C300: Canon Log processed with Film Convert

cowpunk52

cowpunk52

Veteran
I've been really enjoying Film Convert lately, and using it to color treat a feature I shot last summer with the C300; some of you may remember when I posted some frame grabs so many months ago. The plugin gives some really nice treatments that can quickly kickstart your footage in the direction you want it to go. To most shots, we applied minimal correction in addition to our Film Convert settings. Anyway, the project is nearing completion and here are some frame grabs of the treated picture (please disregard the JPG artifacts, they are not present in the native files). We shot in Canon Log on L series prime lenses with the C300 straight to CF card.

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The first and fourth stills look great.

How far are you going with adjustments before you go to film convert? Any stills of the before?

Haven't been able to make it work for me, yet, but when it does work it's a pretty interesting look, so still trying to explore it.

Edit: by work for me I mean that sometimes it mutes skin and blues too much for my tastes, but I'm pretty sure that's user error and would like to figure it out.
 
Here's the problem I have with it...it doesn't seem to anything that a solid pass in a color correction plugin (Colorista II for instance) or software (Resolve for instance) could do...and adding grain is a poor idea for web content (the grain is hell on encoders).
 
Hey Brian,
I think you achieved a great "honest" indie look. As Kholi suggested some "before" grabs would be perfect, so we can see how much FC altered the image.
Did you use FC as your "base adjustment" and are you going to grade the image more in the end?
I like it as it is, just thinking workflow here...
 
I totally feel what you're saying Kholi. I'm using FC as the first pass, then adjusting the picture from there. Using it on this project, I've come to learn that the best practice would be shoot with the FC look in mind. It does mute skin tones, but I find that Canon Log is a bit blue anyway, and I shot a lot of this film with a slightly warmer WB. Using Canon lenses helped, too - I think something like Zeiss would have caused even more muted skin. I also adjusted the WB setting of FC to accommodate the skin tones until I had what I felt looked natural but still soft. The program does a great job of softening out red skin blotches and imperfections. This is processed with the Fuji Eterna stock preset, which I find gives a bit warmer skin tone as well (and saves a good deal of shadow detail). Remember you can also control how much of the FC preset you mix into the footage, so some control there as well.

Gary, I also think that you can largely achieve the same thing with a solid cc pass, but FC is much quicker to use, and my time was very limited working on this project. I agree 100% about the grain issue for web content, and for this project I didn't want a grainy look anyway; but it's a cinch to turn off the grain in FC, which is what I did.

Spartacus, I'll go through and find the native files for a 'before' comparison this evening. The files above are indicative if the final look of the piece, and for the majority I just did a bit of work on the curves to get my exposure values exactly where I wanted. I did that after applying FC.

i appreciate the feedback and questions, guys. I feel that FC is an excellent tool, albeit not right for every project. For this one, it has made achieving the look I want a much less painful process than it could have been - and that's something I really appreciate about well made plugins.
 
cowpunk52 said:
I totally feel what you're saying Kholi. I'm using FC as the first pass, then adjusting the picture from there. Using it on this project, I've come to learn that the best practice would be shoot with the FC look in mind. It does mute skin tones, but I find that Canon Log is a bit blue anyway, and I shot a lot of this film with a slightly warmer WB. Using Canon lenses helped, too - I think something like Zeiss would have caused even more muted skin. I also adjusted the WB setting of FC to accommodate the skin tones until I had what I felt looked natural but still soft. The program does a great job of softening out red skin blotches and imperfections. This is processed with the Fuji Eterna stock preset, which I find gives a bit warmer skin tone as well (and saves a good deal of shadow detail). Remember you can also control how much of the FC preset you mix into the footage, so some control there as well.
Click to expand...

Pretty much came to the same conclusion, but this helps because I thought my stupid brain just wasn't getting it. If FC is your primary look yet you didn't shoot for it, it seems a bit "last minute", but when testing for FC specifically things seemed to line up far better.

Good point on softening skin, I tried it on an actress and it does help... also, never thought about the neutrality of Zeiss glass affecting how it all comes together. Maybe using C/Y Zeiss would be a good medium.

Mmmaaaan Fuji stock kills. Just really enjoy the Fuji look (actual film) and it's neat to see this get close.

Will keep an eye out for the befores. Thanks for the info.
 
cowpunk52 said:
For this one, it has made achieving the look I want a much less painful process than it could have been - and that's something I really appreciate about well made plugins.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's true. You can almost duplicate the work of any plugin in the "vanilla" software, but then it becomes how much your time is worth to you to not have to fool with it, which is a good point in FilmConvert's favor. I do wish they had a kickass Technicolor preset.
 
cowpunk52 said:
We shot in Canon Log on L series prime lenses with the C300 straight to CF card.
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Oh man. How was that. I really want to try them out. I have a Zeiss CP.2 85mm I'm thinking about selling and going for the Canon 50mm Cine. I would use that lens a ton on both cameras.
 
Interesting - thanks for sharing. It looks like some of those were underexposed by at least 2 stops. Is that to grab more shadow detail?
 
Firstly I'll start off by saying I really like what you have done here. I think the final grades are really very nice indeed.

I know the whole idea of using the C log profile is to start with a flat image so you can grade in post, but with an 8 bit codec, I wonder why people do that. Could you not have got nearer to the final image in camera by pushing the exposure another stop or two and using a profile that has a little more saturation. You would then be closer to the look and feel that you were working towards and you would have had a little more latitude to push the grade before it breaks. I'm not telling you here, I'm really asking for your advice and trying to understand your workflow...

The guy in the grey t shirt and the guy in the burgundy hoody look really under exposed in the "before's". Do you use a meter or do you do it by eye/ in camera? .. and is this the image you see in the viewfinder when shooting.

Cheers
 
The point of shooting a log format is not so you can grade in post, it's so you can capture the maximum amount of dynamic range available from the sensor. There is no way to get the full 12+ stops of DR from the C300 unless you shoot with Canon log. That being said, sometimes you don't need that full range, especially when shooting in a low contrast environment, and when using compressed codecs it's often better to get close to the look you want in camera in order to avoid breaking your image in post somehow. However, on this particular project, there were two major reasons that kept me shooting Canon log for the duration of the project. The first was skin tones. At the time, no cine or video matrix or gamma setting could come close to the skin tones I was getting with Canon log, which has a natural softness that's is immensely pleasing to the eye and flattering to the talent. I wanted that skin tone to be constant through the film, so using a standard gamma wasn't on option for me. I've developed a couple of CP's now based on the a variation of the CINEMA color matrix that gives skin tones that are very close, but they still don't equal the softness I get from using the log gamma. The 2nd reason I used cinema log was to avoid as much as possible the 'colored aliasing' issue that the C300 gave in high contrast edges that went to overexposure. I wanted to hang onto my highlights as best as possible in all situations, and log helps you do that more than any other gamma.

I used a waveform to expose the log in camera, placing my middle grey between 32 and 40 IRE, depending on where my highlights were landing. Most of the time I used the 'view assist' in the c300's monitor while shooting.


edit: the colored aliasing issue has since been addresses by new firmware that got rid of the artifacting.
 
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Thanks Cowpunk... I completely understand your reason, thank you for the explanation it was interesting and informative.. so again cheers for that.
 
Canon Log is designed and optimised for 8bit, it's not as flat as other Log profiles such as Sony S-Log or Alexa Log-C.
 
Hey Marvin... yeah I hear that.

I have to say that I have seen many examples of the C100 and I have not been so impressed. It appears to me that people seem obsessed by the wide dynamic range and because of that, many video's on the C100 channels like Facebook & Vimeo have been pretty dull, underexposed, low contrast and far to desaturated. Its like people have come from DSLR's and decided that if their talent is standing in front of a window "for instance", they must exploit the C100's WDR and have both the talent exposed as well as being able to see whats outside..and very often this results in a flat looking image which lacks contrast. It seems almost everyone is shooting C log for WDR.. I was not convinced this would be the best option with an 8 bit codec... However the stills that Cowpunk has posted have the contrast and saturation added back into the image and the results are very impressive. I'm looking forward to doing some testing of my own.. when it eventually arrives!! :)
 
Erik Naso said:
Oh man. How was that. I really want to try them out. I have a Zeiss CP.2 85mm I'm thinking about selling and going for the Canon 50mm Cine. I would use that lens a ton on both cameras.
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The Canon L Primes are very nice lenses and look fantastic - but they can be a bit of PITA to work with on set; at least, for the AC ;) The 85mm is especially challenging due to it's servo-controlled manual focus and loose focus wheel. The best way to use these lenses, IMO, is in conjunction of a nicely dampened follow focus that can help you be more precise. I've subsequently upgraded to a set of Canon CN-E's (24, 50, & 85) and I love every inch of them. They are extraordinary cinema glass for the price.
 
jbear said:
Interesting - thanks for sharing. It looks like some of those were underexposed by at least 2 stops. Is that to grab more shadow detail?
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Not to hang on to shadow detail, but to highlights. I wanted to take full advantage of the 5.5 stops of overexposure that the C300 is capable of as much as possible, so I kept my 18% grey in the 35 IRE range
 
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