General CINEMA Picture Style...any good?

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bronxjragon

Well-known member
There's a new picture style floating around called CINEMA for the EOS line. Here's some footage below:

http://vimeo.com/28550676

Has anyone tried this? It's a whopping $19. I have had some nightmare experiences with Cinestyle (and honestly the whole additional LUT step isn't worth it to me) and this picture profile looks nice.

Anyway, hoping for some feedback on the profile before making a purchase or not.
 
It looks pretty good. They have some theory in there that I like the sound of. The Marvel method doesn't work for me. The methodology of marvel is to increase dynamic range, but doing my own tests and also those of Steve Oakly ( http://www.steveoakley.net/template_permalink.asp?id=172 ) imply that there isn't anything gained from shooting in flat styles. Also, you lose important information in the mid levels. Though, I believe there are times when the flatter styles may be useful (typically shots without humans in them).

The shots in the link you gave are well done. Good selection of color combinations and lighting conditions. look at how they have a lot of blue teal and yellow in them (complimentary colors). So, it gives a very synchronous feel. The color profile is playing a small part, in the grand scheme of things, as to why you like these shots. Look at his other work on vimeo, before he had that color style... still good.

 
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I bought it and tested it yesterday. I liked it enough to shoot a pretty important project with it today. Just going through the footage and its looking really good. The project has a really fast turn around time and very little money for grading time.

Plus its only $19.

http://www.cineplus.ch/cinema.html

My two bits
 
What's with the white balance on those first samples? Some serioius shift toward cyan in all the blues. I find it to be very unappealing and a quite common incorrect look passing for "cinematic" these days.

Cheers,
Pete
 
Mmmm..
there was no choice of any color.
The street is a normal street with normal people.
The picture style plays a huge part because all that cyan is created by the style by viring similar colors.
Same with the chicken. A normal chicken, a normal sunny day.
Nothing was artificially or intentionally done.
 
c3hammer said:
What's with the white balance on those first samples? Some serioius shift toward cyan in all the blues. I find it to be very unappealing and a quite common incorrect look passing for "cinematic" these days.

Cheers,
Pete
Click to expand...

I don't see anything wrong with the white balance. Also, you do know that white balance and other color settings IN CAMERA can be used to make an image seem "colder" or "warmer"? http://vimeo.com/28669523

Just because you don't like a look that doesn't make it "quite common incorrect."

It's a profile setting. That's like saying Standard profile is correct and Neutral is incorrect. They exist for a reason buddy.

Anyway, what I'm asking for is feedback from people who have actually used the profile in different scenarios.
 
looks good....but i've been 2 spoilt on free pic styles. dont see the reason why this should be the only one i purchase.
 
Sorry for getting side tracked on your original question bronxjragon.

I've never thought of picture styles or white balance as a useful tool to create a 'look" in camera. Always thought of picture styles as a way to capture the most information possible, or conversely the "truest" feel of the actual scene such that you could create what ever "look" you want in post via tools like Magic Bullet. Technicolor Cinestyle is not intended to create a "look" in any way. Simply another tool to broaden the depth captured.

The white balance issue I mentioned is called bondiblue effect on early Panasonic HDC-TM700 camcorders that often happened when using auto white balance. Their samples creates that exact color shift to green/blue. All the blues in their samples are jacked toward that cyan or bondiblue look. Currious to see if you can get a truer more natural "look" with a warmer white balance setting.

Cheers,
Pete
 
it would be nice to have a "demo" or something before spending 20$ on a picture style! It's quite a lot of dough I find... for 5$ I would have bought it already!
 
I like it. Adding it to my toolset along with the Technicolor one. Don't mind paying at all when the results are this good.
 
There is a quick review of the profile here:

http://wideopencamera.com/just-the-cut/cinema-picture-profile-worth-the-money/

I bought it and can honestly say I dont care for it at all. I think that guy has a LOT of nerve charging anything when there are so many awesomely FREE profiles out there. To me its just a clever sales pitch, throwing terms like 'no grading', 'analogue colours', 'film colorimetry' with a 'give it a try' price of $19...doesn't really put it into the snake oil sales category...but its not far from it IMO. My recommendation is spend your money elsewhere and instead use what is free, available and proven to work.
 
I think you are naive and he took advantage of it, that is called business by some.
*Anyway i realized that shooting with taking contrast down is also making picture very poor colorwise, i switched to contrast on 0 and footage looks much better and vivid, i cant bring back saturation in the same way when color info is not there and this info is suffering when contrast is lowered.Anyway on contrast -4 everything looks camcorderlike, especially car reflections and shiny things look like plastic, grass looks like its very soft and overall picture appears more softer than with contrast on 0.
You see too much into shadows and its just... i dont know, flat and uninteresting, colors become more gray and lifeless
contrast -4
sdrd5.jpg

and contrast 0
gd6d.jpg
 
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What I see in your screengrabs, bwwd, is totally adjustable in post. I could make those images match completely with a few minutes in Color or After Effects. But the first shot gives me slightly more data in the shadows to play with if, say, I wanted to tweak the lows more, maybe imbuing them with a tint of green or slightly boosting their level. You could also leave the shadow intensity as is because it's a high contrast scene already. Your first image is more "cinematic" in terms of tonality in my opinion, whereas the second is very high contrast, which is more "camcorderlike," again, in my opinion.
 
End of the day baking in a colour is almost always bad, and in reality Id say 99% of the time any of us have enough time to at least whack on a simple s-curve when we're editing our footage. So for ultimate latitude get cinestyle or similar or if you do feel the need for cooking then choose Marvels or something like it. Both are free and you can have up to 3 profiles loaded on your camera so go nuts.

Of course if you feel the need to reward someone who concocted a way to sell bucket loads of something almost identical to what you can already get for free...then by all means buy cinema ;-)
 
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