Adventures in the PSE

great looking music video shot on Flaat: https://vimeo.com/40353013 after praising Flaat_12 for the wide dynamic range he needed for the in-train-with-landscape-through-windows shots, the shooter (Lucas Pfaff) now complained that it was somewhat difficult to grade... I think I know what he means, some shots have that kind of dead-looking colors in the midtones that you see in HDR photography... hard to avoid, given those shots are close to HDR territory!! anyway, it seems like it was a very challenging shoot, and it looks great, so, enjoy!
 
Sorry I never got to use Flaat. I'll surely recommend it for people to check out. Sold my 7D, but I'll be around to answer workflow questions and such. Still going to be working with 7D footage until my partner upgrades to RAW. Trying out Resolve too. Good luck out there.
 
Well, no idea: I never used the Cinema PS, and I won't donate to get this one either... among other things, because I no longer own a Canon DSLR: I bought a NEX-5N about a month ago, I'm very happy with it, it's a very nice upgrade from the Canon DSLRs (every one except the 5D3), so last week I sold my old Canon

Now, from the information in that website, it seems he's pushing up the shadows (as I do in Flaat), but also bringing down the highlights, which I've found to be a bad thing: you just can't move the highlight clipping point, no matter what, and saving more room for the hightlights leaves your midtones starving for color gradation (specially if you're also pushing up the shadows). I don't think if he's doing this, but the only way to have more headroom in the highlights is to move everything up, so you're basically underexposing and pushing everything up, you get more noise and less headroom in the shadows. The other way to do it is the CineStyle way: push the highlights down, and the shadows up; you can get the black clipping point to move a little (but noise will creep up), but you can't move the white clipping point at all, and you're leaving your midtones starving.

A couple of links:
Flaat Shootout 2012: T2i vs 5N vs GH2 vs D800
Canon picture styles quick color test
 
Samuel H said:
...you just can't move the highlight clipping point, no matter what, and saving more room for the hightlights leaves your midtones starving for color gradation...
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Not my sort of preferred style. But there is always a pro and con to each style.

If someone has that picture style, and wants to loan it to me and Samuel, I don't mind doing some tests or comparisons with it, to show why I don't like it, but also potentially show it's strengths.
 
No point in lending it to me anymore, happy 5N owner now :)
(and looking forward to this little cam being hacked, it would be great if some sort of near-log picture style could be added, I already posted it -and offered my help- on the feature-suggestions thread)
 
James0b57 said:
Agreed.

Not my sort of preferred style. But there is always a pro and con to each style.
Click to expand...

I've done some brief tests of the "Lightform" picture style. The comments is where it gets really interesting though. :D
https://vimeo.com/47534634
https://vimeo.com/47581427
https://vimeo.com/47590554

James0b57 said:
If someone has that picture style, and wants to loan it to me and Samuel, I don't mind doing some tests or comparisons with it, to show why I don't like it, but also potentially show it's strengths.
Click to expand...
Send me a PM!
 
Haha, sorry that guy gave you a hard time for comparing his pic style. It is what it is sometimes. Your tests highlighted the basic differences very well, I thought.

Cinestyle is unique from all the other picture styles. Really no one can complain too much about it. It does something none of the others do, and it is free. I do not like using Cinestyle, but I am glad to have it available. Flaat is also really unique in the attention to the naturalistic curve. Loved how CloudInTheSky used it in Chasing Liberty. Goes to show working with the strengths of the picture style are important.

http://vimeo.com/37993764


Headshotriddle7, I sent you a PM.
 
The thing about Cinestyle is that it has never been officially confirmed by Technicolor (still waiting for the promised whitepaper...) what the true intention of raising the black point to 16% really was and while the general consensus seems to agree that it extends the perceived dynamic range of our camera's I personally doubt that any proper color scientist would overlook the inherent flaw in that logic, given the 8-bit coding space and the destructive h.264 compression algorithm. I personally think that Cinestyle has been developed to make intercutting DSLR footage with professional log-space formats like red etc more convenient but then again the only thing that could confirm this would be an official whitepaper by the developers...
And you're absolutely right about Chasing Liberty - a lovely looking short! I use the VisionColor picture style for pretty much anything I do. It's quite subtle and I guess ultimately that's what its all about. I was a beta tester and am friends with the developers so I can ask them to send you a free copy if you want to play around with it.
 
Here's another quick test comparing the Lightform PS to VisionColor and Flaat_10p under tungsten and mixed lighting situations (all picture styles at their default settings):
 
I think I have just found out how to actually raise the output black (like cinestyle) and lower the output white point (like Lightform) using nothing but Canon's Picture Style Editor. Has this been known how to do or did I just accidentily discover something potentially awesome? :D
Again, sorry if this is nothing new! (As you can tell from my post count I'm still the new kid on the block haha)

output_black_test01.jpg
 
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Please excuse the horrific quality of the screen recording and my complete lack of tutoring skills (first time "tutorial" & non-native speaker, sorry)
pw: black
 
If nobody is excited about all this, than everybody sold their canon's and nobody bought a 5dmk3. =)
 
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