OT: Blacklight videos best filters etc to use

richard-courtney wrote on 4/14/2003, 1:36 PM

I have a group of puppeteers that use blacklight in their performance.
Using Canon DV and Sony DVCAM both get over saturated from the
blacklight colors. Normal auto settings for "spotlight" helps but
still get "fogging" or intense glow on the puppets.

Anyone video blacklight and can help in lens filter selection or post production
technics?

Thanks

Comments

Jsnkc wrote on 4/14/2003, 1:38 PM

You might want to try using a UV filter, I do a lot of concert shooting and I used to get really oversaturated from all the spotlights. I put on a UV filter and now I don't get any oversaturation at all.

Chienworks wrote on 4/14/2003, 1:48 PM

Video can't handle the range of lighting that the eye can see. If at all possible, have the puppeteers stage a "video only" performance in more normal lighting to get the best video image possible. I regularly do this with dramas at church. The official performance is usually done with rather harsh spotlighting (since we only own one follow spot and we can't dim the lights). This may look interesting to the audience, but the camera sees a white spot on a black background and the video is just about useless. We'll do a tech rehearsal and then a dress rehearsal beforehand and i'll tape the dress rehearsal in normal room lighting. People often complain that i'm not taping the "wonderful lighting effects", but when they see how much better the video looks they live with it.

richard-courtney wrote on 4/18/2008, 8:24 PM

Reviving this old thread ---
after seeing Bob's thread on laser pointers.

Anyone have a solution?
Using a ND filter set helps too but kills some of the colors I want to keep.
Post is almost too late as there is blooming / fogging on certain colors.

farss wrote on 4/18/2008, 11:52 PM

I think what others have said previously still holds true. Video just doesn't do those intense colours. However you do see ads that look like they've used deep reds etc that are to die for. I suspect the real trick here isn't that the reds are any better, it's that they've turned everything else down a notch to make what's left pop in a relative way.

As for shooting, really avoid overexposing, in fact underexpose, you don't want any of the R,G,B channels clipping or the sensor overloading. The scene is mostly black and the camera will try to adjust average exposure, avoid this. You might try exposing to the left, in other words expose for the blacks not the highlights. The situation might be improved by adding a little light from daylight fluros. Not enough to kill of the flourescence, just enough to add some natural colours into the spectrum. Again avoid having the blacks come up, reduce exposure to keep the blacks black and avoid gain. Adding noise into the mix will make things really ugly.

I know from first hand experience these kinds of lighting situations are a nightmare. If you could borrow a puppet or two and a UV light to play around with without the pressure of shooting the actual performance would be good I suspect.

Bob.

johnmeyer wrote on 4/19/2008, 8:11 AM

I have videotaped dance numbers that were done under blacklight, with the dancers wearing white gloves and other white accents. At least in that case, they wanted the audience to just see the bright parts. So, I just cranked the exposure WAY down.

In the earlier posts, people were talking about using the spotlight mode on your (Sony) video camera, but this implies some sort of automatic exposure. The key is to make sure you are using full-manual. No automatic exposure allowed for this portion of the shoot.

This is also similar to doing film to video transfers. You MUST exposure for the highlights (reduce the exposure until you get no zebras at all). Let the shadows go dark. Then, in post, use Vegas' Color Curves to bring up the shadows while leaving the highlights alone. You'll get some noise in the shadows, but you can suppress that using Neat, or Mike Crash's adaptation of one of the Virtualdub filters, or by using any one of several AVISynth filters, if you are familiar and comfortable with that freeware program.