Similar Suite of Flat Picture Styles for Canon DSLRs

Samuel H

Samuel H

Major Contributor
I was unhappy with all previous picture style options for Canon DSLRs: standard, neutral, portrait, etc, just don't seem to cut it; Technicolor CineStyle seems to use the available color space inefficiently and delivers more noise than other options; Marvels Cine requires a lot of work in post and is not easy enough to grade for my very limited skills (I end up with clay looking people nearly all the time).

So, being the constructive nerd I am, I created the Similaar suite of picture styles for Canon DSLRs: Flaat 1 through 4

These picture styles use the available color space in an efficient manner, are easy to grade, and deliver nice skin tones. And they also deliver much increased dynamic range: the most aggressive one, Flaat_4, brings over one stop back from previously clipped shadows (even compared with Technicolor CineStyle) (the downside is that with, such an aggressive picture style, even at ISO 100 the heavily lifted shadows may display quite a lot of noise: you'll have to push them back down in post, but at least they're not clipped, so you have more control on how you treat them) (Flaat 1 and 2 don't digg so much into the shadows, and don't have this problem: they're just nicely flat)

Would you care to test them and tell me what you think?
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html
 
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Had a chance to test out Flaat2 tonight. Pretty cool! I'll give it run and see how it comes out.

Not much of a test, but here it is on a ML 5fps undercrank of the full moon rising tonight.

http://vimeo.com/34769974

Cheers,
Pete
 
indeed, Flaat_2 is my favorite one, with Flaat_3 as an option for increased DR, and Flaat_4 for very exceptional situations where I need as much DR as I can get, even at the price of noise in the (previously clipped) shadows
 
Looks great.

The solution for this would be to apply a preview LUT and expose normally, but these cameras won't let you do that (maybe your field monitor will).
Click to expand...
I have a feeling that this will be possible with ML. At least on a smaller window (Magic Zoom already has a LUT option).

Is there any widely-used LUT format? A plain text file will do, but I'd like not to reinvent the wheel.
 
the current "rec picstyle" method is good enough for me - maybe if these flaat picture styles get some traction I can create a set of LUT files and you can work on implementing that - right now, with the jury still out on whether flaat lives up to the (my) hype, I'd wait
 
Hey Samuel,

Currious if you've come up with a standard set of post tools you run on Flaat2? I've always been confused as to exactly what people do to bring out the best in their clips. So far I've only needed to adjust curves a bit with Flaat2. It doesn't seem to need anything else to get a very vivid image. Even half the curve adjustment of Cinestyle and the contrast and saturation really blow up. My Cinestyle presets I've created all use Curves, Saturation, Unsharp mask, sharpening and often a gamma adjustment. Marvels 3.4 uses every tool in the drawer it seems and is ultra critical of white balance. Like you've said, I'm having a hard time with that one, though when I get it right it's really good.

With Flaat2 it seems I'm only going to need Curves and my default Unsharp mask.

Interested to see what others are finding with this one for grading? I'd love to hear what very specific tools are in your presests?

Cheers,
Pete
 
Norman..thanks for doing this. I like Cinestyle but man its noisy. When i get some time i will be testing these out and posting my results.
 
Samuel, what NLE are you using? I'm using Vegas and it only has RGB curves. I can use that and then desaturate, but that's a bit of a pain as well.

Cheers,
Pete
 
premiere has luma curves, that's the one that's been used for the skin tests in my page
I've just noticed even AE doesn't have luma curves!!
an RGB curve should work too, but it makes it a bit more difficult to grade (as you've noticed, you have to desaturate; also, depending on what you do with the curve, it may get tricky to grade too)

re: noise
Flaat_3 and Flaat_4 are also noisy, maybe even more than Technicolor, but that's because they expand the DR by bringing up the shadows
Flaat_1 and Flaat_2 should deliver less noise and smother gradients than Technicolor, and be easier to grade than Marvels Cine
 
the video test is up on vimeo - http://vimeo.com/34943260 - regarding noise, the improvement is not as big to my eye as it is on the waveform monitor; I think it will take a real project, with full color-grading efforts, to really test Flaat - anyway, I'd be very interested in knowing what you think about it (and if you've had the chance to shoot something using flaat, your thoughts on that too) - enjoy!
 
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