CLASSROOM: Blue Clipping – A Problem You Probably Never Knew Existed in Low-Budget Cameras1 min read
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You guessed it right: it’s a problem you can’t fix in post, and most of us may never notice it until we get to the colour grading phase. If your camera costs less than $10,000, you’d better be aware that it has probably got the blues.
The problem occurs when you shoot in low-light situations, and there are lots of prominent bright blue areas in the frame. The sensors on most consumer and prosumer cameras seem to have a very peculiar sensitivity towards blue in that situation. Is it related to the fact the blue channel has most of the noise in the footage? I don’t know. However, this occurs when using a non-raw file encoding, such as ProRes, AVCHD, and the like. A possible solution is to change the colour temperature until the clipping is gone and then alter the colour temperature back in post.
