Why Use a Color Chart?
On color charts
Just do know it expires, it's a consumable. Must be completely sealed in dark if you want to keep as long as possible the color accuracy. What @shian said.
There's been times when mine has saved a ton of time in post matching different manufacturer's cameras. And there's been times when I wished I had not foregone using mine.... cuz it would have saved a ton of time matching different manufacturer's cameras.
Word!
@shian yup x2
There's been times when mine has saved a ton of time in post matching different manufacturer's cameras. And there's been times when I wished I had not foregone using mine.... cuz it would have saved a ton of time matching different manufacturer's cameras.
Davinci Resolve has built-in correction tools which, with properly exposed and already reasonably closely balanced footage (as Caveport said) automatically do the advanced corrections required by the Macbeth charts (including the x-rite, sekonic, and other "colour checkers" and the passport series). The article is right in a the still photography version of those tools is a bit out of gamut for REC709, but you'll still get a damn close match that is quite useful. I certainly see the point in using the product advertised in that article, especially if you want to manually match your colours, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with using the Colour Checker Passport to get you at a solid base. I then use FilmConvert to take it to the basic film look I want, then apply my style grade on top of that. Remember: correction LUTs before conversion LUTs before style LUTs.
A Macbeth color chart is not useless for video, it is useful. He has it backwards.
I use one with DaVinci Resolve and it works well. Keep in mind that they are not designed to work with poorly white balanced footage. The linked article is promoting an alternative product! ;-)
Here is a good article over at Pro Video Coalition about why a Colorchecker/Macbeth chart is almost useless for video production:
http://provideocoalition.com/aadams/story/what-good-is-a-macbeth-colorchecker-chart
johanson - Thanks for the link to the MBR Color Corrector plugin. Looks very interesting. I have used profiles for film scanners, and found them very useful. They not only speed up the work flow, but insure far more accurate color adjustments with less degradation to the image.
I am dropping in late on the discussion, you could use the free AE plugin MBR Color Corrector 2: www.mattroberts.org/MBR_Color_Corrector/ 8bit version is free. It helps matching cameras once you have shot your scene with a colorchart inside.
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