Adventures in the PSE

NormanBates said:
...the shot I liked most was the one at 0:18, and it seems it's not Flaat :)
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Actually both those first two clips were with Flaat2 (2,-4,-2,0). I didn't have them on my backup drive at home, but found them today here at my office.

There's potential here with these things, I just need to figure out what my post processing is doing so differently between clips with similar adjustments. Part of the equation is understanding where things go crazy vs. what the ps is doing there.

By the way these are not still image sequences, but actual video via Magic Lantern framerate override at 3 fps in a 29.976fps timeline. The ability to just go film like crazy doing long captures without the massive data and post processing is truly incredible. I think I forgot to reset the framerate override on one clip in there and it started another file and filled up my 16 gig card. I just sped it up a ton and it looks exactly the same.

The actual 3fps in a 30p timeline is super smooth motion of the clouds. Just a little too slow to keep peoples attention and was sped up some more in Vegas.

Because these are framerate override in video mode, the ps is very important and the reason I've been playing around so much trying to find something "better".

Thanks for the help. It's been a fun exercise and I think, as most people can see from the results, quite useful !!!

Cheers,
Pete
 
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NB, here's another test from this morning! The first clip is Neutral, the middle are all Marvel's 3.4 and the last is Flaat2. I tried to film every scene with Nuetral, Marvels, Cinestyle and Flaat2. These were just the one's I thought looked good for a teaser. The last with Flaat2 was incredible looking vs. the others. All shot with the T3i and the 3x crop zoom. A couple in the middle were 5x and you can definitely see the softness there.


I had to turn down everything with Flaat 2, but it's pretty incredible looking. I need to sort out how to change the colors a bit but that thing definitely is up there vs the other PS for sharpness and highlight detail.

I think I'll have to play with it some more. When I first tried it I thought it was kind of one of those fuffer nutter "off color" profiles, but man, when you get it right on the exposure it's really nice.

Cheers,
Pete
 
the next version of the Flaat suite will have two sets: one based on portrait (for people like me that just can't get nice skin tones back in post if shooting with a ps based on neutral) and one based on neutral (without all these color shift issues) - I'll release that together with the picture styles for the 5D3
 
NormanBates said:
the next version of the Flaat suite will have two sets: one based on portrait (for people like me that just can't get nice skin tones back in post if shooting with a ps based on neutral) and one based on neutral (without all these color shift issues) - I'll release that together with the picture styles for the 5D3
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Hi. i was testing your flaat2 yesterday. I tryed it togheter with Crooked Path Flat 3.0, and sincerely, i see no difference between them...So, i will keep the crooked path. Or there is something that i am missing?
 
very interesting: their original concerns are very similar to mine, and they've also arrived at some of the same conclusions (e.g. use sharpness=2 in camera), but went for different things on other areas (based on faithful, mine is portrait; I suggest saturation=-2, they suggest 0; the solve the skin issue with the tone slider, I solve it going with a portrait-based picture style) - my guess is that they won't be that similar, but I'll check
 
i use their picture style since 6 months. When i used yours i really liked it, and when i compared the 2 i saw why... ;-)
maybe yours is a bit more saturated
 
ok, so I have just tested CPF 2.1 and 3.0...

I don't like 2.1 at all; it tries very hard to see a bit more into the highlights, fails miserably (just like any other option: it's just a hard clip that no picture style will avoid), and in the process throws away 25% of the codec's color space
cpf21.jpg

now, 3.0 is a lot better in this respect; at least in the luminance channel, it is, as you noticed, relatively similar to flaat_2

this is cpf 3.0:
cpf30.jpg
and this is flaat_2:
flaat_2.jpg

close, but flaat_2 looks a lot better:
* much smoother response to light (and in particular, no wiggling)
* somewhat higher DR (0.66 stops?)

now, the skin tone test:

this is cpf 3.0
cpf30skin.jpg
and this is flaat_2:
flaat_2.jpg

I have to say I like how that looks, but it feels a bit overboard: it's making this beautiful Russian lady look a bit like someone from The Jershey Shore... just a bit, I know I'm exaggerating :)
I'll definitely have to play with that tone parameter, because 2 may be too much, but even Flaat may benefit from switching it from 0 to 1


edit: this is flaat_2 with tone=1 - I like this
flaat2_tone1.jpg
 
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I've never liked marvel films, crooked path, nor -4 contrast neutral, but they are far more useful than the infamous super_flat. =)

Many have used them to do some incredible things.

I quite like flaat_2 even with it's quirks, which add to the character. Just like Neutral -4 contrast -4 saturation made some good looking drab/cold films, which seemed to define the best of dslr for a little while, flaat was used tastefully in "Chasing Liberty".

each picture style is a bit like a film stock, and it doesn't have to be only about contrast or flatness, but can be about aesthetic, and color as well.
 
it's absolutely true that Flaat was a perfect match for the final look they were after in Chasing Liberty
I hope to see other projects use it soon, targetting different final looks

(Flaat and Chasing Liberty were featured yesterday on a German site, which drove a very sizeable increase in visitors and some very positive comments; it's definitely being a win-win relationship)
 
that's great news, thanks!
(it's a little bit shameful that I had to spam so many gurus to get some exposure for Flaat, but yes, I did it)

I hope to have a clear winner and much more exposure as soon as I can make the 5D3 version of Flaat
 
Neat Video kicks ass. I've been shooting at 1250 for several projects with Cinestyle...noisy. Neat Video takes it out. the images look great.
 
WhiteMonkey said:
Neat Video kicks ass. I've been shooting at 1250 for several projects with Cinestyle...noisy. Neat Video takes it out. the images look great.
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Yes, good info, it is nice that there are helpful ways of getting what we need, and it doesn't have to all happen in camera. (THough it's nice when it can.)
 
* denoising in post helps a lot but has downsides too; I have MB Denoiser myself (I hope the new version is more stable, haven't tested it much yet); actually Stu Maschwitz's advice is to ALWAYS run a mild denoising, then mild add noise, to eliminate banding and artificially generate higher bit-depth color (it's an interpolation, but for some issues, like banding, it works)

* yes, I had seen the link at nofilmschool; from the onset, that site has been the biggest driver of traffic to the Flaat page, by far (they ran a short piece on it: http://nofilmschool.com/2012/01/picture-profile-similaar-flaat-aims/), now a German site (slashcam.de) is fighting for that spot; my guess is that a blog post by someone like Vincent Laforet, Philip Bloom, or Stu Maschwitz, would make all this negligible, and I hope to get that if Flaat is what it takes to make the 5D3 really shine

* @James: I don't know what my answer to that previous post should be, I'm torn between "blushes" and "sorry James I already have a girlfriend"; I think I'll leave it as "thanks for the compliment :)"
 
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