Best Settings for Skin Tones on 7D?

Thank you for starting this thread. I'm very interested in the best settings for skin tones as well. I'm not sure why but it seems like with the DSLRs i have a harder time getting correct skin tones (compared to our HMC-150s). I've tried faithful and neutral with everything turned down. Now I'm loading the two you guys posted. I'll probably make a comparison video here shortly.

Thank you in advance to anyone who is willing to shed some light on this subject.
 
yes very interesting thread. may i point out that a critical white balance helps a lot when comparing such profiles.
on fair skintones it seems the slightest drift can throw off the mid hues and be lost in codec degradation. perfect exposure helps too. shooting a 3 tone grey card in the picture can help to see what's happening there when switching to a different picture profile.
after weeks messing around, i find neutral with dialed down settings according to taste is still the safest and most versatile preset once everything else is under control but i would love to be proved wrong...
 
rhervag said:
yes very interesting thread. may i point out that a critical white balance helps a lot when comparing such profiles.
on fair skintones it seems the slightest drift can throw off the mid hues and be lost in codec degradation. perfect exposure helps too. shooting a 3 tone grey card in the picture can help to see what's happening there when switching to a different picture profile.
after weeks messing around, i find neutral with dialed down settings according to taste is still the safest and most versatile preset once everything else is under control but i would love to be proved wrong...
Click to expand...

After testing all different settings, neutral seems to work well leaving a lot of room for corrections in post.

In Neutral when you "dialed down settings" what formula did you arrive at, and is that setting just for skin tones or are you using it in other situations as well?
 
I agree as I would love to know other people's dialed down settings.

I've been using Neutral -4, -4, -1
 
yes, i only would recommend to shoot neutral after having witnessed the results of quite a few different options on a 52 feet screen... enough of the plasticy skin with user custom profiles. most of them look great on the web but fall apart when you see the graded results projected.

shooting flat is good. superflat is a bit much, extra flat is far off and every mega flatter-est custom curve bakes horrid side effects hard to resolve down the road. i don't think the tradeoffs are worth it. some people got so obsessed about the fim look and passionate about color grading they allow talents faces to look sick like melted wax or turned to zombies.
i prefer to get it fairly right in camera and minimise grading if at all possible.
a hint of 3 way correction should suffice to match several takes in most cases. a secondary layer with a global scheme such as a little mojo or a tamed MB looks can enhance the feel but i really enjoy to approach it further in camera whenever a proper art direction was established and agreed upon prior to shooting.

No highlight priority for me, sharpness always down to none ; for the rest, it really depends on the glass being used : i tend to dial down contrast half way or completely down on modern canon lenses while i keep it centered when using vintage glass to keep things even. saturation a few notches down depending on the glass too and scene content...
it is like an instrument, play it how you intend it to sound. pianissimo or loud & clear.

i think those settings are the least step after achieving a perfect exposure, white balance, filtering, lighting and staging, etc... there is always something to be done optically to correct the light entering the sensor before having to tweak those profiles to look good imho. THAT makes a whole lot more of a difference than the profile curve + XYZ plugins...
 
sharpness : 0 (always)
contrast : -4 on Canon L and Sigma glass, -2 on vivitar & takumar M42, 0 on vintage russian M42 (helios40, jupiter9, tair11, etc...)
saturation : -2 most of the time, but depends on the project.
color balance : i barely touch it but I do enter manually K color temperature and tweak the WBK shift and have the rgb histogram on every time. (did i mention how a 3 tone gray card is a nice investment ?)
 
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Its about time someone showed a test of all these picture styles on something other than trees, to show skin tones as well. I know there are a couple of tests showing 2 or 3 styles, but not all. I'm hopefully going out in natural light with someone today to test all the picture styles on a girl in a park, with a white piece of paper and custom white balance for every setting. Will post back with the raw results.
 
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Well here it is!

Went to hyde park and tested these picture styles on skin tones. We're in London so it started to rain half way through, was unable to complete the entire list of picture styles, but got most - around 25 - done.

All have been done with custom white balance set with a white piece of paper for each picture style. No grading, just raw movies to see the picture styles.

 
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matt9b said:
Well here it is!

Went to hyde park and tested these picture styles on skin tones. We're in London so it started to rain half way through, was unable to complete the entire list of picture styles, but got most - around 25 - done.

All have been done with custom white balance set with a white piece of paper for each picture style. No grading, just raw movies to see the picture styles.

Click to expand...

those film emulations one look the best. even in a rainy and depressingly cold place as england :happy:
 
Solid test, good work.
The neutral and Neutral AWB are quite different, what did you set the WB to in the first take?
I'd also be interested in finding those film downloads.
For me the AGFA stands out as a good balance that need little correction right out of the box.
Have you tried to correct Superflat and Marvels cine in post to see how they come back to life, you don't have to post them since we already have the first test as a guide, but it you experiment with CC in post some feedback would be great.
Thanks Matt
 
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good job.
can you do us a favour and zip up all of your styles and add to a post?
 
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attached to this post is the one's I've got

Genesis_Panalog4_WIP.pf2
Kodachrome 25.pf2
Kodak Portra 160NC.pf2
Marvels_Cine_V1.2_rel.pf2
superflat01.pf2
Velvia.pf2
WW06_P-STUDIO.pf2
WW07_P-SNAPSHOT.pf2
 

Attachments

Hi guys,

Find attached the all the picture styles that were tested in the clip above. (Film Emulation Picture Styles.zip)

I'm also attaching some extra film emulation pic styles that weren't shown in the clip. (Extra Film Emulation Picture Styles.zip)

I'm going to have to buy my friend another caramel machiatto, she was there for an hour, it was freezing! Sometimes I wish I lived in California like everyone else on here seems to!.. Natural lighting would be so much better as well.
 

Attachments

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