Sony PC5 - Indoor Lighting - Mixed Results

[Jonathan Schmidt]

I have a PC5 camera that I've used for a couple of years, overall with excellent results. However, indoors, the lighting sometimes plays tricks on me. I have had some video come out with a noticeable yellow tint that I've had to color correct in Premiere. Does anyone have any tips for shooting indoors?

[makicr]

Not a tip, but I have an open thread (without response to date) asking about video lights. That may be helpful to your problem as well.

[Jonathan Schmidt]

Great, thanks! I'll keep an eye on that thread.

Not a tip, but I have an open thread (without response to date) asking about video lights. That may be helpful to your problem as well.

[Suhit Gupta]

Does your camera not have a built-in lamp? I used to have the same problem with my uncle's camera (no idea about the model) but the yellowish tinge was a lot less when I turned on the camera's own spotlight.

Suhit

[Jonathan Schmidt]

No, it doesn't have a lamp built-in. I'm not sure a light would help some of the situations that I've run into. For example, over Christmas, I shot some footage of my father-in-law's swearing in ceremony as a judge. It was in a fairly large courtroom with really odd lighting. For the actual swearing in, there weren't very many lights on. If I had a video light attached, it wouldn't have reached the subject anyway.

The video turned out pretty grainy, which is typical for lower-light. On top of that, the color was off due to these weird lights. They weren't incandescent or fluorescent. I'm not sure what they were. They reminded me of the lights in my old high school gym only not nearly as bright.

[Crocuta]

The video turned out pretty grainy, which is typical for lower-light. On top of that, the color was off due to these weird lights. They weren't incandescent or fluorescent. I'm not sure what they were. They reminded me of the lights in my old high school gym only not nearly as bright.

Does the PC5 have the automatic white balance? My TRV-11 does. Both being Sony's it might be worth checking out. Here's how it would work with mine. If I'm in an unusual lighting situation that none of the preset white balance settings work for, you point the camera at a white card in the room as you turn it on and the camera adjusts itself to make that white. Everything else should then fall into place. You still have a problem if the room is mixing daylight and artificial light, but if you're under a consistent light source, it works well.

[backpackerx]

Yeah, a lot of cameras allow you to set the white balance, I think there is a technical term for it but like Crocuta was saying, you find something truly white and on my old Sony you pressed a white balance button and that set the balance to adjust to the right color temps.

[Jonathan Schmidt]

I'll have to dig out the manual and check that out. I don't think it has that feature, but I want to be sure. I know you can set it to "Auto" mode, which just tries to adjust automatically under changing light conditions. You can also set it to manual where you set it yourself but then it is hard to get it accurate unless you are using an external monitor that is calibrated properly. It's a good suggestion, though. Thanks!