probably return it and try a replacement.

I suppose if I saw output from another HF100 that was markedly better than mine I'd know what to do. Is there somewhere to go for this, other than YouTube, where camcorder enthusiasts go?

Finally if I captured some representative stills and put them up on my FlickR account would folks here be prepared to have a quick look?

All your help is much appreciated.

Regards

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

I suppose if I saw output from another HF100 that was markedly better than mine I'd know what to do. Is there somewhere to go for this, other than YouTube, where camcorder enthusiasts go?

You could take a look at Vimeo.com, if you haven't already.

Originally Posted by eddypolak

Finally if I captured some representative stills and put them up on my FlickR account would folks here be prepared to have a quick look?

Sure, but without seeing the object in question it'll be hard to say whether you're getting accurate reproduction of "reality" or not.

As a professionally-trained video editor, let me just say that a lot of time and money is spent getting colours right, even from high-end broadcast cameras. This wouldn't be the case if colours were simply "true" straight out of the box. It is a subjective thing, though, and what might look good to some doesn't to others. The colour sub-sampling employed by consumer-grade camcorders is a bit hit and miss to be honest - and a well-calibrated monitor will show this immediately.

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

Thank you for the responses! However there does not seem to be much concensus on what colour fidelity to expect. As all posters are clearly speaking from experience and are knowledgeable I an not sure what to conclude. It does put me in a quandery given the crazy cheap price I got the camera for. If i'd bought full price i'd probably return it and try a replacement.

I suppose if I saw output from another HF100 that was markedly better than mine I'd know what to do. Is there somewhere to go for this, other than YouTube, where camcorder enthusiasts go?

Finally if I captured some representative stills and put them up on my FlickR account would folks here be prepared to have a quick look?

All your help is much appreciated.

Regards

Only you know if the reds are correct ,if you send some digital camera stills that are correct with some cam stills we can check them out, i have found green to be the worst colour for slight variences even since hd cams.
Broadcast hd tele gives acurate colour even its live and no time for CC obviously these machines cost upwards of 25 times as much money but consumer stuff looks good to me nowadays if the cams working right.

[eddypolak]

I am learning a lot here and already much the wiser. I will try and upload some still camera pics and some corresponding cam video captures in the next few days.

Thanks again for your input!

[eddypolak]

I don't need to upload anything! Thank you Andrew for the tip re Vimeo - exactly the kind of site I was looking for. Check out these two videos of scale model cars. These are not toys and I know myself being a motorsport fan that the paint colour should be quite accurate for models like these.

First video - Diecast cars collection - HF100 on Vimeo Pink Ferraris especially noticeable at :24s just like I've seen with filming the real things.

Second video - http://www.vimeo.com/4404420 The red Ferrari looks perfect (well good enough for me). The blue on the Williams is also much better than the lilac version in the first video.

I've sent a Vimeo comment and maybe the creator will tell me how the clips differ and whether the colour grading was where a correction was done. Meanwhile I think you can see the from the first video that this is not just a case of not getting the right shade of red. The colour is way off. But at least it's not just my HF100!

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

I don't need to upload anything! Thank you Andrew for the tip re Vimeo - exactly the kind of site I was looking for. Check out these two videos of scale model cars. These are not toys and I know myself being a motorsport fan that the paint colour should be quite accurate for models like these.

First video - Diecast cars collection - HF100 on Vimeo Pink Ferraris especially noticeable at :24s just like I've seen with filming the real things.

Second video - Die cast cars collection - Part 2: Exoto cars on Vimeo The red Ferrari looks perfect (well good enough for me). The blue on the Williams is also much better than the lilac version in the first video.

I've sent a Vimeo comment and maybe the creator will tell me how the clips differ and whether the colour grading was where a correction was done. Meanwhile I think you can see the from the first video that this is not just a case of not getting the right shade of red. The colour is way off. But at least it's not just my HF100!

Never used the HF-100 but i am surprised it has as poor colour rendition as you say, the only place reds are maybe a bit out on my HV30 and FX-7 is floresent lighting,a hc 1 sony i had was not 100% on red but they were never pink like you get.


After watching your vimeos the first films reds are pink as you say perhaps the FH 100 needs correcting for good red colouring only FH 100 owners can tell you this.

[eddypolak]

I didn't make it clear that the Vimeo items were not mine but they show that the HF100 in general does what I have seen on my unit.

[JefUK]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

I don't need to upload anything! Thank you Andrew for the tip re Vimeo - exactly the kind of site I was looking for. Check out these two videos of scale model cars. These are not toys and I know myself being a motorsport fan that the paint colour should be quite accurate for models like these.

First video - Diecast cars collection - HF100 on Vimeo Pink Ferraris especially noticeable at :24s just like I've seen with filming the real things.

Second video - Die cast cars collection - Part 2: Exoto cars on Vimeo The red Ferrari looks perfect (well good enough for me). The blue on the Williams is also much better than the lilac version in the first video.

I've sent a Vimeo comment and maybe the creator will tell me how the clips differ and whether the colour grading was where a correction was done. Meanwhile I think you can see the from the first video that this is not just a case of not getting the right shade of red. The colour is way off. But at least it's not just my HF100!

The first video does show the Ferrari as a pink colour, and it also varies from scene to scene, not at all natural. The colours of the Ferrari and the Williams in the second video are more accurate, and more like what I would expect from my HF100. From experience of my HF100 the first video is plainly wrong and grossly in error, I would expect it to be more like the second video.

Some thoughts come to mind when considering the above observation:

Both videos have been subjected to colour grading with Magic Bullets, and we shall probably never know what changes have been made to the colours. I suspect the first video has not had consistent colour grading applied to every scene. A "raw" video clip is best used for this type of comparison, the colour grading is just adding another level of confusion.

Can you take some video of an object that we all know, a red Royal Mail postbox in sunlight for instance, capture stills from the video, and if you are satisfied that the stills show the same colours (on you system) as the video post them on Flickr? We can then all view them and comment on how they appear to us.


Viewing photographs or video, and making comparisons on different display systems, is fraught with difficulty and problems, made worse by no one knowing what the others are seeing:

In general, variation of the viewed colour against that experienced by direct viewing of the object is more likely to be affected by the viewing monitor than the capturing on an HF100. Monitors using TN display panels are notorious for poor colour reproduction, and most are poorly calibrated, especially for reds. Monitors using variants of VA and IPS panels are much better, with IPS being considered the best for image quality and these are normally used for critical image viewing/editing applications. Variants of VA panels are normally used in LCD TV's, although there is a trend to use TN panels in "budget" models and brands.

To speed up processing, video display on a PC is almost always handled differently by the graphics sub-system than "static" images such as the UI graphics and photographs. Therefore, photographs and video of the same object can often appear different when viewed on the same monitor, especially on TN based monitors. Video, on most (all?) graphics cards, is handled by a "hardware overlay" method which reserves a separate area of graphics memory for the video part of the display and then renders the video to the display area on the screen using chroma-keying. If the video is from an MPEG source a conversion from YUV into RGB is also made.

Accurate colour reproduction on a PC is therefore a challenge, although it appears that your problem is more fundamental and is probably caused a faulty camera.

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

I didn't make it clear that the Vimeo items were not mine but they show that the HF100 in general does what I have seen on my unit.

Yes i did realise they were not your own cams vimeo shots.
JefUK gives you a nice little explanation and right if you send stills a mail box is the perfect thing

[eddypolak]

Thanks JefUK for taking the time to explain some of the pitfalls. In particular I did not appreciate the different issues relating to cine playback on a PC.

That pink Ferrari is pretty representative of what I've seen too so I'm interested that you actually have an HF100 too and have not had the same experience.

I'll try and find a postbox (must be one around here somewhere ) to do the comparison shots.

[JefUK]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

Thanks JefUK for taking the time to explain some of the pitfalls. In particular I did not appreciate the different issues relating to cine playback on a PC.

That pink Ferrari is pretty representative of what I've seen too so I'm interested that you actually have an HF100 too and have not had the same experience.

I'll try and find a postbox (must be one around here somewhere ) to do the comparison shots.

Attached is a jpeg screen grab from my HF100 of a Flash Red VW Polo, not too dissimilar to Ferrari red, taken in diffused bright sunlight with very thin cloud cover. You can see that it is clearly not pink, like the Ferrari, but does get lighter where the lighting and reflected light is highest. In shadier conditions the red appears darker. I think there is a tendency to over-expose, and reds appear lighter than when viewing the object directly.

What settings are used on the camera? Try shooting with the following settings and see if the colour improves or is more to your liking:

White Balance: try AWB, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy and manual settings
Image Effect: try "Vivid" and "Neutral" effects

Also try setting the exposure manually and see if the colours can be improved.

[eddypolak]

Thank you for your efforts. You did not mention the settings you used for the Polo shot. The car is certainly not pink but maybe a bit orange? Did you use Cine mode which has that tendency to my eyes? (Incidentally do you know what else Cine mode does? I'd use it for the better colour but are the iamges a bit softer too?).

My two pics are HF100 v Canon G9 still camera. Both camera were set to P with everything else auto and AWB.

I agree that the HF100 overexposes a bit and this makes matters worse. Pinkness seems to be associated with under-saturated. The white balance appears Ok but I have tried various settings but no avail. I have not tried the effects thinking they would only make matters worse or less realistic. However as you imply its whatever gets you colours you like that is correct. A quick go with 'Vivid' does look better for reds due to greater saturation. Not sure about other colours yet though.

Thanks again for your support!

It does seem very strange to me how the image changes in iMovie 09 when you post process exposure or whatever. The behaviour is unlike processing stills with Photoshop or whatever.

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

Thank you for your efforts. You did not mention the settings you used for the Polo shot. The car is certainly not pink but maybe a bit orange? Did you use Cine mode which has that tendency to my eyes? (Incidentally do you know what else Cine mode does? I'd use it for the better colour but are the iamges a bit softer too?).

My two pics are HF100 v Canon G9 still camera. Both camera were set to P with everything else auto and AWB.

I agree that the HF100 overexposes a bit and this makes matters worse. Pinkness seems to be associated with under-saturated. The white balance appears Ok but I have tried various settings but no avail. I have not tried the effects thinking they would only make matters worse or less realistic. However as you imply its whatever gets you colours you like that is correct. A quick go with 'Vivid' does look better for reds due to greater saturation. Not sure about other colours yet though.

Thanks again for your support!

It does seem very strange to me how the image changes in iMovie 09 when you post process exposure or whatever. The behaviour is unlike processing stills with Photoshop or whatever.

It does not look pink on my pc or vaio but a bit lighter red than the digi cam, i could tell better on my tvs, if you print off a still does the digital camera match the box closely.

[eddypolak]

The still camera pic is close to the real world impression. I know the display is not going to be totally faithful nor indeed any capture device. However with every still camera I have had, colour rendition out of the box and with default settings on monitor has been close enough not to be worthy of comment unless closely scrutinised. I have tuned pictures post capture for saturation and maybe white balance as and when but these have been fine tunings or even deliberately going away from natural for effect. I have never seen a shift like this red to pink before in a still camera. I appreciate this is all very subjective but the two pictures I attached show very different colours to me.

I think I must conclude that to get what I am looking for I will have to play around with capture and post processing corrections some while longer.

Again thank you for all the advice.

[JefUK]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

Thank you for your efforts. You did not mention the settings you used for the Polo shot. The car is certainly not pink but maybe a bit orange? Did you use Cine mode which has that tendency to my eyes? (Incidentally do you know what else Cine mode does? I'd use it for the better colour but are the iamges a bit softer too?).

My two pics are HF100 v Canon G9 still camera. Both camera were set to P with everything else auto and AWB.

I agree that the HF100 overexposes a bit and this makes matters worse. Pinkness seems to be associated with under-saturated. The white balance appears Ok but I have tried various settings but no avail. I have not tried the effects thinking they would only make matters worse or less realistic. However as you imply its whatever gets you colours you like that is correct. A quick go with 'Vivid' does look better for reds due to greater saturation. Not sure about other colours yet though.

Thanks again for your support!

It does seem very strange to me how the image changes in iMovie 09 when you post process exposure or whatever. The behaviour is unlike processing stills with Photoshop or whatever.

My shot of the Polo was taken with Image Effects "Neutal", "Daylight" White balance, and Program AE. On my monitor or plasma TV it does not appear orange.

Your still photo views correctly as pillar box red, but the Video frame grab has too much blue, giving it a slight purple-red colour. I have seen this when using AWB under some lighting conditions, try the "Daylight" setting.

I am not sure what Cine mode does, but it does significantly change the white balance.

Changes in video image are probably caused by changing colour space between sRGB and YUV formats. MPEG video uses YCbCr colour space whereas most photo editors work in sRBG or Adobe RGB and no changes are made for viewing only printing.

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by eddypolak

The still camera pic is close to the real world impression. I know the display is not going to be totally faithful nor indeed any capture device. However with every still camera I have had, colour rendition out of the box and with default settings on monitor has been close enough not to be worthy of comment unless closely scrutinised. I have tuned pictures post capture for saturation and maybe white balance as and when but these have been fine tunings or even deliberately going away from natural for effect. I have never seen a shift like this red to pink before in a still camera. I appreciate this is all very subjective but the two pictures I attached show very different colours to me.

I think I must conclude that to get what I am looking for I will have to play around with capture and post processing corrections some while longer.

Again thank you for all the advice.

Different reds but not one red and one pink or pink red unless i am going colour blind, you need more f100 owners to comment i think eddypolak,

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...erformance.htm
it got a good review from camcorderinfo.com

[eddypolak]

I'm sure you are not colour blind! There are probably some real differences in what we see due to display hardware and then we use the words for the colours differently. Maybe it's time I visit the 'philisophy of perception' forum! I'd like to bet the cameras we have are performing identically.

When I made my first posting I though just maybe I'd get a response or two after a few days. I wasn't expecting all the useful replies I've had and on such a tricky topic. Thanks for your patience.