ProTools #1: Photography Workshop: Camera Profiling

 02/03/2021

Beytan Erkman - Workshop 

Using the colour chart which is used for professional practice. The customised colour chart allows us to reset my own camera and not be restricted to the profiles already created on there.

Camera profiles enable you to alter the way in which the colours are captured and presented to you.

- seeking the purest and truest type of colour

- taking control and producing own colour palette with raw file

- remind us what the colour palette is around film and take control of these colours without relying on apps, presets or plugins.

- saving these new created palettes as new presets and apply them to images.

Colour Infra-red film - Kodak Aerochrome

This film is a false colour reversal film which was used by the US military in the Vietnam War when photographing the jungle. This is because everything with chlorophyl would be captured and presented in a surreal, fluorescent pink/red colour making anything else that is inorganic come up easily detectible against the land scape which they hoped would mask them. The film registers a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can see. 

Photographer Richard Mosse, used this style of film to capture the instability and conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between the years of 2010 - 2011. Using the military surveillance technology within film, he captured rebellion groups, jungle war zones, massacres. This radical way of capturing conflict and the ongoing wars of the DRC, it highlights the complexity of the region's violence. He makes something that is so terrible appear somewhat beautiful creating a sense of internal conflict with the viewer. Despite having a sinister history about the film, it can produce extraordinary outcomes.

- film is difficult to expose as the ISO isn't true as it works due to the amount of infrared light that is available which is something that can not be easily measured.

Macbeth ColourChecker Chart / Colour Checker Rendition Chart:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/CIE1931xy_ColorChecker_SMIL.svg

                   

The colour checker chart was introduced in 1976 and consists of 24 squares of painted samples based on the Munsell colour system. The Munsell colour system specifies the hue (basic colour), chroma (colour intensity), and value (lightness).

However, our main focus in the workshop was on the Macbeth ColourChecker chart (on the left). which is based off the chart depicted (on the right). This chart maps the colours of the rainbow on a grid. The numbers wrapping themselves around the actual block of colour from 460 - 630. These numbers are the wavelength for the colour blue (460) and red (420). Designed in 1931.

The colour checker chart was put together in 1974 for the television, lighting and film industry.

The swatches on this chart are spectral reflectances that mimic natural objects like human skin, foliage, flowers. The colours that have consistent colour appearance under a range of lighting conditions and they each have a different value:

The colour that film brings evokes emotion and nostalgia making us consider the image in a different way as it has its own colour palette. Where as digital imagery produces real colour that mimics reality. However, digital colour is limiting.

1. Download colour checker chart  

2. Take photo with camera of screen with chart on it - Has to be a RAW file because what can be produced from a raw file is the reduction of the DNG. As we cant turn a normal pixel based image in to a profile

3. open on photoshop