How to Colour Correct Your Ski Footage
Shooting ski videos in high-altitude environments is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you’ve got crisp air and incredible landscapes; on the other, you’re dealing with blinding snow reflections, harsh sky glare, and shadows that love to turn bright blue.
If you want your footage to look crisp and realistic—rather than flat, washed out, or strangely tinted—you need a solid color correction workflow. In the video above, I break down my step-by-step process for getting your ski clips looking crisp, natural, and properly balanced.
Step 1: Hit the Basics In-Camera
Before you even open your editing suite, set yourself up for success on the mountain:
Lock Your White Balance: Avoid leaving your white balance on Auto. If the sun is out, I usually set my Sony FX3 straight to the built-in Daylight preset. Keeping it fixed across all your clips keeps your color baseline predictable. You can also use a gray card to set it manually.
Expose Your Log Profile Properly: When I’m shooting S-Log3, I expose bang on in the middle of the waveform—treating it just like I would a still photograph.
Step 2: The Color Correction Workflow
Once you’re back at your desk and ready to edit, follow this sequence:
Apply a Log to Rec.709 Conversion LUT: Start by applying an official manufacturer conversion LUT directly to your clip in the browser (under the extended info tab in Final Cut, for example). This brings your flat log profile into a standard color space.
Dial In Exposure (Zone System): Use the Ansel Adams zone system to set your luminosity levels. Your snow should sit around 70% to 85%, and your shadows around 20% to 25%. Keep the whole signal between 0 and 100 on your waveform so you don’t blow out highlights or crush shadow detail.
Add Saturation: For S-Log3, bringing saturation up by roughly 15% to 20% usually hits the sweet spot. Go easy here—oversaturated snow quickly looks ugly.
Fix White Balance: Check your RGB parade. Your red, green, and blue levels at the top of the scope should sit fairly level so your whites stay white. Keep in mind that snow naturally reflects ambient light, so it might carry subtle blue or warm tones depending on the time of day.
Clean Up Blacks & Shadows: Blue sky reflecting on white snow almost always introduces a heavy blue cast into your shadows. Use the bottom end of your RGB parade to pull those blacks into line, or use a Luma vs. Saturation curve to desaturate the extreme low and high ends.
Check Skin Tones: Isolate skin using a quick mask if needed, and check it on your vectorscope. Ensure your skin tones sit cleanly along the indicator line between red and yellow.
Pitfalls to Watch Out For
Excessive Blue in the Shadows: Leaving sky reflections unchecked.
Yellow Highlights: Overcompensating white balance until the snow looks warm and dirty.
Flat Contrast: Forgetting to push contrast far enough, leaving your shot looking like raw log footage.
Watch the full video above to see these adjustments applied step-by-step in real time, and check out my other bog posts where I look at colour grading ski footage!