Ty Harper

I don't know which method is more "accurate"  in matching the cameras to the reading on your meter or in matching the cameras to each other.  I would guess that the difference is minor, but it would be interesting to see a comparison of  the two methods.
I know that merely using the custom white balance on each camera without a color meter will get a close enough color temp match, and it is quick, easy and consistent.  Either way, you will still be tweaking sliders (or clicking eyedroppers) in post to get the final correction.
By the way, it is generally a good idea to avoid mixing light sources of different colors on the same side of the subject, especially on a person's face.
Also, you might try leaving a slight difference between the color temperature of the exterior light and that of the interior lights.  I usually keep the interior key light neutral.  If a window is visible in frame and if only skylight is streaming through it, I tend to keep it around 1/4 CTB -1/2 CTB from neutral.  If direct sunlight is visible in the background, I sometimes keep it at neutral -1/4 CTO.

@tupp thanks for the perspective. I've been in talking head interview scenarios where the lighting is a mix of LEDs and natural light in a space with big windows south and east facing. And so I've been setting up lights and cameras first, and then been using the Sekonic C-800 to:
(i) get an initial read of the color temp of the natural light hitting the grey card and color checker located in the central area that the talent will be sitting (it's a lot of natural light so not at all too low) and using that as my base color temp reading.
(ii) get my bicolor Litepanel Astras as close to that natural light base reading as possible using the C-800's multi-light color match function and manually tweaking each LED.
(iii) I then get the overall LED lighting levels roughly set with respect to recommended IRE levels for each cam via my monitor.
(iv) calibrate WB of each camera individually
Now here's my question. At this point should I calibrate each camera using their individual custom WB functions or by inputting the initial base temp I got via the Sekonic C-800?
I ask because I've gone the route of calibrating WB using each cameras custom WB and noticed that in the case of the R5C (which actually displays the color temp reading) that the color temp reading is way off from the Sekonic C-800 base reading. And while I know the WB calibrations from each camera will be off from each other to some degree - I wonder whether using the base color temp of the C-800 will result in the cams being off by the least degrees.
Hope this makes sense.
At the end of the day it's not like I've had to struggle much to match colors for my needs - but it would be good to know which approaches might give the best results.

Just got the Kolari VND filter and can confirm that it fits the official Canon drop-in adapter perfectly with no issues I can see so far.

Just got the Kolari VND filter and can confirm that it fits the official Canon drop-in adapter perfectly with no issues I can see so far.

If you are doing a multi-camera shoot, first put the grey/white card and color chart together, lit by the dominant full-spectrum light source of the scene/event.  Flag other light sources from hitting card and chart.  To avoid glare, the light source should be at about 45 degrees (or less) to the plane formed by the card and chart.
Position all the cameras side-by-side as close as possible to each other, about 6-8 feet directly in front of the card and chart, and perform a custom white balance on each camera.
Then, record about five seconds of footage of the card and chart with each camera.
If the dominant light source of the scene/event is intentionally not full-spectrum, perform the above procedure using a separate full spectrum source with a color balance that is close to color of the dominant source of the event/scene.
If you are shooting at separate times/locations with each camera (not a multi-camera session), do the same procedure above at each time/location with the one camera.
Of course, if you are shooting raw, the white balance will not affect the captured image, but having a custom white balance should provide a decent starting point for your NLE and for color grading software.  The footage of the charts will help in more finely "dialing-in" the color correction in post.
 

Hey all,
Based on your individual experiences, how would you get accurate WB/Color Match across cameras if you had an R5C shooting in Clog 3 (which has the same quick custom WB button as the C300s etc), a 1DC shooting in original CLog, a 5D MK III using Magic Lantern, a Sekonic C-800 color meter (which I got for really cheap at an auction a while back), an X-rite color checker and a grey card?
To be clear, I know how to WB with all these tools and color matching has been totally fine using Resolve - just curious how others might approach it with the aforementioned tools?
Thanks in advance!

To all my friends at EOSHD I have some very sad news.
My sister has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
She is just 38.
I have just brought the news to the main blog page here, for the full story:
https://www.eoshd.com/news/my-sister-zara-reid-is-in-end-of-life-care-for-cancer/
I might need to rely on my friends here to get me through this very difficult time and keep working.
Anyone who pre-orders my Panasonic GH6 Shooter's Guide will really be helping. I am in financial difficulties too, on top of this.
I want to keep this blog going even though I am a wreak at the moment.
I am going to miss my sister enormously. She was at the heart of my family.
Please don't hesitate to contact me if you wish to pass a message of support onto myself, Zara or my mum.
My email address is eoshd.com@gmail.com
In the future my aim is to get back to work and carry on EOSHD. Sorry it has been so quiet of late.
Thanks guys.

No, just the 70d sadly. Well, M50 does it but that’s a very rough ML build with barely anything functional. 

The web promo went live so I'll post a link to it...
Overall, I am proud of it, but I must say that everything that could go wrong... did. All in all, I am happy with it, but I wish I had more than an hour to shoot it and a day to edit it before I locked it and sent it to the sound editor.

I captured a post film screening interview last night between the director and his mom who is one of the first Black filmmakers in Canada... nothing prepared ahead of time just a capture of the moment for his family archives. I seriously considered pulling out the 5D MKIII to pair with my R5C but ended up going with the R5C and 1DC bcuz the second shooter wasn't familiar with ML. The R5C's footage was obviously great but the DPAF struggled at times to keep focus on the director's mom - and while it was happening, all I could think was maybe I should've just stuck with my trusty 5D MKIII/1DC combo. All that to say my relationship with the R5C has been kind meh so far (altho the image and cinema options in essentially a 1DC sized body once u add the grip are great!) - but the biggest takeaway I've had so far is that now more than ever, I know I will never sell my 5D MKIII. 

I thought I'd resurrect this topic since I am still shooting on my trusty 5D3. Here's a frame from a web promo I shot last week...
 

@John Matthews @EduPortas @MrSMW @Kisaha
This conversation reminds of a couple of pretty important aspects of film-making that are often not discussed as often as they should be, audience and longevity.  I feel these have a fundamental role in considerations of specs and outright image quality.
The audience, in the context of this discussion, seems to be predominantly people who know the people in the film.  I think this is important because trying to make a film that engages and entertains people who don't have a personal connection to the subject is, I think, many many times harder.  For wedding / engagement work, and for the personal work that I do, the intended audience is people who know the subjects in the video, and for that, the outright technical quality isn't so much of a defining factor.
Longevity is the other major factor that I believe is at play here - this content has almost an infinite shelf-life.  Most content becomes less and less relevant the older that it gets, but not this.  
Corporate work is fundamentally different in this sense, and is mostly about looking modern and fresh and new, to which the aesthetic quality of the images (clean, modern, professional, etc) can be vitally important, at least in the clients eyes.
When you're filming a wedding (or other key family events - not sure if you guys do other family related work like mitzvahs, etc) or the "family videos" that I make, you're acting as a historian.  Older rich families have entire departments of people who keep the family archives, and this is the creation of that material.  In a sense the value of this content goes up over time rather than down.  If I had a choice to send videographers back in time to film a key event of my ancestors, earlier would be of more interest than later.
I've tried to maintain a clear distinction in my technical efforts: capture and preservation first, aesthetics second.  
Even when it comes to aesthetics, what is the aesthetic of a wedding or historic family event?  It's nostalgia.  Sure, you absolutely want to try and capture who the people are, with their own styles and character, but even if your client is demanding 12K video because it's the latest and they always have the best, in 50 years time the 2D linear sequence of images will look antiquated regardless of what you do.  I would also suggest that the sharper you make it (as distinct from resolution - they're independent aspects) the more quickly it will age, rather than appearing more modern.
Aesthetics, even when I concentrate on them, push me towards a less 'trendy' look.  The modern look is high-resolution, clean and noise-free, colours so pure they seem electric, and sharpened to the point you could fillet a fish with it.
This is the exact opposite of nostalgia.  The aesthetic of nostalgia, especially of positive events which is what we are trying to achieve with weddings and family content, is the aesthetic of the dream, the warmth of remembering people you loved, especially people who are gone - either because they have grown and aged and who are not who they were or because they have passed.  
The aesthetic of warm remembering is fuzzy, which requires very low sharpening and often diffusion, it is noisy and organic, the colours are of an older time, a time when colours were less 'pure' and more likely to have come from nature somehow rather than single NM LED lights.  It's also lower resolution just because the tech of the past had lower resolution.  
The more I learn about film-making, the more I prioritise content and then colour.  From a practical point of view, in my own work documenting family trips and moments, my priorities are (starting with the outcome):
To create a great final edit that is deeply sensitive to the subject matter (people and places) In order to do this, I must have a great editing experience with footage that is easy to edit and makes me feel inspired in the editing process What inspires me in the editing process is getting great shots of the people, having great colour, and having enough content to allow freedom and options in the edit If you think about those things in reverse order, for me who shoots without permission and without re-dos or direction, it means I have to have a small camera that doesn't get barred by security and doesn't influence the people I'm shooting too much, it means it has to operate well hand-held, and must be a workhorse that is always ready and doesn't get in the way.  Once I have narrowed my options to those that can do that, it means I want the best quality colour I can get from that camera, and it means I should shoot a lot.
I find that most camera talk exists in absence, or without discussing explicitly, the end goal of the entire endeavour.  
Contrary to what people might think, I think that more resolution is actually a good thing, all else being equal.  The problem is that all else isn't equal, and any extra resolution actively hurts the things I value that are more important to the end product than the resolution itself.

While I agree that those 1DC files are next level frustrating - it's a night and day experience on something like a Mac Mini M1, which is pretty affordable nowadays. All that to say now more than ever cams like the 1DC and all the RAW ML enabled Canon dslrs are hassle free treasures imo.

Finally had the time to research this a bit more and you are right. My older Nexto ND2901 was able to backup footage via my Sandisk CF Express Type B reader. The caveat is it doesn't seem to be able to do it while running on batteries - it must be plugged in, so not as portable as I'd like it to be but a lifesaver no less. Either way these Nexto units have proven their worth - even as the company itself has apparently gone out of business. 
 

While I agree that those 1DC files are next level frustrating - it's a night and day experience on something like a Mac Mini M1, which is pretty affordable nowadays. All that to say now more than ever cams like the 1DC and all the RAW ML enabled Canon dslrs are hassle free treasures imo.

Lack of sharpening gave it a really smooth image and color science was pretty good.
But the codec is something I never want to deal with in my live again. 😭

1DC was immediately noticeable when doing the singular comparison, it looks so organic and much less digital compared to the rest.

No personal experience, but some years ago when I was looking for portable backup options for the XC10 I found that some of the portable HDD backup units would backup from a USB drive, and I read that those allowed you to plug in a card reader and backup from that.
As I never confirmed it personally, don't take my work for it, but it might be a way to side-step the issues of which portable units have CF card-readers and which don't.

I've had the xh2s for a couple months now. Just shooting test stuff but the footage is absolutely unreal.
 
Don't have anything else to say except that camera conspiracies guy is the most annoying person on the internet. I'd like to see him try to make something look good before constantly whinging.

This is the same way to get the Sigma MC21 to "work" on Leica by taping over the pins (for similar reasons in terms of blocking by the camera) but it becomes a dumb adapter with no control of AF, Aperture and IS.
So, yes, you could do that with the Meike/Viltrox/Kolari etc but lose all of that stuff in the process which may or may not be an issue depending on what you are mounting on it (just using EF as an intermediate mount etc for older manual lenses) or only use manual focus anyway.
But the best way I can see to have your cake and eat it in terms of keeping all of that, insuring yourself against future firmware blocking and not having the dramatic colour casts at greater intensities is as @ntblowz does it by using the official adapter but swapping out the NDs for the Breakthrough versions.
More expensive in the short term but not as costly as having an adapter that all of a sudden is rendered useless.

After 2 years of Canon VND adapter for EF and using normal screw in VND on RF lenses, I'm not sure that the adapter is more convenient. 

Going from min to zero is a pain as either you remove the filter and put a clear one or swap the adapter, I find unscrewing faster as I can simply put in the pocked the vnd and I'm done. 
The small wheel for me is not as easy as the front filter to do fine adjustments.
The plus that you can use lens hoods.

If I would start all over now, I would probably look into some magnetic system.
As adapter the kippertie revolva seems a better solution but is very expensive and I'm not sure how compatible is with the R5/c...

No, both the Kolari and Meike adapters also provide electronic control for AF etc.
A simple handshake ID check between camera and adapter/lens will be able to tell the camera the identity of what it is connected to it and compare that with an approved list at which point the camera can then adopt a policy of "if you're not on the list, you're not coming in" and prevent any operation until you remove it.
Of course, it is not currently active in any of the firmware as people are able to happily use these products but its obviously only an update away should Canon choose to do it.
On the basis that the Canon version does not fare very well at all on every comparative review I've seen then these 3rd party products must be damaging not only sales but reputation too.
The colour shift and IR pollution performance of the Canon version in this review being an example.
 

I got the Canon VND but changed the filter to breakthrough X4 VND for best VND on the market.
We also got the Canon speedbooster for C70 but once we migrate to all RF lens (24-70 2.8, 28-70 F2, 15-35 f2.8, 70-200 F2.8 etc) it kinda becomes irrevalent.. except just for the EF 35mm F2 IS which we still have pairs well with C70.
We just dont buy third party for best compatibility issue, I have a friend who have Sigma 24-105mm Art but it locks his C70 up from time to time.. once he changed to Canon no more lockup.
 
Next upgrade will be looking at V-Raptors and Komodo combo.. at least our RF lens still works.
 

It could be because Viltrox are the only one that have acquiesced and gone public about it or that they were first on the list and the others will follow.
If it is aimed solely at Viltrox then it could be that Canon consider that actual wrongdoing has happened in terms of the acquisition of the protocol and/or lens design.
Its a tough call because on the one hand the temptation to buy them before they disappear (BH already show the Viltrox as discontinued) but on the other hand they might well be rendered useless by a future firmware update.
I suppose it comes down to whether you have a Canon camera with a settled/finished firmware version so you don't have to upgrade to a future firmware that potentially could contain a countermeasure.
 

Well I can say for example that for someone like me who has an R5-C and is actively looking to pick up one of those RF-EF adaptors that come with the drop-in ND filter, that the Meike and Kolari offerings are just better. And that's using every metric that matters, including price. So from that perspective I can see why Canon would not want this type of smoke from third party companies.