shooting flat = blocky

[ralfmouth]

I re-shot some scenes today but flat (sharpmess/contrast/saturation minimum) this time to see if there was any benefit in post and if it produced a better picture. It seems worse most notably a lot of macro-blockyness and mush. Its as if the lower contrast resulted in the camera distinguishing less colors. Is this possible?

 

[Rainer]

Stu Maschwitz recently summed it up: "what you want from a flat profile is to eliminate the contrast s-curve that the most Picture Styles bake into the footage. Some custom Picture Styles go so far beyond “flat” that they actually invert this curve. This not only makes the image harder to grade, it can cause quantizing and compression artifacts to show up right in the middle of your tonal range, where they’re most noticeable."

 

[J.F.R.]

Do not shoot flat, despite what many maniacs around the net will tell you , DON'T. Get your look in camera through white balance temperatures and the actual scene you are lighting if and when possible. Shooting flat is very hard to bring detail back without creating noise, macro blocking , artifacts, etc. Unless you are working with professional colorist avoid creating another step in work flow and get the look you want in camera.

 

[Samuel H]

Yes, that's what happens if you shoot too flat. And it's what drove me away from cinestyle too.
Plus, by shooting with saturation=-4, you're going nearly-white-and-black (not so much, but you get the point), so when you add saturation back in post every codec color issue gets magnified.

Check out Flaat:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html
It's flat in the sense that it's near-log and therefore easy to grade, but not in the sense that the image is crushed beyond repair (there's saturation, and there's contrast, in the recorded images; but that contrast is evenly distributed across the spectrum).
And make sure you use it with Contrast=-4, Saturation=-2, Sharpness=0, Tone=1, and that you test with skin tones (Flaat is based on Portrait, there are some color shifts in the blues and reds and such, but skin comes out beautiful)

 

[ralfmouth]

Thanks for the great replies.

"This not only makes the image harder to grade, it can cause quantizing and compression artifacts to show up right in the middle of your tonal range, where they’re most noticeable."

That's what i saw. Ugly looking and impossible to grade - unuseable really. My settings must invert the curve. How would one know?

Do not shoot flat, despite what many maniacs around the net will tell you , DON'T.

Is shooting with a straight curve ok. Are you referring to superflat only?

you're going nearly-white-and-black (not so much, but you get the point), so when you add saturation back in post every codec color issue gets magnified.

So one loses both chroma and lumina information in midrange. Like 4:2:0 turns into 1:0:0?

Check out Flaat:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html
It's flat in the sense that it's near-log and therefore easy to grade, but not in the sense that the image is crushed beyond repair

That curve is "superflat" right. I'm not too familiar. Well here is my understanding of curves as they relate to my issue - compression/macroblocking/crushing...

Flat curve = even crushing from highs to lows. Most natural looking? Most gradeable?
S-curve = more midrange detail (less crushing) at the expense of high/low detail.
"Superflat" (inverted S-curve) = more high/low detail (less crushing) at the expense of midrange detail.

So really you decide where to spend the camera's detail with curves.
Your perogative.
If one considered a balanced approach best does this mean flat?

 

[Samuel H]

low-saturation is not like going to 1:0:0, it is like staying 4:2:0 but with only 6 or 7 bits in the color channels



flaat is not inverted-S, it is near-log, which is precisely what you want for easy grading

this is the light-response function with Flaat_10:

and this is the much-more-aggressive Flaat_12:

much wider, more DR (and more noise, and more banding, of course), but not inverted-S, still a nice near-log response

Lots of stuff shot on Flaat in the vimeo group:
https://vimeo.com/groups/flaat

For example this awesome-looking piece:
https://vimeo.com/groups/flaat/videos/59171144
(not that I can shoot like that! these people are REALLY good)

 

[ralfmouth]

low-saturation is not like going to 1:0:0, it is like staying 4:2:0 but with only 6 or 7 bits in the color channels

so low saturation = more banding not more color blocking.

flaat is not inverted-S, it is near-log, which is precisely what you want for easy grading

Unfortunately the camera in question is Olympus. I retired my mushy 550D which might benefit from this profile.

In summary, when you say "log" you mean a flat response curve and...
The benefits of log are easy grading (because evenly distributed contrast is less likely to clip?) and dynamic range.
The drawbacks are more shadow noise (because the curve is lifted?), color banding (above) and mid-range compression blocking in post.

To avoid the last one (visible blocking), shoot with an S-curve...more bits and bytes will be available for midrange detail and...
the clipped blacks/ blown highs will hide compression artifacts in these areas..
Assuming one was willing to put up with clipped lows/highs, is this a good theory?

Or could one buy a BMCC and never have to worry about it?