So the technicolor cinestyle is now available. You can dowload it here-

CineStyle Downloads, CineStyle, Digital Printer Lights - Technicolor (http://www.technicolor.com/en/hi/cinema/filmmaking/digital-printer-lights/cinestyle/cinestyle-downloads)

Aside from the tests that I've seen elsewhere what my own testing has shown me is that the picture style retains much more detail around highlight areas that either blownout or close to it. The following is a video and couple of cropped frames from it. They compare the cinestyle with the neutral profile. In both cases the user defined settings were 0, -4, 0, 0. In the second shot (see stills) parts of the post on the left hand side of the frame were blowing out, but you'll notice with the cinestyle there is much more detail around those blownout areas. Its obviously better if you click through to vimeo to watch this in HD.

Technicolor Cinestyle vs Neutral on Vimeo

Your test actually shows vastly improved shadow detail more than improved highlight, which is what I'm finding with this new low-contrast picture style.

Thanks for this. It's exciting to see continued support for the 5D in what is now an established 5D ecology. I'll be trying this on a project next week.

J.

Thanks for posting. Seems to be a large improvement. The blacks are often quite crushed with this camera and it looks like the new style really helps in this area.

I'm planning on trying this out.

I have questions too, will have to search more but thought of asking here too.

I found myself having a hard time finding focus now that I use the the neutral super flat settings. I don;t have focus aids..so only using the LCD...but man...sometimes is just to dificult for run and gun. Any ideas?

also..this LUT thing..will you all use it or just go straight to grade from scratch? Can this LUT be used in FCP?

Also..I'll like is this example above..how will you grade the shots and how diferent they'll be from the neutral.... to me that neutral looks very contrasty already..ummm.

thanks for the test.

Whats everyone's settings to get it back to something like canon's standard. I was testing out saturation of 10 and contrast of 17 in after effects.

The other picture styles now all look over-saturated with too much contrast compared to the Technicolor CineStyle. I quite like this look straight out of the camera as it has a sort of cool pastel tone however it is not meant to be used like that. The idea is to use the provided LUT to put back the colour & contrast while retaining detail in the shadows & highlights.

I am not sure that I am using LUT Buddy (the FCP plugin) correctly however as FCP crashes if you just import & apply the supplied LUT. If you convert it to 3D 32-bit then export & re-import then it doesn't crash but does wind up with an saturated contrasty image pretty much like all the other picture styles.

The render times when applying the LUT are pretty horrendous too. Around 4-5 minutes for a 20 second clip on my 2.5GHz 2008 MBP.

I found myself having a hard time finding focus now that I use the the neutral super flat settings. I don;t have focus aids..so only using the LCD...but man...sometimes is just to dificult for run and gun. Any ideas?

Yes this seems to be the case. The lack of contrast with these picture styles will make focusing more difficult.

also..this LUT thing..will you all use it or just go straight to grade from scratch? Can this LUT be used in FCP?

From what I've read the LUT doesn't really have any advantages for grading over creating your own curves profile. I don't plan to use it.


Also..I'll like is this example above..how will you grade the shots and how diferent they'll be from the neutral.... to me that neutral looks very contrasty already..ummm.
thanks for the test.

Yes it is constrasty by comparison. This was however shot in full afternoon sunlight, in situations that don't have as much variation between the shadows and highlights, neutral with -4 contrast can appear quite flat. In terms of grading one of the strengths of this profile that I see is working with tools like Colorista II which has power masks so that you can selectively "relight" a scene. So in the footage posted above you may not want to keep the extra shadow information across the entire frame but you might want to hold on to the moss under the tree while you push some of the other shadow areas towards black.

I agree that the LUT isn't technically required. Any picture style will provide 8-bits of information on the card. The key point is to decode this properly. In other words, don't use Quicktime or any NLE that relies on QT for its h.264 decoding. All you need to do is decode the 8-bits properly into a 16-bit or 32-bit NLE at which time you perform grading. For even better results, insert a noise reduction plugin right before your color corrector as it can smooth out gradients and provide an output with more than 8-bit resolution. (Yes, the resolution is "fake", but can work really well on smooth surfaces like the sky or a balloon.)

My workflow is to transcode to Cineform for my initial edit. Once I know which clips I will use, I process the original MOVs in AE in a deep-bit mode with NeatVideo and Colorista II. I render the result to Cineform and replace my initial Cineform files. Open up the NLE and your edited footage is now graded. Continue editing, compositing, and re-grading to taste. Render a final Cineform master. Encode to your delivery formats and distribute.

I can't wait to try Cinestyle on a real project!

Here's a question for everyone: I have often found that while these cameras have that "crushed blacks" look to them, the footage will easily open up in color correction to where it "should be" without any penalty (macroblocking or noise). I know people SAY that will happen, but my experience is otherwise. I've often wondered if it's one of those weird Quicktime quirks. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I agree with the "where it should be" thing. If you like the look right out of the camera with a higher contrast picture style, you're golden. You don't need to apply additional gain adjustments, and it looks nice. Often, I desaturate the overall picture and tint the highs (orange) and lows (teal). As long as I didn't need to change the s-curve much, it's all good.

I think the main thing about shooting flat is that you have some elbow room if the exposure wasn't spot on. It should also work well when shooting high contrast scenes, like when backlit on an overcast day.

Regarding Quicktime, that's another issue. It's 8-bits in and 8-bits out. Because it applies its own gamma curve, you end up getting "holes" and "doubles" as you go up the scale, rather than 256 unique levels. You could shoot a smooth monochrome wash from dark to light that looks good out of the camera, but Quicktime will add some "teeth" that make it impossible to show such an image smoothly. And, because the errors get baked in at 8-bits, you can never get that information back again.

If QT worked in 16-bits - or even just 10-bits - one could recover the detail. And it doesn't just affect blacks or whites. It causes errors across the range.

Back when the 5D2 first shipped, QT was even worse. It would just clip the data below 16 and above 235. And then it would stretch the results with a funny gamma curve from 0-255. It didn't just crush the blacks, it took a jackhammer to them!

It's stuff like this that gives 8-bit video a bad name. Process it properly and it's surprisingly good. Process it badly, and it can look just terrible. Of course, capturing more bits is preferred, but 8-bits shot, exposed, and processed well can deliver the goods.

Here's a question for everyone: I have often found that while these cameras have that "crushed blacks" look to them, the footage will easily open up in color correction to where it "should be" without any penalty (macroblocking or noise). I know people SAY that will happen, but my experience is otherwise. I've often wondered if it's one of those weird Quicktime quirks. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Charles:

This is one of the reasons I use Cinform. Originally, when 5D first came out, we were seeing loss of detail at both ends. I am a PC user, but Cineform appears to me to open up things from the initial Quicktime clipping range. This was Cineforms claim to fame early on in the DSLR revolution. Now I had heard Quicktime had done some work in that area, but it still appears to be the same for me. It would seem to me that the Canon codec in camera is what is the issue, and conversion that specifically corrects that is what is needed.


To make things more complex, when I edit the Cineform DSLR footage in Vegas Pro, I have to select the Vegas Preveiw monitor color correction filter to "studio RGB to computer RGB" in order to get a reasonable approximation for eyeballing purposes as to what the ultimate render will be.... Then you have to turn that off at render time.

As to Technicolor Picture Style, I had previously been shooting a lot of stuff iwth Superflat. Later, I was convinced by posters here that super flat was creating to much noise. On recomendations, I went to neutral and turned down the sharpness, an color and contrast settings.

I have been looking at the Technicolor now, and I think it is going to be great for getting whatever dynamic range is in the camera. Couple that with false colors from Anthony Newmans version of Magic Lantern, or false colors in my Marshall monitor, and, from testing I have done, I think it I wlll be able to get some great footage in high contrast situations (bright daylight to shadow) that will react well to color correction.

My workflow is to transcode to Cineform for my initial edit. Once I know which clips I will use, I process the original MOVs in AE in a deep-bit mode with NeatVideo and Colorista II. I render the result to Cineform and replace my initial Cineform files. Open up the NLE and your edited footage is now graded. Continue editing, compositing, and re-grading to taste. Render a final Cineform master. Encode to your delivery formats and distribute.

I can't wait to try Cinestyle on a real project!

John:

Have you been successfull in getting the technicolor .lut to work in Cineform's FirstLight if you use. When I first downloaded the .lut, I just clicked on it, and it looks like Cineform automatically loaded it to the list of .luts available in FirstLight. However, in trying to apply it to a Cineform transcoded file, it was nothing but red.

For those of you that don't know Firstlight, this is a cool feature of Neo Cineform, in which you can instantaneously treat your footage to fixed .luts, or add a plethora of adjustments, without damaging original footage. That treatment can be done and will instantaneously transfer to the project you are working on in NLE.

Chris, I've got NeoScene. I don't believe that it has the LUT feature.

Thats right, it does not....

I confirmed the lut does work in Color Finesse 3 in After Effects.

Hey guys, few novice type questions if you please:

1. Shot with it in a dark basement. Clearly it helps in bright daylight, but I'm not sure you should use something like this for dark conditions - or am I way off base?

2. Much more difficult to focus - I thought I broke my lens at first. Any way to avoid this (other then having a different style programed in)?

3. If you're happy with the basic image coming from the camera shot with "normal" styles, should you still consider using a super-flat style?

Thanks -

I have often found that while these cameras have that "crushed blacks" look to them, the footage will easily open up in color correction to where it "should be" without any penalty (macroblocking or noise). I know people SAY that will happen, but my experience is otherwise.

I agree and I'm not sure what is the point of shooting low contrast and then crushing back the blacks in post. You are always better off getting your look in camera or optically. If your intention of shooting low contrast is to crush the blacks in post, then you will actually decrease the picture quality than if you had just shot with crushed blacks from the beginning.

Either underexpose to save highlights or overexpose to save shadows. I frequently shoot a stop under with these cameras because the shadow detail is recoverable but the highlights are not.

I agree that the LUT isn't technically required. Any picture style will provide 8-bits of information on the card. The key point is to decode this properly. In other words, don't use Quicktime or any NLE that relies on QT for its h.264 decoding. All you need to do is decode the 8-bits properly into a 16-bit or 32-bit NLE at which time you perform grading. For even better results, insert a noise reduction plugin right before your color corrector as it can smooth out gradients and provide an output with more than 8-bit resolution. (Yes, the resolution is "fake", but can work really well on smooth surfaces like the sky or a balloon.)

My workflow is to transcode to Cineform for my initial edit. Once I know which clips I will use, I process the original MOVs in AE in a deep-bit mode with NeatVideo and Colorista II. I render the result to Cineform and replace my initial Cineform files. Open up the NLE and your edited footage is now graded. Continue editing, compositing, and re-grading to taste. Render a final Cineform master. Encode to your delivery formats and distribute.

I can't wait to try Cinestyle on a real project!John, how long does it take you to process a minute of video with this workflow? I find NeatVideo really slow to render & only use it when I really need to rescue some noisy video. The idea of applying it to everything doesn't seem practical.

Hello Chris,

I am getting that same problem loading the Technicolour s-curve LUT into Cineform's Firstlight and getting just red when I apply the LUT. I have reported this to Cineform Support and they are testing it out.

Leo

John, how long does it take you to process a minute of video with this workflow? I find NeatVideo really slow to render & only use it when I really need to rescue some noisy video. The idea of applying it to everything doesn't seem practical.

You're right. It's slow. I don't use this on fast turnaround stuff or stuff that doesn't need strong grading. In fact, I wouldn't use Cinestyle for fast turnaround, natural looking stuff either. Just get it close in the camera, transcode to Cineform, adjust levels when needed for matching, add a bit of sharpening, and deliver.

But when I want strong grading and best results, I go with the MOV -> NR-> 16-bits -> Colorista II -> Cineform route.

Speed is one of the reasons that I do a rough edit first. I only correct the footage that is used in the final project - not everything that is shot.

Leo, thanks. Can you PM or post if you hear of a resolution.

Jad: My view: Red and all the other major digital film cameras shoot a low contrast image to extend the camera latitude. This is well known. All the camera is doing when you increase saturation, contrast, or sharpness in the camera is locking in potentially image damaging treatment, that will make color color correction more difficult.

Jon:

This is the great thing about Firstlight, and the applications of .luts. You should try the Cineform trial of Neo.

Work flow is simple. Shoot your footage in Technicolor Cinestyle, or other low contrast style. Transcode your footage to Cineform as you normally would. Take all of your footage into Firstlight, and process it to conform to your basic film requirements. .luts are there to give treatments to meet certain film stocks. You can adjust any number of factors and create your own .lut. There is no rendering, the change to each file treated is instantaneous. Then you go to your editor and edit as normal. If you want to change what you did in First Light, you can have it running in background, and synch it to your editor.

I'm not sure that a LUT workflow would work in all cases. In general, I want to first adjust each image to correct for exposure differences and then perform any shaping after that. A LUT would only work well where the exposure is what you want up front.

Also, can the LUT be customized to the level of true grading? Often, I want to push my darker colors towards blue/teal/green and the lighter colors toward yellow/orange/red. And I usually want to do that after any re-lighting (push faces, pull backgrounds).

For fast turnaround, natural stuff, a LUT sounds great. For cinematic work where you finesse each image, I don't see the benefit - unless it can be applied at the end of the chain and unless the tools allow it to be designed to bend the darks toward one color and the lights toward another.

Work flow is simple. Shoot your footage in Technicolor Cinestyle, or other low contrast style. Transcode your footage to Cineform as you normally would. Take all of your footage into Firstlight, and process it to conform to your basic film requirements. .luts are there to give treatments to meet certain film stocks. You can adjust any number of factors and create your own .lut. There is no rendering, the change to each file treated is instantaneous. Then you go to your editor and edit as normal. If you want to change what you did in First Light, you can have it running in background, and synch it to your editor.


Chris... i never research this before..but i'm curious now. I'll look into it but would like to ask you first. Can FCP work with cineform files? what do they make avi?

I'm reading of all the destructive way that FCP deals with 8bit footage and wish I knew more about it before to find a better route. I've been using Prores and for easy to do. I would change to PP now but I'm thinking that the new FCX is fixing most of the important issues now and adding some good ones..so I'm stick with it.

meanwhile..wondering if using cineform in FCP is a good way to go...or stay with my proRes.

Thanks

also..to answer some previews question.

the real advantage to shoot with cinestyle is first to get a better H.264 compresion out of the camera...and then also get more dinamic range.....

i read it somewhere and it makes sense.

will quote him but can find him now...

I don't use Macs, but Cineform does have a MaC Version, from their site:

"With versions for both Windows and Mac, CineForm’s Neo delivers a real-time digital intermediate workflow, even up to 4K spatial resolution, that is compatible with most NLEs — including from Adobe, Apple, Avid, and Sony — enabling cross-platform compatibility for 2D and 3D editing and effects applications that has never before existed. A CineForm DI workflow begins with the underlying CineForm Intermediate compression acclaimed for its high visual fidelity, and which is used routinely as the mastering format for 2D and 3D film, televison, and archive workflows. "

Cineform Neo4K (http://www.cineform.com/neo4k/)

GoPro bought out Cineform, and now Changed name from Neo4k to straight Neo. For $ 299 you apparently get all features that originally cost $500. For Jon and others, should be an upgrade from NeoScene too.

Get magic bullets lut buddy:
Red Giant Software: Downloads - Free Products Download Form (http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/downloads/free-products/)

I'm going to run more test tonight, but still seemed to be some grey in skin tones.

For fast turnaround, natural stuff, a LUT sounds great. For cinematic work where you finesse each image, I don't see the benefit - unless it can be applied at the end of the chain and unless the tools allow it to be designed to bend the darks toward one color and the lights toward another.

My impression was always that LUTs are designed to allow you to shoot a flat image then edit proxies with the LUT applied so that you aren't cutting with muddy grey footage - then the colorist can go back and do a proper grade from the log-encoded source (possibly using the LUT as a starting point). From that standpoint the First Light workflow makes sense, in that it's not baking in a change to your footage, you can cut with something approximating the final look but still retain plenty of info for your grade. But if the workflow is to shoot technicolor, then render everything through a LUT and end up with contrasty footage you might as well just shoot that way in the first place.

Evan, that makes sense. I could use that on my first "cuts only" pass, then I would still bring the MOVs into AE and apply the magic. I would encode from AE to Cineform without any processing.

Still, I could also apply an effect to the master output of the NLE for quick cuts. I guess it's a tradeoff between CPU load and wallet load, since I don't own Neo. ;)

First, as it was expleained to me, the benefit of appling change to the Cineform format is that it is done in 10 bit color space.

Second, you can apply a film look, and then do your adjustment in the NLE. And yes you can change the .lut in post if you want.

Third, the footage on the NLE timeline is affected instantaneously, and you can have the NLE open to monitor changes instantaneously.

By the way, I am not a Cineform shill. But I think it does a great job, and some here are not giving good information about Firstlight does, and you should really find out more about it. Here is a video that explains a bit.

Introduction to FirstLight (part 1) - VIDEO TUTORIAL : cineform support (http://support.cineform.com/entries/20000263-introduction-to-firstlight-part-1-video-tutorial)

I did this test with my Canon 5D and Canon T2i, comparing, and using CIneform. I used a .lut in Cineform and also added 50% sharpening in post.

Technicolor Cinestyle tests T2i v. Canon 5D Mark II on Vimeo

Note that David Newman has now posted a Cinestyle .look file for download. It looks pretty good. Download it here: http://j.mp/iSidLT

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Technicolor Profile / 5D Mark II on Vimeo

Chris and Olivier,

Nice footage. It certainly looks like there is a lot of dynamic range with Cinestyle. I'm not seeing a lot of aliasing in either clip. Is Cinestyle helping with that or is that the result of turning down the sharpening in camera?

Pat

Hey Pat:

The roofs on the homes across street are exhibiting moire, which is, in my understanding, a type of aliasing. If you down load my uploaded files, it will show up better than what has been rendered by Vimeo...

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Why wouldn't you- except in those situation where no post grading is going to be done. My understanding of the Technicolor Cinestyle Picturestyle is it opens up your file closest of any Picture Profile to actual raw images--- as close as what can be attained with the codec.

What we fail to remember sometime, is that anything we add on in the camera (saturation, sharpness, contras, etc.) can be added in post, probably with a greater degree of control, and with better results. In my case, I convert the file to Cineform which actually lets you work in (if their claims are accepted) 10 bit color space. And with use of Firstlight, I can instantaneously apply what I might have wanted in the camera in a simple batch process to the original footage, but with much greater degree of control.

Hi Chris,

Since you need to grade every shot I wouldn't use the profile for less expensive projects. Personally I would but sometimes the customer doesn't have the budget.

Here's a question for everyone: I have often found that while these cameras have that "crushed blacks" look to them, the footage will easily open up in color correction to where it "should be" without any penalty (macroblocking or noise). I know people SAY that will happen, but my experience is otherwise. I've often wondered if it's one of those weird Quicktime quirks. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Hehe, i think your colour correction workflow is vastly different...in quality of workflow! than most here :)

Up until now I've been working mostly with a slightly burnt in camera color + grading for natural to slightly exaggerated looks and its been fine, but for more extreme pushes of colour i do find it helps to desaturate a bit. but I'll add that i do get my burnt in camera looks first and then desaturate a bit if needed for post.

something else i noticed with respect to the inherent 5D/7D quirks, such as moire or blocking is they seem to disappear more the bigger the screen gets.

I have a little 14 inch jvc crt pro monitor that shows most flaws quite easily, that in the beginning when using the 7D it was driving me crazy when editing/colour correcting - but then i found when even on a 25 to 30 inch screen most of the minor to medium issues were gone, for the most part - on a 50 or 60 inch it feels like a movie theater. Great little cameras!

Footage looks great Chis, I am downloading now for a closer look. I like the doorway in shadow across the street and the black bits on the car not being lost to black, as well as the sky not blowing out.

Liking this a lot.

Technicolor have released a new 3D LUT that is compatible with the LUT Buddy plug-in and Apple's Color & prevents FCP crashing when the clip is rendered

CineStyle, Digital Printer Lights, Filmmaking - Technicolor (http://www.technicolor.com/en/hi/cinema/filmmaking/digital-printer-lights/cinestyle)

Unfortunately FCP still takes an age to render the footage to which you have applied the LUT using LUT Buddy (3-4 minutes for a 20 second clip on my 2.5GHz MBP).

Very pleased with the new Technicolor profile but I wouldn't use it for every project.

Technicolor Profile / 5D Mark II on Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/23266791)

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but I see almost no shadow detail in that video and the highlights look strange. I'm not sure this technicolor profile is to be used for high contrast scenes..

Folks,

I must be retarded. I installed the profile on my camera, and LUT Buddy on CS5, but LUT Buddy is looking for a .3dl file. The file that Technicolor provides and says works with LUT Buddy is an .mga file.

Have I missed something? Is there a place to download LUTs that work with LUT Buddy?

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Sterling

I think this profile is a boon but emphasises the need to be considerate of the 5Ds foibles when (thinking about) lighting.

Here are some grabs from a recent trip to Uganda a couple of weeks back, where interviews were conducted in remote refugee settlements, usually outdoors and in a hurry (nobody likes to hang around in near 40 degree heat). What is most impressive to me is how this picture profile (pp) hangs on to darker skin tones and interprets them with apparently more accuracy than previous pps I've used. Clearly, some areas I just needed to blow out, given the huge dynamic range. But there seems to be far less noise in out-of-focus dark/darker backgrounds too and a resistance to macro-blocking.

The first two grabs need colour matching (change in lighting conditions/colour temp from the silo door/opening behind me). The last grab below I thought would be particularly trying. It still needs lifting on the main figure on the right but given how harsh the sun was (see his left arm) I'm surprised there was any tonal definition left in the shadows on his face at all. I could have used an assistant with a reflector for that one.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2126/5775454756_193c3a4eea_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5188/5775451856_a94b38d67d_z.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2419/5775452584_b3c8bd70c3_z.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2424/5774919441_415277943a_z.jpg

These look good Justin, I wish I could use it next week shooting a doco in the States but I have to match with existing footage and other cameras for the project as much as I can, so I have to play safe with the images I supply as I won't be there for the edit/grade.
Shame…

Thanks Wayne. One thing that struck me about using this pp and the consequent LUT is just how faithful to the original scene the footage was. I think the workflow will be key here. But my impression is that the application of the LUT on a clip has a fairly light footprint on the codec, to which further grading could be usefully applied without noticeable 'destruction' of the codec. Clearly, your project's post-flow will determine what you can do here.

Incidentally, anticipating lots of red tones, I decided to use the 5DtoRGB conversion process on the footage for greater transcoding accuracy of reds to a completely OTT ProRes 4444 editing codec. It may be false and hopelessly erroneous but I theorised that this might help the pp/LUT to reveal its full potential without attempting to unnecessarily cramp or compress it into a ProRes codec with less bandwidth. Anyone else try this?

There's certainly less noise and better colour fidelity when properly using this PP/LUT but using ProRes444 wont improve performance - it will just waste hard disk space.

Hi Liam,

Well it depends on what you want. Knowing that 4444 is overkill, on paper, is one thing. But since we know that using a more compressed editing codec than 4444 (while the stats indicate that 5D footage, natively, is not going to make use of the capacity or features of the 4444 codec) throws away data - and colour data at that - it's worth learning exactly what is being thrown away.

There is some anecdotal evidence that using the 4444 codec with a post-process like 5DtoRGB seems to better retain the overal colour gamut of an image (Robin Schmidt, Director, Editor and DSLR mentalist – 5D to RGB the follow up: bigger comparison yes yes (Prores 422 SQ) (http://www.elskid.com/blog/5d-to-rgb-the-follow-up-bigger-comparison-yes-yes-prores-422-sq)). And since colour fidelity and range is major reason for using the Technicolor pp in the first place, I thought it was worth a look.

Big files? Yes. More pleasing results than other codecs? Certainly. For general use? Possibly not. Will I continue experimenting? Definitely. I feel no need to be declarative on the topic at this time as I'm still learning about it and enjoy seeing the results.

Forgive my ignorance, but I have a couple questions about this Cinestyle thing.

Is there a difference between loading the profile onto the camera and manually setting the sharpness, contrast and saturation to the same levels that the Cinestyle preset dictates? Also, If I remember correctly, when you first load the Cinestyle onto the camera, Contrast is ZERO, but in their docs, they tell you to set it to -4. Why would they have just made this the preset when loaded in?

On the post side of things, is there any point in monkeying with the LUT settings, or is loading the S-Curve LUT simple enough? I'm using LUT Buddy, and there seems to be several options.

Cheers,

Sterling

Sterling,

This is my understanding, and thus likely to be incomplete and perhaps plain wrong. Perhaps others will be kind enough to correct my misunderstandings but here goes:

As I understand it, the pp for these cameras is generally inaccessible except via the Picture Style Editor (Canon : Picture Style (http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/picturestyle/editor/index.html)). This gives you access to the overall gamma settings for the camera - the relationships between Hue, Saturation and Luma levels, right across the chroma and luma ranges. This is often referred to as an 'S-curve' and has features such as the 'toe' (the shadow HSL relationships) and the 'knee' (the highlight HSL relationships). This can give a fundamental 'look', emulating the chemical reactions of film emulsions during film processing. It is more than just contrast, saturation and sharpness.

Additionally, the Techinicolor profile seems to have 're-programmed' this feature in the 5D to permit more of the colour gamut (the total range of colour seen by the sensor) to be captured within the h.264 codec whereas before, it was limited to the rec.601 colourspace, if I remember correctly. It is the first pp to do this by encoding using log maths, I think, and is a minor miracle. Like old vinyl records, it needs to be 'decoded' again (like RIAA) so that the original image can be conveyed as it was seen by the sensor. The compressed nature of the h.264 codec requires that this be done, and the Technicolor pp is more adept than others at retaining the original scene. It's as near to a raw, unmolested setting as you will likely get out of this generation of the 5D (and the next, I'm guessing).

The camera has additional, on-board settings for contrast and sharpness. If you are happy to use these, you are effectively grading the footage as you shoot. The thinking is that this may be fine for some content but that ultimately, you will get a much higher quality of grade (and stress the acquisition codec less - h.264) if you get as much information off the sensor as you can and do this (contrast, sharpening, saturation) in post.

I hope this is not too full of errors and helps rather than hinders.

Justin,

Thanks for your response. This is good information to know. I'm renting two addition cameras for a shoot, and I wasn't sure if I could just manually adjust the style setting or if I have to actually load the style onto the cameras. Now I know!!

Cheers,

Sterling