Picture styles

[luciolepri]

Which one do you use, for what kind of job and why?

When I have complete control of the lighting, like on a set, I usually try to get an in-camera look as near as possible to the final look I want to get, so I usually create a specific style for each film, modifing an existing style or creating a new one with that infernal tool that is Canon's Picture Style Editor. Unfortunately I don't know about any other software that can do the work...

When I don't have control over the lighting and I know I won't have much time for the color grading, like when I'm shooting events or corporate videos, I usually choose the "Neutral" style, setting sharpness to "0" and sometimes lowering the contrast as much as possible.

When I don't have control over the lighting but I know I'll have time for a proper color grading, I often use the Technicolor CineStyle v1.0, which is the only "flat" style I really like. And the only one I know that is able to increase so much the DR, without showing too much noise.

These are the picture styles I tried so far:
Technicolor CineStyle, Marvels Cine, cineplus Picture Styles, Canon Video Camera X-Series Look, Flaat picture styles, ExtraFlat Picture Style, Superflat Picture Style

What about you?

 

[neuroanatomist]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

 

[verysimplejason]

I use neutral too, shoot raw, process in LR.

 

[Drizzt321]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

I believe OP is talking about video, not stills. Unless you're shooting with the 5d3 alpha raw video. In which case you're absolutely right, Picture Style is largely irrelevant.

 

[Nirmala]

I use neutral too, shoot raw, process in LR.

+1

 

[Meatball_Sub]

OP, as a video guy myself, I'd be very interested in hearing more about your thoughts on the various cinema-centric picture styles and why you don't like most of them. In my own testing I've found Cinestyle to give poor-looking results, worse than Standard, but it may well just be my own errors causing that.

 

[neuroanatomist]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

I believe OP is talking about video, not stills. Unless you're shooting with the 5d3 alpha raw video. In which case you're absolutely right, Picture Style is largely irrelevant.

Yep - sorry, I totally missed that! :-[

 

[luciolepri]

OP, as a video guy myself, I'd be very interested in hearing more about your thoughts on the various cinema-centric picture styles and why you don't like most of them. In my own testing I've found Cinestyle to give poor-looking results, worse than Standard, but it may well just be my own errors causing that.

Cinestyle is supposed to give you an extremely flat, unuppealing image, to give you more room for color grading. Standard picture style is very sharpened, saturated and contrasty, three things that are usually not so good for a footage that still has to be color graded.
What I dislike most about "cinema-centric picture styles" is that they often improve the dynamic range and the rolloff in highlights and shadows, but they tend to compress mid-lights areas and to increase noise a lot.
What I dislike about every picture style i the in-camera sharpening. It's applied before codec compression, it should be at least decent, but it's simply awful. I always pull it to "0" and, if needed, I add sharpening in post.

 

[luciolepri]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

I believe OP is talking about video, not stills. Unless you're shooting with the 5d3 alpha raw video. In which case you're absolutely right, Picture Style is largely irrelevant.

Yes, I'm talking about video! And even shooting raw video I think that starting from the right picture style is useful to speed-up the heavy post-processing workflow...

 

[gferdinandsen]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

+1, the only reason I shoot in JPG is for the histogram. I keep it set at neutral as to have no impact on the histogram.

 

[neuroanatomist]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

+1, the only reason I shoot in JPG is for the histogram. I keep it set at neutral as to have no impact on the histogram.

?

Even shooting in RAW, you get a histogram based on the JPG preview image the camera generates and stores in the RAW file container. FWIW, Neutral picture style isn't enough to have 'no impact on the histogram' since the white balance applied to the JPG image will also affect the histogram (google "uniwb" for more details).

 

[JR]

For still pictures I use neutral as pointed by others here as it does not impact the pictures once RAW is imported into my computer. Sometime however for video I use a picture style with a bit more contrast and more color to make the video more snappy!

 

[Drizzt321]

I shoot in RAW and I convert using DxO. So, Picture Style is irrelevant except insofar as it affects the histogram. I use Neutral.

I believe OP is talking about video, not stills. Unless you're shooting with the 5d3 alpha raw video. In which case you're absolutely right, Picture Style is largely irrelevant.

Yes, I'm talking about video! And even shooting raw video I think that starting from the right picture style is useful to speed-up the heavy post-processing workflow...

From my understanding (I could be wrong) the MagicLantern 5d3 raw video does not even create the jpg preview, and so you're not using the Picture Style at all. I could be wrong though.

 

[luciolepri]

From my understanding (I could be wrong) the MagicLantern 5d3 raw video does not even create the jpg preview, and so you're not using the Picture Style at all. I could be wrong though.

You're absolutely right. I just started playing around with video RAW and there are still a few thiings that I need to understand. "Picture style" is one of those functions that, just like when you shoot stills, don't affect RAW...

 

[Drizzt321]

From my understanding (I could be wrong) the MagicLantern 5d3 raw video does not even create the jpg preview, and so you're not using the Picture Style at all. I could be wrong though.

You're absolutely right. I just started playing around with video RAW and there are still a few thiings that I need to understand. "Picture style" is one of those functions that, just like when you shoot stills, don't affect RAW...

Which is one of the great parts about it Now I just need to decide to spend enough money to get a 1000x card and start playing with it.

 

[luciolepri]

Now I just need to decide to spend enough money to get a 1000x card and start playing with it.

CF 64GB ComputerBay. You can easily find it on eBay for less than 150 $.
Anyway, it depends on the aspect ratio you're looking for. I have a 600x card with which I can shoot with no frame dropping at 2.67:1. if you wanna start making some tests you can probably do it. What's more, you can even shoot at a little bit lower resolution than 1920 and upscale, quality will still be much better.

 

[cayenne]

From my understanding (I could be wrong) the MagicLantern 5d3 raw video does not even create the jpg preview, and so you're not using the Picture Style at all. I could be wrong though.

You're absolutely right. I just started playing around with video RAW and there are still a few thiings that I need to understand. "Picture style" is one of those functions that, just like when you shoot stills, don't affect RAW...

Which is one of the great parts about it Now I just need to decide to spend enough money to get a 1000x card and start playing with it.

Ugh...

I just wish ML could get a good, solid page set up in one spot, to tell you everything, step by step to set up and use the video RAW from the ML set up, to export for use by Davinci Resolve (which as of 9.15 version will take the RAW straight in)....

I've read through hundreds of pages of the forums, and as soon as I read one instruction set...that seems comprehensive, I read 2-3 more posts down, and someone says it blows up, and that you now have to get build #37 from server xyz, follow half the directions from post #222 from a month ago, and then download and replace this one file on the camera to get it to work....do the hokey pokey....etc.

It seems they are SOOOO close on the 5D3 to being more ready for primetime or at least an easier to install and use Beta version, I wish they'd concentrate on that, get that out the door for the masses to more easily use, and then concentrate on the other cameras that are next closer to being ready.

Then again...I'd like a pony.

 

[luciolepri]

Ugh...

I just wish ML could get a good, solid page set up in one spot, to tell you everything, step by step to set up and use the video RAW from the ML set up, to export for use by Davinci Resolve (which as of 9.15 version will take the RAW straight in)....

I've read through hundreds of pages of the forums, and as soon as I read one instruction set...that seems comprehensive, I read 2-3 more posts down, and someone says it blows up, and that you now have to get build #37 from server xyz, follow half the directions from post #222 from a month ago, and then download and replace this one file on the camera to get it to work....do the hokey pokey....etc.

It seems they are SOOOO close on the 5D3 to being more ready for primetime or at least an easier to install and use Beta version, I wish they'd concentrate on that, get that out the door for the masses to more easily use, and then concentrate on the other cameras that are next closer to being ready.

Then again...I'd like a pony.

Finding out how to install the last version of ML on the 5D MKIII it's actually still quite hard.
Here is the last Alpha build:
https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/downloads
And here are the last updates:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7QlH_BH2m32SnFObTh1dE1PNjQ&usp=sharing

To record RAW, you just have to activate "RAW Video" from the menu. From the same menu, you can change the settings. It's all very easy, if you've already used ML firmware. The only issue with ML in the MKIII is that, for safety resons, there's still no autoboot, so you have to boot the firmware everytime you turn on the camera. Apart from that, everything works fine even at 1920x1080 24fps.

As you wrote, Resolve can handle ML RAW, so there's no problem. On the other hand, if you prefere to create a proxy file, you ca use Rawanizer (freeware).
You can also extract the DNG's from the RAW files (with raw2dng, also freeware) open the DNG's with Camera RAW or something like that, make the adjustments you want on the first image, apply the adjustments on all the others DNG's, export everything in the format you prefere (I use TIFF) and import everything in Resolve for the final color grading.