Shooting with the d7k nikon to have better color grading options

[Marcus Martell]

Hola,

i read everywhere thecanonists shoot a lot of FLAT stuff to have better control on the grading in post.......
So what are your thoughts about that? Any d7000 users have any suggestion for us?
Thx a lot

[Stephen Daugherty]

It's called TassinFlat and you can find out about it here:
Shoot flat on your Nikon D7000 and then edit flat in Final Cut Pro, grade in Color

Alternatively shoot in the neutral picture style and expose correctly. Either way the bigger barrier for grading will be the 8bit color than the mode you shoot in.

[Marcus Martell]

Wow, so Nikon is what we were waiting for!
thx

[Frans Meijer]

Assuming the sensor has a wider range then the encoding allows, would you not make better use of these bits by grading before encoding?

[Justin Molush]

I shot with super flat/advanced flat/cinestyle variants... and in the long run I get it as close to the final product as I can in the camera. Saves time. If you want flat footage thats your call but I find it an unecessary step anymore if you can get it in the camera.

[Stephen Daugherty]

Originally Posted by Frans Meijer

Assuming the sensor has a wider range then the encoding allows, would you not make better use of these bits by grading before encoding?

No because the video that comes off the camera (Nikon or Canon) is already compressed to an 8bit color space. The sensors themselves capture much more than 8bit data but this is thrown away (much in the same way it is thrown away in the transition from RAW to on camera JPEG).

It is best to transcode into a higher bit-depth format so that you can have more room to grade without introducing banding. This process interestingly generates colors that were thrown away or didn't exist in the original capture improving your overall quality.

Originally Posted by Justin Molush

I shot with super flat/advanced flat/cinestyle variants... and in the long run I get it as close to the final product as I can in the camera. Saves time. If you want flat footage thats your call but I find it an unecessary step anymore if you can get it in the camera.

Shooting to get it right "in camera" is viable but you are limiting your post production capabilities. If you only use a single camera (or multiple cameras of the same make/model) you can get away with this. If however you are inter-cutting between multiple cameras of different make/model or applying very much post-processing your images will quickly fall apart. I've found that trying to get it right in the camera inevitably leads to more time in post-production fixing things than shooting for post-production in the first place.

More succinctly shooting flat and then post-processing saves us time and gives more room to be creative in our work.

[Marcus Martell]

Question:

where can i find the TAX FLAT file to put on the camera?
Once i set This superflat recording to shoot videos then i have to switch to take a picture, i'll have the camera always set to that Flat picture profile and the picture will be very flat or once i switch from video to camera the pictures will be with normal sature profile?
Many thanks