Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Calibration

When we are in the developed module let me look at another photograph here I need to get out of back into my fit here there we go all right so we're looking at another photograph here and we're going to do a little extra work on this but I want to start working on um the concept of a camera calibration so I think we can I think we have time to cover that so we're going to talk about camera calibrations um and the reason we want to talk about camera calibrations is because um when you look at a photograph er that you've taken in your camera and then you look at it on your screen here inside of light room it changes it doesn't look the same and it's somewhat bothersome that does that have you have seen that like you bring in a photo and it looks good for a second and then it goes and it changes into like this not good version of it and the first version that you see inside of light room looks like what you saw in your camera but then all the sudden it changes to something that doesn't lo...

ok like what you saw in your camera and so what we're going to do is we're going to show you how to make sure that that's the same so in order to do that I need to go to jackson's baseball portrait and I need to look at a raw versus a j pegs sitting next to each other. All right, so I'm going to look at number forty six here now, let's, my favorite one is down here at the very bottom with the back. All right, they're so there's my favorite shot of jackson. I'm going to go in the developed module and I'm going to reset this. Okay, that's what it looks like, but if you look at the j peg of it that's what it look oh, wait. That's what it looks like okay, so you see the difference so there's the j peg that's what I saw on the camera thought I was going to get I got that. So that's what I thought I got this is what I got there's a little bit of a color difference and there's a lot of a contrast difference. Now, obviously, the first issue is a j pegs contrast it because it doesn't have a cz much distance between black and white, so if you have this much distance between black and white, you have less contrast. And if you lower the distance, if you limit the distance between black and white now you have lots of contrast. A j peg only has this much cut, uh, tones it has two hundred fifty six tones total and arai image has like forty thousand and so it's a big difference and so that's why this looks a little bit less contrast e than that does but when we don't want a limit our raw image to be you know, completely blocked up like a jpeg what we want is the look to be the same and so we have to start that process before we shoot images so the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to we're actually gonna calibrate our camera so I have my camera here um actually I didn't want to bring my camera all the way up here because I was carrying other stuff so kanan provided this for us, so we have to think canon for appreciate it that was much better than me bringing up my camera s o but it is the same camera that I shoot with and I have a card in it it's actually the same card that I shot there so I'm going to turn it on and I'm going to let's do the overhead camera and I'm going to play the images here and I'm going to show you something that you need to do in order to make all this happen okay the first thing that we need to do when we're shooting you guys see that perfect okay, so we're looking at our camera the first thing that we do is he's uh if you if you're taking pictures and you look at the picture styles so these air picture styles that you can use inside of your camera these picture styles are actually they're not affecting the raw image at all they're on ly affecting the j peg that's being created now when I shot this I actually shot if you if you look it here you can see right there I've got raw plus large fine j peg so that's the best j peg I can get out of the camera and a raw image so in order to do this process I need to have both of these things happening I need have a large fine j peg and a raw image that's what needs to be coming into the card that's the first thing that you need to be doing the second thing that you need to do is go into your picture styles and inside your picture styles and this will work on icon as well they call it something different than picture styles but it's the same concept eso inside of your picture stiles you're going to choose the one that best fits your style and you can edit those as well so like if I choose if I go down to let's say you know this neutral one and see out zero zero zero zero so that's like zero contrast zero extra saturation zero movement on the tone are the or the color balance on the image so it's right across the everything's normal. But if I hit the info button that allows me to set the sharp mr contrast saturation, the color tone. So I'm going to go in and say, I want tohave in order for my j peg toe look correct the way I want it to look, I need to set this and this is really up to you to set your style. Do you want it to be a little extra sharp? If you do it's gonna pop, but the j pegs already going to be the same sharpness is the image so it's just a like do I want extra sharpness to the image? The next one is contrast, I don't want more contrast or less usually, in order to approximate a raw image, you would want to bring the contrast down on the j peg rather than up. If you take it up it's going to be overly contrast, then I would go to the saturation. Usually, if you want it to be really poppy, you're going to go forward on it. If you want it to be more like film, you're going to take it down a notch or two on dh that's going to set up your your contracts are your saturation and then of course you can go to your tone and change whether or not you're going to go one way or the other warmer cooler on the tone so that's that's completely up to you I don't care what your style is but set your style and then keep it there so uh another trick by the way when you are working with menu to return when you're working on on set with clients if you don't ever want them to question whether or not you can turn something backto color so if you're like I don't want anyone to ever ask me can you make that color because I want them to think there is no way for it to become color again I shot it in black and white all you have to do is once in a while during the shoot just go in and select the monochromatic version just select it and then if you take a picture it's going to show up in black and white so then if you take that picture shows up in black and white and you say hey look at this photograph then they're going to be like oh he's actually shooting in black and white it kind of kind of sets the mind for the disappointment later that no I can't turn that back into color but they'll have seen you shooting in black and white just help them to understand this guy shoots in black and white if it's black and white, it stays black and why I can't go unless you want me to paint color back into it. Okay, so just a useful tip anyway, so what I want you to do then is I want you to come into your I want you to set raw plus fine j peg large find jake because you want the best one, and then I want you to set your picture styles so that you like the style that you're getting, and I want you to see it on your camera the way that it should be seen. Now, another thing you have to be aware of is that inside of your menu, you also have in the play area, you have the ability to change lcd brightness, turn it off of auto, so go here, turn it to manual because auto keeps doing this, so then it fools you into thinking you have the right brightness, so you want to turn it on to manual, and then you want to to get the right amount of brightness for wherever you are, if you're outside that's different than if you're inside, so if you really want to see the screen and no like outside, you're gonna brighten up the screen, but then you're going to think you're images or brighter than they are, so I want you to kind of find a happy medium there and usually it's four five you want to look at these areas right here, the white and the black and make sure that you're seeing it fairly white and black, typically speaking it's always too bright and so I would if you find yourself always having to brighten up your images, probably you have your lcd screen brighter than it should be tone it down one notch that way if you just glance at it and you think it's bright enough now that will force you to really look at it. Now that being said, don't use the brightness of your screen to determine whether or not you have the right amount of brightness. What I really want you to do is I want you to go in to your display and in your display I want youto have the right history, graham that history graham is what's really going to tell you whether or not you're exposed correctly, not the brightness of the screen? So if I go through these images, then I look at that image this image is correctly exposed because most of it is dark and black and darks and see all of that is dark and that's why you see this big pile of dark agnes because it's a big dark wall it's got a dark shirt on a dark hat on and then you can see this larry over here where you got like all of that um white area there that's the whites and the whites and the highlights or his face and his arm the name on his shirt and then down here like that's it those are the things that are bright and so there's very few of those therefore you see very few of them on the history graham if you want a little bit extra information and this is the way I shoot I keep my rgb history rams open as well and those rgb hissed a gram's will allow me to see the difference between you know what is over exposing so if I see this thing blowing out on the right hand edge but it's on ly the blue blowing out and it's just in the sky and there's a blinky light in the sky that tells me this has blown out then I could say oh well it's just the blue because the blue is too bright but if it's on ly the blue blowing out just the blue but the green and the red are still fine in the sky then I know I can recover it because there's still some information in the sky you see how useful those are so you want to know whether or not you're blowing something out or you've got too little information? If it's in all three of the colors you're in trouble, if you're blowing out in all three colors, you're not getting it back, but if you're only blowing out in one color good chance you can recover all of it alright, alright, so that is what we need to set the camera up first to do. The next thing that we need to do is we need to actually shoot a, um let me go back to this so that you can see it. We need to shoot eh? Color checker passport. So that's, this thing right here set that right next to it when we see that there we go. So that color check her passport has a bunch of colors and tones that we know what they are. Scientifically we know exactly what these colors are, and so we can take these and if we shoot them, then we can have calibration software. Look at this specific thing and it can say I know what the colors should be on this shot because you shot this with it. If we shoot this with it, then we can bring that in and generally speaking, what you can do is set up a calibration for outdoor shooting, the calibration for indoor shooting calibration for specific lights if you have some hot lights that use than take some calibration shots for that if you have some flashes that you use so I use pro photo flashes if I flash with those, then I can calibrate their color if I if I'm using a warm you know, hot light or something like that like I'm using a to qet or one k or a you know, a mole or something like that, then I'm gonna calibrate for those lights because they're completely different color if I'm outside calibrate for that so once you've taken a picture of this, then you're absolutely certain that you're going to have the right color so each shoot that you do just have one picture of that color check her passport that way you know that you're going to get the right color especially if you're doing product photography, doing product photography and the colors got to be dead on you want to make sure that that is completely, you know it's spot on color and this will help you do that it also has on the other side of it it has a, uh a great card so and it fits in your pocket alright, so that is the color check her passport this is the settings that you want on your camera and you're going to take a whole series of photos as a raw plus j peg once you've done that and you bring them into your system and remember we told you that you need to go to your preferences and inside your preferences you need to choose in the general area you need to tell it that you can on ly that you need to treat the j peg files next to the raws as separate photos all right that way when they come in and you see them in the grid you see raj a pig raj a peg raj a pig, right? That is how you set up to calibrate your camera and also to calibrate light rooms so that it's giving you exactly what you want to see every time your images come in so that you don't have to fuss with us, much of the dials were going to get light room to the bulk of the work before you ever look at the images but that requires you to do this step first. All right. Any questions up to this point? Questions about nikon cameras the menus are different they are right but you can still access all the same. I guarantee you that if you have a nikon camera every single one of those especially if it's a semi pro war pro camera if it's ah any of the limited cameras if you get like consumer cameras either cannon or nikon or any of them panasonic or whatever most of them will have most of these functions in him, if not all of the functions. You just have to figure out where they are, just leaf through your that thing, that book, that manual thing that came with it, just leaf through it, you'll find it but hissed a gram's air very important. When you're shooting, I never look at the photo, I'm looking at the history, I know what the photo was, because I took it. I was looking at it when I shot. What I need is the history and the history and tells me what's, really that screen itself. Is it's too hard to determine whether I'm I'm looking at the right thing or not? So the history rams are important when you're reviewing it? Um, the image brightness is important so that you can see it, especially when you're outside. I come from arizona, so it's, always bright, so I have to have that wrapped up pretty bright in order to see something outside, but then I can't trust it at all, so I have to trust the system rams. But then remember, it has to be a large, fine j peg that's coming along with that raw, because otherwise you're not going to get an accurate presentation of what you know the j peg is presenting