Dull/Yellow/Dark footage on Canon 80D

[crittyhq]

I'm embarrassed to say I've had this camera for about 3 years now and still haven't gotten the hang of it. The first few years I was shooting (video only) in auto mode only but decided to try messing around with manual settings about a year ago because I wasn't happy with the quality of the auto footage.

The issue I'm having is that, even with proper lighting (I usually use 2 soft box lights from Amazon--20"x28" ESDDI Softbox lights 800W), my footage is coming out dull, yellow, and super high contrast (very dark in some areas). It takes hours of color correcting to get it looking somewhat presentable, and even then I’m not fully happy with it.

Here are my settings:

Frame rate 29.97

AWB-W

Shutter speed 60

Apperture: 3.5

ISO 160

Picture profile: neutral

Lens: 18-55mm lens that came with camera

What's most perplexing to me is that I have a Canon G7X from 2015 and I never have to worry about colors and white balance on it; the quality of the footage is slightly more grainy but overall it's much less headache to shoot with. Shooting the same scene in the kitchen would have looked much better (other than image quality/graininess) on the G7X with 0 fuss, just point and shoot. However, since I spent so much on the 80d I feel I need to try to figure this out. When I see footage other creators have shot on the 80D it looks so much better.

[stevet1]

crittyhq,

Try changing your picture profile to something else. like Standard or Faithful.

See if that makes a difference.

Steve Thomas

[crittyhq]

Thanks; I originally switched to Neutral to try to combat the yellows but I had been in Standard before. The Neutral definitely isn't helping with the color dullness. I'll give Faithful a try!

[rs-eos]

Could it be that it appears to be dull since you're most likely in the Rec709 color space? 8-bit 4:2:0 video for NTSC is not the best since brightness values are only allowed to go so high.   Having said that, I don't know if your particular equipment has any video capture modes that would allow for a wider dynamic range and say 10-bit color.   Or any color space beyond Rec 709 (e.g. P3).

[BurnUnit]

Can you reposition the camera, or change its angle slightly to reduce the glare on the upper door of the fridge? Maybe set up something off-camera to reduce the light reflecting off the upper door? For that matter, does the fridge even have to be in your scene?

Strangely, on my monitor at least, the lighting looks slightly cold to me. If your videos involve cooking and food it may not appear as appetizing as it would with warmer lighting. Experimenting with the White Balance settings may get you better results. Maybe a bit under-saturated as well, though there's not a very wide range of colors in these shots to work with.

Overall your exposure looks pretty good and the lighting seems fairly even throughout the scene, except for the glare off the upper fridge door.