Notes: How can I achieve beautiful colours when filming in nature?

How can I achieve beautiful colours in the video?

Which colours we see in the final video depends on many factors, some of which we can control and some of which we cannot.

What I cannot control:

1. the screen of the viewer

What I cannot control is on which device and with which screen someone watches our videos. So our videos should be recorded in such a way that they look good on as many devices as possible.

2. natural light and weather

For our channel ‘Classical Music and Nature’ we film exclusively with the available light, which means no lamps, reflectors or other aids to illuminate nature. (Not even for details)

Anyone who has followed our ‘Classical Music and Nature’ channel knows that we often film for a very long time so that we can then speed up the video in post-production. We often film ‘a battery’ long, which varies in length depending on the temperature, but it is about 1.5 hours in 4K. In 1.5 hours, the light situation can change massively. Clouds can roll in, the sun can set or rise, so how can we create the best possible colour results?

Rainbow videos in particular depend on a good white balance, otherwise they don't look nice... See below under white balance how to adjust it…

What I can control:

1.1. Colours in nature

I can't change the colour of flowers or make the grass green again if it has already turned brown in autumn. But I can make sure to film flowers in sunlight when their colours are shown off to their best advantage. And I can film the forest when it is particularly beautiful and lush in spring or summer.

Flower videos that contain strong colour contrasts or complementary colours are particularly beautiful.

The most common colour system consists of 12 colours based on the primary colours blue, yellow and red.

The colours opposite each other are called complementary colours. See further reading at the end of the article (in German).

Videos in which the clouds move quickly are also beautiful. Before I set up the camera, I watch for a while where the moving clouds pass the horizon the fastest and set up my camera in that direction. Sometimes this is not the most beautiful part of the natural scenery around me, but in the video, this area will look the most interesting.

Images with more contrast create greater depth and therefore look more interesting than images with less contrast. (Quote from Cullen Kelly, colourist)

1.2 Normal, slow motion or time lapse?

While we often film moving clouds for a long time so that our editor has enough material when she speeds up the videos as she likes, we often film water in slow motion. My husband likes 120fps (frames per second) and I like 240fps, especially when the sun shines on the water and makes it glisten.

Time lapse in post-production. This means that the video was filmed at 29.97fps and then sped up using the video editing software:

Lake glitter recorded at 120fps:

Torrent recorded at 240fps:

Seagull in a storm on Lake Brienz. The seagull kept drifting out of the frame so quickly that I had to film it at 240fps, which looks unintentionally comical:

1.3 Where I put my camera

I can control my position in the landscape. Am I standing in the shade or in the sun, or am I placing my camera (on the tripod) in the sun or in the shade? Am I pointing my camera towards the sun, at right angles to it, at a different angle to the sun or away from the sun? Am I pointing my camera up, at the sky, or down at the ground?

First of all, a warning about the sun:

Please note that we NEVER film with a telephoto lens into the sun, as this would destroy the camera's sensor. If someone wants to film directly into the sun, they do so at their own risk! Even with wide-angle lenses, damage to the sensor cannot be completely ruled out. Just wanted to mention that since we are talking about filming in nature…

Sunrise filmed with a wide-angle lens and variable ND filter:

For the next video, I used a wide-angle lens and placed the camera in the shade. There had to be enough fog, the sun had to shine through branches and not be covered by clouds to show the rays. Too little fog and they are not visible, too much fog and it is just grey... Where you place the camera is crucial...

All this will change how the colours look in the end. Polarisation filters for example, show the greatest effect when used at right angles (90°) to the sun... For this video, the grey card was used for the white balance and then a polarisation filter:

2. Which lenses and filters we use

If someone were to ask me what the most important piece of equipment is for filming, I would probably say good lenses.

Filming is nothing more than the passing of light through lenses onto a sensor and the recording of that light. Everything in between the camera's sensor and the light it captures has an important role to play.

What you can achieve with good lenses and good filters can hardly be achieved in post-processing or by other means. We own three old Russian lenses, affectionately called ‘Altglas’ (old glass), one of which in particular conjures up beautiful bokeh because it has more aperture blades than any of our modern Fujinon lenses. (Bokeh: the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image, such as the round halos seen when sunlight passes through out-of-focus branches in the background.)

Here you can see the angular shape of the ‘round’ circles in the background, taken with a Fujinon XF 30mm F2.8 R LM WR MACRO lens with 9 aperture blades (rounded diaphragm opening):

The number of aperture blades on a lens also determines how the ‘round lights’ in the background look. Lenses with 6 blades form hexagonal, honeycomb-like shapes. The more blades a lens has, the rounder the bokeh appears.

So you don't have to have the latest or most expensive lens to take great pictures.

Often older lenses are made with very good ‘glass’ (lenses). The only disadvantage of very old lenses: the autofocus cannot be used with ‘old glass’...

Many of the older Fujinon lenses take excellent pictures, so it is not necessary to buy the latest and most expensive... (I don't know about old lenses from other brands)

When it comes to variable ND filters, we have taken care to use filters that only darken and do not cause any colour changes...

3. White balance

Since we are filming over a long period of time, we need a manual setting for the white balance, which, once set, does not change.

The automatic white balance would correct the white balance with every passing cloud, and so our videos would become restless.

And that is exactly what happened in this video taken with a mobile phone. The white balance changed several times automatically just because the camera's angle to the sun changed.

In the next video, the white balance was not changed. It remains unchanged from the bright beginning to the dark end... This shows the play of colours more beautifully than if the automatic white balance interfered in between.

3.1 The grey card, or the white card

I was able to achieve the most natural colours and also the best results when the white balance was set manually using a white card or a grey card of 18% grey. With this method, the colours are very accurate and look natural. If the sky then changes colour, these colours will also look very natural. The camera seems to have the best results with a grey card of 18% grey (middle grey), as the sensor can apparently use 18% grey well. Please make sure to choose a grey card that does not reflect and has a grey tone of 18% grey if you are considering buying one…

3.2 White balance with Kelvin

Alternatively, you can determine the white balance using the Kelvin value. In my opinion, this is more difficult because you need to have good experience in judging lighting conditions if you don't have a light meter. However, if you want to create a warmer or colder mood with the white balance, this is possible with the Kelvin setting, which is not possible with the white/grey card.

If both the light and the camera have the same Kelvin value, the light appears white: it appears neutral, neither warm nor cold.

You can now artificially create warmer or colder lighting conditions:

Higher Kelvin for the light source than for the camera	‘colder light’
Same Kelvin setting for the camera and the light	neutral light
Lower Kelvin for the light source than for the camera	‘warmer light’

Example with 1000 Kelvin difference:

Light in Kelvin	3000	3000	6000	6000
Camera Kelvin	3000	4000	6000	7000
	white	clearly warmer	white	not in the same measure warmer

It should be noted that a change in the lower scale range brings about a greater change than in the upper scale range. So it does not change linearly.

Many different sunlight Kelvin scales can be found on the internet. Here is an example from the internet:

4. Using ND filters to avoid overexposure

Over- or underexposed videos are unusable... so we use variable ND filters to avoid overexposure.… and if the light permits, instead of ND filters, a polarising filter, which can be used to good effect to intensify the blue colour of the sky.

Lenses with a large aperture require an ND filter more quickly than lenses with a smaller aperture. To film a sunset, a lens with a large aperture is able to film for longer without an ND filter than a lens with a smaller aperture.

The challenge when filming for long periods with ND filters is that you can't adjust the ND filter in the middle of the video because that would be distracting for the viewer. So you have to weigh up whether the sun will come out and how much the filter will need to be adjusted, or if it will disappear completely, whether areas will suddenly be underexposed. That's why we often film in LOG format, see below, to avoid these problems.

Sunrise filmed with ND filter and wide-angle lens:

5. Using film simulations to emphasise colours

We film with Fujifilm cameras. My husband decided on this system many years ago and we stuck with it.

Fujifilm is known for its beautiful colours and has wonderful film simulations that bring out the colours very well. My favourites among the film simulations are ‘Reala ACE’ and ‘Velvia’.

Film simulations can be used when the difference between very light and very dark areas in the video is not too extreme, so the camera does not require such a wide dynamic range. Velvia in particular has a small dynamic range, which means that images are quickly over- or underexposed.

Link to the title image video filmed with the Fujifilm film simulation Velvia:

(Yes, the green of the forest was really very lush, so the video has not been ‘greened’ in post-processing.)

Better to underexpose colours than overexpose them. Saturated colours look more beautiful. (Quote from my husband Christian)

6. How can I take beautiful pictures in very, very high-contrast situations?

If it just doesn't work with normal camera settings without having anything overexposed or underexposed, what now?

Now it's getting a bit technical...

6.1 What our displays need – Rec.709-Gamma2.4 and Rec.709-colour space

So if you are filming normally with your mobile phone, you don't have to worry about these technical things, unless you also want to film/photograph in LOG with your mobile phone to master high-contrast situations.

To display colours correctly, end-user displays require a certain colour space. For whatever reason, the standard for high-definition (HD) displays and images is called ‘Rec.709’ , ‘BT.709’ and Gamma 2.4. or (ITU-R BT.709)

So if a video uses this Rec.709-Gamma2.4 and Rec.709 colour space, the colours will be displayed correctly on our digital displays. It is the colour space used by our mobile phones and monitors (with a few exceptions).

The film mode on mobile phones and the film simulation modes on digital cameras already use the Rec.709 gamma and Rec.709 colour space.

6.2 The LOG image profile – the solution for very, very high-contrast situations

If there are very bright and very dark areas in the image, parts of the image will be over- or underexposed in normal film simulations.

Log is short for logarithmic. A camera's log image profile uses a flatter type of gamma curve than a standard profile like Rec.709 and therefore has a wider dynamic range.

The camera's dynamic range can be fully utilised in the Log profile. This means that as much as the camera can record in terms of grey levels (from black to white) will be recorded, regardless of the subsequent ‘translation’ into display-compatible Rec.709.

Black Magic Design's camera app (only for newer models such as Samsung S23 or newer, iPhone 15 or newer) allows you to use LOG with your mobile phone. The app is free and has many professional settings. However, post-processing of the log-filmed material is necessary. You cannot use the low-contrast log shots without editing them. If this colour profile is used, the editing process becomes significantly more complex!

7. Using log profile to utilise the full dynamic range of the camera

We film in Fujifilm's LOG profile, which means F-Log, F-Log2 or F-Log2C.

The range of details in a LOG profile is much greater, which makes it possible to capture the details during filming and to preserve the details during video editing in post-production. It is only in the video editing software that the video is ‘translated’ from the log profile (in our case F-Log2 C) into Rec.709, without having to lose details in the shadows or highlights.

Other camera systems have different log profiles... (Sony: S-Log, S-Log3 Canon: C.Log, C.Log3, Nikon: N-Log etc.)

Our editor then uses the ‘colour management’ to ‘translate’ the videos into the ‘Rec.709’ colour standard. This means that the colour space is converted from the F-Log2C log profile to the Rec.709 colour standard in post-production.

This video was shot with F-Log2C and then converted to Rec.709:

If I had filmed in Rec.709 in a film simulation, either the fog and the snow illuminated by the sun would have been overexposed, or the dark areas in the fir trees would have turned uniformly black. The video would have lost a lot of colour detail. Furthermore, when underexposed shadows are brightened, they only become grey, the colour has been lost. And you can't get any more details out of the underexposed or overexposed areas in post-processing.

What do you do when you have to decide whether to sacrifice details in the shadows or in the highlights? It's better to compromise on the shadows. If shadows are underexposed, it's much less of a problem than when there are no more shades or details in the clouds, snow or fog.

If you look at the way great painters such as Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (known by his first name Rembrandt) have designed shadows, you will see that their shadows are not pure black or dark grey. The great painters have used countless colour shades in their shadow design.

8. ISO and shutter speed/aperture

8.1 ISO

The purpose of the ISO setting is to distribute the dynamic range. According to Fujifilm, ISO adjusts the camera's light sensitivity.

ISO is not designed to make an image lighter or darker, although it can be used to do so. When you change the ISO, you do so to change the structure in the image. (Quote from Cullen Kelly, colourist)

The ISO controls how much ‘noise’ will be visible in the image. So whenever possible, the choice of ISO value should be an artistic one rather than an exposure-related one.

8.2 Shutterspeed

With the shutter speed and the frame rate (frames per second, fps), you can adjust how time is perceived. We have already covered the frame rate, i.e. the frames per second, when we talked about normal speed and slow motion.

Other effects can be achieved by adjusting the shutter speed:

A slow shutter speed is used to make events appear as if they are ‘in a dream’. A fast shutter speed is often used in horror films. (Quote from Cullen Kelly, colourist)

8.3 Aperture

The aperture can be used to achieve a blurred background, and it can also be used to influence the brightness of the image.

It is not the job of the aperture to provide sufficient light, its job is to control the depth of field. (Quote from Cullen Kelly, colourist)

9. Colour grading

The last step in video editing where we can still influence the end result is colour grading.

“Colour grading” should not be confused with “colour management”.

In colour management, the recordings are ‘translated’ from the camera language into the display language of the end devices.

In colour grading, the aim is to give the already ‘translated’ material a ‘film look’, for example, and to design the colours in such a way that the beauty of the recordings is shown to its best advantage.

10. Conclusion

Filming in nature is both beautiful and challenging, as we cannot influence the most important thing, namely what our ‘protagonist’ is doing. And maybe that's why it's so enjoyable to share our footage with others.

I hope you found this information helpful,

and I wish my readers all the best and hope to see you soon,

Simone