This will be a short review – not least because I’m really enthusiastic about the tool, which is admittedly rare.
Do you really need it?
After the initial praise, I have to say that I doubt whether the Checkr will be used as much as it deserves. I have referred to the use of colour charts in many workshops – but I have never seen it used in any production myself, at least none that I have been involved in. Especially if you colour correct yourself and don’t really need it – except when the tools in Resolve don’t always work as far as Resolve’s automatic recognition procedure is concerned. If you wanted to counteract this – at least until now – you had to use colour charts manually, but this was only time-saving to a limited extent and usually quite inconvenient. Unhandy, sensitive and not really standardised. This has changed with the new Checkr video. And before anyone says anything: that’s not a spelling mistake “Checkr Video” is the name Datacolor uses.
There are now also so many different colour checker boards that it can be tedious for the colour grader to select the right module in Resolve using the auto-recognition function. But with the Spyder colour checker, this can be done manually using waveforms and vectorscopes and with any software that has halfway usable grading tools, including Media Composer, Premiere, Final Cut, etc.
If you do this “by hand”, you can see why the purchase pays for itself very quickly.
Use in front of the camera
Enough adulation, how do you use it? Ideally, we hold it in the main light source or next to the face; depending on the image section, it can also be held under the face (pro tip: be careful, the head casts shadows). It is important to say this loudly (and repeatedly) to anyone who touches a colour chart: Do not touch the colour fields themselves with your fingers, as the slightly acidic skin grease destroys the colours.
Once you have the colour chart in the picture, slowly wiggle it vertically and horizontally. This not only looks funny, but above all ensures that the shiny black surface is at least once in the picture without reflection, thus providing maximum black for contrast. If you’re shooting with studio lighting: put it on a tripod. And if you have to employ an extra useless assistant (someone’s nephew)..
Ideally, we should also not overexpose (or temporarily reduce the aperture when exposing high key). It is also important to mark the shot as a separate clip and make sure that these clips have been exposed once for each lighting situation for all cameras. You can give this to your colourist as a separate collection and save a lot of time when colour-matching very different cameras.
Use in post
The colour warper in Resolve is still quite new and is best suited for colour matching. In all other programmes that do not have one, the Hue vs. Hue and also the Hue vs. Sat controls should be used. However, the latter require more time (especially in Final Cut or Premiere) than the same tools in Resolve. The colour warper is also available as a plugin from Nobe – is.gd/color_remap – it’s really worth the money and we’ve been fans of it for years. If you want to know exactly what’s in the latest version, you can take a look at Uli Plank’s text from page 70 onwards. And to be fair: The 3D LUT Creator by Oleg Sharonov was the first to bring these functions “Conveniently” to the people – See DP 19:03, or in full text here: is.gd/dp_3dlc
up and down, turning each colour in the colour wheel to the right or left, while checking
in the vectorscope that they end up in the right field.
Colour grading
Before we do anything with the frames, it is necessary to optimise lift, gamma and gain according to waveform. Colorwarper is then the tool of choice – in comparison, with Hue vs. Hue and Hue vs. Sat you have to use two different tools one after the other and alternately, where you also have to set the colour vector points first, which is particularly time-consuming in Final Cut.
In the colour warper, you can work directly and can already touch the vectors. Only if too many vectors were previously preset, then you should reduce them to six.
Conclusion
The Checkr belongs around the neck of every cameraman or AC or VFX supervisor. And as soon as several cameras of different types are involved, it generally does no harm even with VFX shots if no others are used!
But one more tip: If the part is regularly used outdoors, then you should get a new one every year or every two years (the Checkr costs around 150 euros), because these colours also fade over time, especially due to UV radiation in the sun!
