Shooting flat with a DSLR... good in theory, but not so much in practicality?

[HansSteinert]

I love color grading. It's probably my favorite part of post production. So naturally, I loved shooting flat. I used the Philip Bloom settings, and then resorted to cinestyle as soon as that came out.

Last week, I had to shoot a promo event, and the necessary turn-around time was very quick. So, I decided to just shoot with the "standard" profile so I didn't have to grade in post.

The image turned out incredibly clean and sharp compared to my past shoots. I'm assuming this is because all the "coloring" happens within the camera BEFORE the camera does the h264 compression. Which made me wonder...

Perhaps shooting flat with the DSLR codec does more harm than good due to the codec and bitrate? Shooting flat and then grading this flat h264 encoded video file seems to really exaggerate artifacting and noise. Perhaps if we want the best images out of these DSLR cameras, we should try to get as close to our finished look as possible within the camera profile settings?

What do you guys think? Have you guys had similar findings? I shoot with a 60D, mind you.

 

[HansSteinert]

Here's a frame from the weekend using the standard profile:

 

[dordor]

I've had somewhat the same experience as you. I were shooting a group of people at a concert at sunset. I tried both cinestyle and faithful, and the images from faithfull blew my mind. It's like there was more information in the colors at faithfull, I hardly had to grade anything.

 

[Chris Santucci]

Perhaps shooting flat with the DSLR codec does more harm than good due to the codec and bitrate? Shooting flat and then grading this flat h264 encoded video file seems to really exaggerate artifacting and noise. Perhaps if we want the best images out of these DSLR cameras, we should try to get as close to our finished look as possible within the camera profile settings?

What do you guys think? Have you guys had similar findings? I shoot with a 60D, mind you.

That's what I've been thinking also. It's common knowledge that there's a narrow range of adjustment that can take place with this footage before it starts to fall apart. I think the main advantage to these super flat settings are they allow the ability to maintain highlight detail but I'm not sure what the other advantages are especially if you have control over what you're shooting.

If you can monitor well and control contrast, I'd think you'd be better off getting the look nailed in-camera but everyone gets excited about these pseudo raw picture settings for some reason.

I used to keep contrast set all the way down but I don't do that anymore.