I have had my 2 Z5s for a while, and while the picture between the 2 cameras always seemed a bit off even though every setting was completely identical, I just assumed this was caused by different angles in the cameras for my shoots. For the most part, I was able to fix this in post to at least be watchable.
After I did a test shoot for a new TV show, everything seemed to be much more out of whack. I had similar angles, yet the the color matching between the 2 cameras was pretty bad. The browns where especially bad, and I am having a heck of a time trying to balance everything in post.
Both cameras have all the exact same settings. I have tried resetting it to factory defaults, and then reloading a profile saved to a memory stick and transferred the exact same profile to the other camera.
This morning I did a controlled test to see exactly what was going on. I printed out a SMPTE color bar chart and put it on the wall. I then placed each camera one at a time and tried a few test shots.
First I started with -3db gain. Most the colors seemed to match pretty well, but if you look at the blacks, one of them has a bit of a red tinge and the other has a bit of a green tinge to it (compared to the other camera). As I added gain, ALL the colors seemed to becomre more and more different. I know I will never shoot anything with 21db gain if I can ever help it, but this shows what is going on with my camera.
I know there are cameras with Black Balance, but the Z5U does not have that option as far as I can tell, and I am not even sure if that is the issue.
It is quite irritating that I have 2 exact same pro cameras that I paid a pretty hefty chunk of $ for, with every single setting set identical, but yet I still wrestle with color matching. This makes it especially difficult to edit a multi camera shoot as I cannot just universally lay down some color correction and color curve changes to taste. I know there will always be some tweaking here and there between shots but having to go to each and every shot and re-adjust it is painfully time consuming. Vegas removes all previous effects added to a track when you combine for multi camera editing , and from experience if you re separate the tracks afterwards, the transitions don't seem to work 100% correctly if there are some color correction or curve changes.
Here is the video I shot. I put a mask of the 2nd camera in the middle - you should be able to tell which is which!
NOTE: Even though I have the later shots labled as color corrected, it was VERY basic - and not fully tweaked. I just used the dropper tool from Vegas to pinpoint the white, the grey and the black.
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