blue lighting washing the stage. There was so much blue that our cameras' LCD monitors
only displayed blue-- what the camera was seeing differed from what the eye was seeing. The
scenes were blue, yes, but there were other colors too. Yet the LCD monitors were seeing just blue.
And it turns out that's what was recorded.
I have noticed this kind of disconnect before for brief periods in some shows, didn't know what it was,
and wasn't concerned. "Sure, the end of that scene had the red lights turned up so everything looks red.
What of it?" But while shooting this latest event I was wondering if my camera had a fault and needed
servicing. Both cameras reported the same thing.
The problem relates to the use of new LED light systems. LED's have strong single frequency
colors compared to older halogen systems where a broader range of colors are found. LEDs can
be blue whereas halogens are bluish. Cameras don't faithfully render mixes of pure LED colors.
Your eye sees LED red plus a bit of LED blue as magenta but the camera sees pink.
There really isn't much to be done about this. One idea is to underexpose the scene in the hopes of
getting more of the other colors, then adjust in post. Another idea is to desaturate in post. And what
I ended up doing was simply reducing the amount of blue in the video while retaining brightness.