What is False Color? - Cinematography Basics

What is False Color?

In this video, we take a look at what is False Color. False Color is one of my favourite tools to help me get the correct exposure for my shots.

In this video, we're taking a look at False colour and how you can use it to get the exposure right for your shot, every time.

The waveform scope and false colour are by far my favourite ways of measuring correct exposure. A light meter is also fantastic to have as well, but personally, I often don't use one as I'm a solo operator the majority of the time and I find working off my monitor to be a much faster workflow when adjusting lighting.

I'm using a SmallHD Focus for these examples but you can find the false-colour tool on the majority of reference monitors and it's also built into some cameras. There are third party firmware upgrades available for certain cameras as well, although I can't personally recommend any.

False colour is a tool that basically gives you a visual way of displaying the different exposure values of your image.

The great thing about it, is that you can customise it to suit your needs, unlike a waveform or RGB parade.

The out of the box false colour will look slightly different depending on what system you are using but for the most part; the orange and red areas will be where your image is hot and close to clipping at the 100 IRE point. The blue and purple areas are your shadows towards the 0 IRE point. The green and grey areas fall in between this.

As I mentioned this, will be slightly different depending on what you are using.

IRE stands for Institute of Radio Engineers for those of you that are interested but that isn't really important though, what is important is that you understand a 5 IRE value is roughly equivalent to 1 half stop, a 10 IRE value is 1 whole stop. This will help you a great deal when working with false colour and working out the contrast ratios for your shots.

I'm using a Sony A7iii and shooting in S-Log2, so I have my false colour setup for this. When working with a Log or Raw format, it's important to make sure when you are viewing your false colour, you are doing so with a monitor LUT. I mostly just use the standard Slog to Rec.709 conversion LUT, however, you can use whatever best suits your need. Sometimes I like to use a custom LUT that brings down the exposure and contrast so that I know I have extra room in post.

When working off a reference monitor it's important that it is calibrated, so that you know what you are seeing is correct. I'll be putting out another video soon on how to do this, so if you're interested in that, make sure to subscribe if you haven't already so that you are notified when it comes out.

Let's take a look at false colour in action to give you some examples of how it can be used to monitor your exposure.

For this setup, I'm using my trusted X-rite video checker to help me demonstrate where the different exposure values are sitting.

At the moment, I've got this shot exposed for middle grey.

As you can see, when viewing through false colour, this is displayed as green/grey.

If I overexpose the shot, you can see how certain areas start to move to the orange-red area. If I underexpose the shot, there will be more purple/blue areas displayed on the false colour monitor.

I've got my false colour setup to give me a safety net of roughly 10 IRE or a whole stop in the highlights and 5 IRE or half a stop in the shadows. This lets me know I've got some room in post to bring back some of the highlights if needed or raise the shadows a bit. I don't like to push this too much with 8-bit footage but it's good to have a bit of wiggle room just in case.

For this second example, let's say I want to keep the correct exposure on my subject but let the background fall to shadow. Instead of adjusting my exposure in camera, I'll have to adjust my lights for this.

Now you can see how the false colour of the background area has changed to purple/blue and the main subject has remained the same.

False colour is great for monitoring those areas you want to underexposure and fall to shadow. It makes it so easy to tweak your light settings to dial in the ratios you are going for.