Matching Two Different Cameras

Before any color correction. (Roll-over image to see the "after" version.)

After white balance via Vegas Color Corrector. I used the middle eydropper for greys on the subject's shirt (the center part of it). (Roll-over image to see before white balancing.)

After Vegas Color Curves. I added the 'black and white' filter to the video output FX chain (access it via the video preview window). After that, I eyeballed the curves until the man in both pictures looked similar. (Roll-over image to see before Color Curves.)

After Secondary Color Correction, set to isolate the greens in this image. I then brought down the saturation, and kind of decreased contrast by decreasing gain and increasing gamma. (Roll-over image to see before Secondary Color Correction.)

The footage to the right had excessive edge sharpening applied in camera. To counter-act this, I applied a soft focus effect. I duplicate the video onto itself with the same filters. I then applied a very slight Gaussian Blur to the top (0.002) and dropped the opacity to 29%. The difference is much more apparent when you view the images at full resolution. However, if you monitor on a television set connected via composite then the sharpening will not be quite as apparent as viewing at full resolution on a computer monitor. (Roll-over image to see before the soft focus effect.)

In my biased opinion, the two images are now close enough that its maintains continuity in the look of the image. The audience hopefully will not notice something is amiss. It is however possible to match the two cameras a little better. For example, if you spent more time you could tweak the grass and foliage colors to match better. The white balance could also be done better. Look carefully at the highlights on the man's shirt. On the left image, the highlights/backlight is yellow-ish. On the right image, they are reddish.

You can download the Vegas project files I used from this folder.

The forum thread that spawned this is "A little novice color correcting help?".

-Glenn Chan

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• Return to the articles section.
• Want even more? Color Correction for Sony Vegas can be purchased direct from VASST. I've distilled my Vegas color correction knowledge into this DVD. You can ask or search on the SCS forum (link below) for reviews / user comments.
• You can also get Vegas help over at the official Sony Creative Software Vegas forum. Sadly enough, I have 1600+ posts there.
  

This site by Glenn Chan. Please email any comments or questions to glennchan /at/ gmail.com