Sorting out camera shading for a regional panel show

The call from Nadia

Nadia produces a weekly panel programme for a regional channel, recorded in a small studio with three cameras. Early in the autumn she rang us with a problem she described plainly: the pictures never quite matched. A guest in a blue jacket looked grey on camera one, slightly green on camera two and fine on camera three, and the vision engineer spent the first forty minutes of every recording shading by eye.

She was not asking for new cameras. Her crew already had decent equipment and a camera control unit that had been installed some time ago and rarely revisited. What she wanted was a recording day that began with the pictures already close, so the director could rehearse the show instead of waiting for the picture to settle.

I went to the studio with Tom Bradshaw, our camera systems technician, to see a normal recording day before suggesting anything. That meant watching the crew arrive, power up, line up and begin rehearsal, and noting where the time went.

What we found on the studio floor

The cameras were of two slightly different generations, and their stored settings had drifted apart over months of small adjustments. Nobody had written down a reference state, so each recording day began from whatever the previous day had left behind. Black levels differed, the gamma settings were not the same on all three, and one camera still carried a colour matrix that had been tweaked for a one-off drama insert.

The control surface itself was sound, but the cabling to it was a mix of lengths and ageing connectors, and two remote heads responded unevenly because of a loose control line. None of this was dramatic. Each fault was small, but together they made the shading job feel endless and the picture unpredictable.

We also noticed that the lighting levels on the guests varied with how the set had been dressed, which made any fixed camera setting look wrong from one week to the next.

• Stored camera settings had drifted apart with no written reference
• One camera carried a leftover colour matrix from a past job
• A loose control line made one remote head respond unevenly

Setting a baseline before shading

Our first step was not to shade anything. We reset all three cameras to a common starting state, checked each against a chart under the studio's working light, and saved that state on the control unit as a named reference. From then on, shading would mean small corrections from a known point rather than a fresh search every time.

Tom replaced the worn control cabling and re-seated the connector on the remote head that had been misbehaving, then checked pan and tilt response across the full range at slow and fast speeds. We matched the two older cameras to the newer one rather than the other way round, since the newest unit had the cleanest response and gave the crew a sensible target.

We kept the work inside two working days and recorded a full rehearsal in between, so Nadia's crew could judge the change on their own material and not on test charts alone.

A routine the crew could keep

A setup that only we understand would have been a poor result, so the last part of the visit was a short written routine for the crew. It lists the order of checks before rehearsal: recall the reference, confirm the chart on each camera, check the heads, then trim only what the set lighting demands. It fits on a single page and sits next to the control surface.

We walked the vision engineer through it twice and let him run it without us on the second day. He changed two of our proposed steps, moving the head check earlier because it was quicker to do while cameras were still warming up, and that is how the routine now reads.

We also agreed on a simple rule about changing the reference. Anyone may shade for the day, but the saved baseline changes only when a person is named to approve it and the date is noted.

How the next recording went

Nadia told us afterwards that the first recording under the new routine began with all three cameras within easy reach of each other. The guest in the blue jacket looked like a guest in a blue jacket on every angle, and shading took a few minutes of trimming instead of most of the morning.

She was careful not to overstate it. Lighting changes on the set still call for small adjustments, and a poorly dressed guest can still upset a picture. But the director now spends the early part of the day on camera moves and timing, which was the point of calling us in the first place.

A month on, the crew had updated the reference once, after a lamp replacement changed the colour of the key light, and logged it as the routine asks.

What other teams can take from it

Nadia's case is ordinary, which is why it is worth telling. Most multi-camera productions do not suffer from a lack of equipment but from the absence of an agreed, recorded starting point. Without one, every recording day repeats the same search and the crew treats the delay as normal.

If your pictures keep disagreeing, begin by asking whether anyone can say what the correct state of each camera is. If nobody can, a reference set, a short routine and a check of the cables and heads will usually do more than a purchase. When that is not enough, a visit to watch a real recording day shows where the time is lost.

• Save a named reference state for every camera
• Check cabling and heads before blaming the cameras
• Write the routine down and let the crew edit it

A camera control system earns its place when the crew trusts the starting point. Nadia's studio did not need new kit, only a recorded baseline, sound cabling and a routine the vision engineer helped write. If your recording days start with a long argument between cameras, we are glad to come and watch one before suggesting anything. You can reach us through the contact page.