Setting Exposure in PivotCams

Camera Motion Systems
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Let me first say that I’ve found these discussion groups to be extremely helpful. Got help in creating a custom panel for Dashboard and have had a few other questions answered from time to time. Thought of asking the following questions earlier but didn’t want to embarrass myself in my lack of knowledge. Well, time to get past that issue and find a solution!

Our worship setup has 3 Pivotcams and two Canon XF405s. I’m somewhat new to video-well, actually new in the sense that I’m still learning the deep technical side of camera settings. We have some problems with our Pivotcams, the biggest being that the color is way off from the two Canons. Sometimes, it’s also off from each other and can even change from shot to shot (presets) in a single camera. I’ve looked for tutorial videos and poured through every Ross manual I could find for the Pivotcams and can’t find anywhere a step-by-step process for setting exposure and/or white balance. Ideally, we’d like the cameras to come as close as possible to each other and to the existing Canons that we have. While I realize that the last part is probably subjective since we can’t get them to be identical, if I could get my hands on details for the process, I would be happy. Part of my dilemma is that what I see for adjustments in the Canon are not duplicated on the Pivotcams. We set the Canon cameras’ white balance using a white card and manipulating the color temperature. The Pivotcams don’t appear to have that feature. In addition, while the Canons have and adjustment for overall gain they do not appear to have individual adjustments for the blue or red (gain) as the Pivotcams do. I also read somewhere in the Ross literature that the iris adjustment controls the green gain. We mostly use presets within Dashboard and generally save the focus, exposure and white balance. So now you can see why I’m confused. So, specifically, here’s what I’d like to know:

What are the specific steps to white balance the Pivotcam cameras?

Should we adjust white balance every week? Or just when we feel it’s getting “out of whack” since

As a rule of thumb, do I want to use auto-focus or auto-iris?

As far as saving individual presets in Dashboard, do I want to save all components: focus, exposure and white balance or is this what causes color shifts within the same camera from shot to shot?

Please keep in mind that all my camera ops are volunteers and know even less about this stuff than I do. My goal is to keep it simple and consistent.Thanks in advance.

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Originally posted by ****

Hi Steve,

Thanks for reaching out and I’m happy to hear that you’ve found our community pages to be helpful. I’m off at a cottage this week with poor wifi connectivity, plus I’d like to dig into a couple of your questions with some of my team before I get back to you. So apologies in advance for the wait, but I will get back to you next week on this when I’m back in the office.

Thanks, and best regards,

Bruce

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Great???thanks, Bruce.

                                                                 [![](//discourse-rossvideo-uploads-east2.s3.dualstack.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/original/1X/ea77b2d00dd39298cc3a7ea2131f068b36d5e004.png)](http://www.locchurch.com)                                                       Steve Witwicki
           LIGHT OF CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH
           Video Team Leader and Social Media Manager
           Cell: 847-271-0623
            
                            Light of Christ exists to INVITE people into Christian                 community, NURTURE them in a life-changing
             relationship with Jesus Christ, so they can faithfully                 and joyfully SERVE Him.
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Originally posted by ****

Hi Steve,

Sorry for the long wait. Please see below for answers to your questions:

What are the specific steps to white balance the Pivotcam cameras?

– set the camera to ‘manual’ white balance and frame camera on a white card, then initiate a WB. That white balance value should be retained until overwritten.

-depending on your lighting situation, you should be able to use the preset WB values with no issues unless you have mixed light sources coming in from outside.

Should we adjust white balance every week? Or just when we feel it’s getting “out of whack” since

-if you are in an area where lighting is controlled and not mixed (i.e sunlight from windows coming in), you should be fine just doing it when it looks ‘out of whack’.

As a rule of thumb, do I want to use auto-focus or auto-iris?

– for ease of operation, auto focus should be fine unless there is a possibility of someone/thing appearing in the foreground that the camera may choose to focus on. Setting and saving a preset with manual focus will prevent that, but your subject will have to be in the correct position. Focus isn’t as crucial on wider shots as opposed to tight shots.

-Auto iris should also be fine in most cases unless your subject is in front of a window or the background is brighter than your subject. ‘Backlight’ compensation can be used in that case when in auto iris, but you may need to use manual in those cases to compensate for the bright background or add more light to your subject.

As far as saving individual presets in Dashboard, do I want to save all components: focus, exposure and white balance or is this what causes color shifts within the same camera from shot to shot?

-you don’t need to save all the components and yes this may be the cause for the colour shift, but would need to see the setup to confirm. If you have presets with shots that have different colour temperatures (different light sources), you may need to set the preset to recall the white balance as well.

-Since the Canons have the option to ‘dial in’ the colour temperatures, it may be best if you set up the PivotCams first using either manual or preset WB, then try to match the Canons to them using that feature. You will need to frame all the cameras on a chart and try and match them using that. You don’t need to buy a professional chart, but can just print out a sheet with colour bars for this purpose to get them to match as close as possible. You may also need to adjust contrast, brightness and black levels if necessary.

-not sure about the ‘iris controls green’ as I have never seen that with the PIVOTcam - could you tell me where you saw that?

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Bruce

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Thanks so much for the response but I still have a few questions.
In your reply you said “– set the camera to ‘manual’ white balance and frame camera on a white card, then initiate a WB. That white balance value should be retained until overwritten.” Does ‘initiate a WB’ mean (using Dashboard) to click on ‘One Push’? Looks like there are 2 ‘One Push’ buttons on the Paint tab (one is below the Color buttons and if I select ‘Manual’ then that one is grayed out. And if I do click ‘One Push’, do I leave it there or click Manual again? Also, I get what Auto, Indoor, Outdoor, etc. mean but what does ‘ATW’ mean?

Since we have little to no ambient light in our worship space it looks like we won’t need to make big adjustments very often. That’s helpful.

We’ve found that auto-iris is definitely not particularly helpful. We have all LED stage lighting and as soon as I switch to auto-iris the entire frame is overly brightened to the point where the image is unusable. We’ve chosen to stick with manual iris and save the values in the presets. One question here-if people on stage wear lighter or brighter clothing would that/should that sometimes necessitate a change in the iris setting?

Regarding your response to my question about the ‘iris controls green’ it was driving me nuts trying to figure out where I saw that. I scoured through every Ross documentation I could find with no hits and finally concluded that I might be going crazy and perhaps made it up. Just today, however, I was reviewing some Ross tutorial videos and bingo! In the one titled “PIVOTCam U: PTZ Dashboard Panel Overview (DB101)” by Gina Thompson at about 24:15 you’ll hear her say “your green is going to be [controlled] through your luminance or through your iris. As you adjust your iris you’ll see that your colors may shift a little bit as you add more green.”

Thanks a bunch!

P.S. Regarding the color chart-I didn’t buy one, instead I made one 24" x 36" using the Pantone colors I researched and had it mounted on foamcore. See the file I attached.

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Hi Steve,

Here are some answers for you. I haven’t used a PivotCam in a while so needed to refresh myself with the user interface:

White Balance/Colour Matching

It seems that you have a controlled lighting situation. Your best bet may be to first try to set the white balance to the preset stored values for both Canon and PivotCams. ‘Indoor’ for the Pivot and ‘Tungsten’ for the Canon and see if that works.

Using manual will allow you to add/remove red and blue to try and match the colors but no auto White Balance can be done as I had previously suggested. You can also record those values and apply them if the settings get lost in the future.

One Push will allow you to use the white card as suggested. Select ‘One Push’ and use the ‘One Push WB’ button to initiate the WB.

When you do that, you will see the Red/Blue Gain values change. These values can be applied to the Manual WB settings as stated in the previous step.

Do the same with all the PivotCams and see if you like how they match.

I suggest setting a custom white balance for your Canon cameras using the white card at the same time as there’s a very good chance that this will be sufficient to match the cameras. Instructions for this can be found on pg. 76 of the Canon xf405 manual.

Auto Iris/ Manual Iris:

Looks like you’ve found your solution in setting the iris values manually in your presets. Brighter or white clothes can be a bit of a pain for setting iris levels as they may look a little over exposed. This may be worth experimenting with on your end to see what effects it has on your video output but overall should not be much of an issue.

Iris Controls Green:

After going through the manuals, I could not find anything that says that this is an option, although I believe this may be used in this way for other camera models (not PivotCam).

Colour Chart:

This will be fine for your purpose, and you saved yourself some $$$! I hope you don’t mind me using the image if I need it. :blush:

I can make myself available for a quick online meeting if you need any clarification.

Thanks,

Zane