This is long, but you may find it interesting. I just spent several
hours over a couple of days trying to get a picture "right." There were
several different degrees of "right" and "not right," with no clear-cut
answer. You might come to a different conclusion than I did. Come into
the kitchen with me and let's see what was cooking. And see the
following four pictures after my last example for the conclusion of the
series.
On Monday evening I shot a wild and crazy contemporary music festival.
I'm friends with several of the musicians. The festival included
several pieces where the musicians performed with computer-generated
imagery projected on a big screen, as well as computer-generated sound.
There was changing stage lighting, and spotlights on soloists that were
drastically brighter than the ensemble lighting. Fun stuff. :-) I was
sitting in an ordinary seat in row 3, and did not have stage access. As
someone who plays music myself, and has shot plays and concerts for 44
years, I pride myself on knowing how to do things without being heard,
disrupting or distracting. So no changing lenses during the
performance, no chimping, and no excess fiddling with the camera. I set
most parameters before each piece, and adjusted exposure by counting
detents on my Olympus E-M5's exposure compensation dial. I ended up
using my Pansonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4 for the whole concert.
One shot posed a particular challenge. In the piece "Up Close" by
Michael van der Aa, a cello soloist doesn't just play with a string
chamber orchestra and electronic sound. She also interacts with a
projected video that runs during the piece. This created a perfect
storm of mixed color temperatures. Here's the first white balance, done
for the tungsten stage lights. The live woman is fine, the video is
blue, blue blue.
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091+_2_.jpg.html>
Balance it for the video, and the live performer becomes the Lady in
Excess Red.
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091+_1_+.jpg.html>
So what to do? I tried black and white. Which was OK, but not quite
what I wanted. Not enough difference between live and Memorex.
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091bw+.jpg.html>
I spent a couple of hours making masks (not my best skill, and I use
Picture Window Pro, not Photoshop, so I don't have a magic lasso).
Eventually I did a combination of a polygon for the screen, merged with
a mask keyed to most shades of blue, plus another to reddish hues,
cloned one into the other, blended the two white balances through this
mask, then and manually adjusted the final result with the clone tool.
It ended up mostly, reasonably technically correct, but the blue spill
in the foreground is impossible, and it's not what I perceived when I
saw it. During the performance, I didn't see the drastic color
difference that the camera "saw." But there was a difference, and this
rendering almost eliminates it.
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091-composite2ClonShpFinalCrop.jpg.html>
At which point I decided that realism was futile. OK, let's get
interpretive. I tried a partially desaturated version of the original
tungsten balance.
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091Desat.jpg.html>
But the picture I eventually chose to post was the one below. I used the
tungsten white balance, so the live performer appeared normal, and a bit
of selective color correction towards grey to reduce but not eliminate
the blueness in the video performer only. This added some mixed-toned
B&W surrealness to the video image. It was not exactly what I saw, but
it evoked the same sensation as what I saw. Besides, my wife preferred
this one. :-)
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/24844563@N04/12664153803/>
Again, see the following four pics for the conclusion of the series.
Thanks for bearing with me.
--Peter
--
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