Technicolor CineStyle vs. Picture Styles

I shot this for my own purposes but thought I'd share in case anyone else was wondering how some of the different styles compared. No special lighting in the room, just the camera propped on my desk. There are about 5 seconds of footage for each style. In order:

Cinestyle
Cinestyle run through MB
Canon Standard
Flaat2
Marvels

https://vimeo.com/38000525

Canon 60D, Contax Zeiss 50mm 1.7, ISO 640
 
Thank you! We were also fortunate to have run Magic Lantern to absolutely nail our exposures. If we had run cinestyle, we would have been dead in the water. Flaat_2 has beautiful roll offs into the highlights (compared to marvel/cinestyle). The snow indeed proved to be a challenge but, once again, magic lantern was a big help! Thank you NormanBates!! I ran a color correction pass through it but it was dead easy. I played with the curves (crushed the lift a bit) and added a slight grain for a retro feel
 
well, thanks to you!! you've embraced Flaat more than anybody else to my knowledge, and you're making it SHINE!!
in fact, now that I've watched it properly, let me say it again: there are some really lovely images in that short! and some of them in pretty challenging scenarios!

it works as I expected in many of the shots, but it also gave me some nice surprises: highlight rolloff is looking indeed very nice (I expected it to be better than others, because the curve in the highlights is a lot smoother, but I hadn't dared to go this far with it, and now I see I should have), and some of those in-car shots look even better than I expected (for things like this, I expected it to be just as good as others, but it's looking great)

I've taken a series of screenshots, and I'll put the video and a few of those in my website; I'll PM you before they go live, so you can decide against all or some of them (I'm trying to avoid it, but maybe the set gives away too much from the story)


@pigbat: thanks to you too! I'll also link to that test from my website

edit: and your "caucasian skin test" too, James (gosh, that poor friend of yours looks sick in that test...)


edit 2: the site is updated: http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html
 
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Unfortunately she was. We didn't plan it that way, but work with my goals for the test. I had wanted a test which didn't distract from the technical elements of the image. Too many tests are either a set of inanimate objects, or all beautiful imagery, so I took the middle ground. I also made sure that somethings were standardized as possible such as using Kinoflo and a WB preset rather than customizing everything or shooting in conditions that couldn't be replicated. Anyway, she is better now, thanks for caring, and she thoroughly hates the test. =)
 
James0b57 said:
I believe he meant shooting Cinestyle without ML. Or at least, I hope that is what he meant. But even then 'dead in the water' is a bit extreme.
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Maybe so. You certainly don't want to focus or expose with any "flat" color profile. You use something closer to the final look then switch before recording.

I don't use ML, but have become pretty dependent on my monitor's false color.
 
Sorry, what I meant is indeed as James0b57 described. Our past videos have been using cinestyle but for our tastes it doesn't work. We haven't tried ML+Cinestyle yet… Liking flaat2 right now, but I might do that for later tests
 
For what it's worth, my last short (which was shot with cinestyle) is in user films right now. I'm not 100% happy with the color correction (which my editor did not me), but overall it performed pretty well.
 
I'm new to the world of Cinestyle, and I'm trying to install LUT Buddy on Premiere Pro. I have installed other plugins from Red Giant and they show up fine, but for some reason LUT Buddy does not show up. Can someone help me?
 
robat19 said:
I'm new to the world of Cinestyle, and I'm trying to install LUT Buddy on Premiere Pro. I have installed other plugins from Red Giant and they show up fine, but for some reason LUT Buddy does not show up. Can someone help me?
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http://brightland.com/w/technicolor-cinestyle-premiere-pro-real-time-lut-preset/
Good luck.

After some more tests I am now completely convinced that using CineStyle makes zero sense unless you intercut with scanned film to match lifted black levels. And quotes from Josh Pines seem to support this.
 
I wasn't that impressed with Cinestyle until I started using Neat Video in my workflow. Now my blacks are the envy of my friends and the whole image is more workable.
 
You can get the same blacks with a myriad of other flat styles, which will also utilize the whole coding space and give you better distribution. Better go for Flaat.
Have a look at the chart in my post on flat Canon picture styles, if you are not sure what's wrong with CineStyle. :)
 
Cinestyle isn't a panacea for sure. It comes with it's own set of issues (banding and skin tones), but I use most of the time and I'm very happy with the results. I have never seen the noise people complain about. If my intended final look is high contrast and saturation then I don't use it.
 
My point is that even for its intended (by the average DSLR videographer) use there are better alternatives that will preserve detail in the blacks in the same way but will be more forgiving to the mids. Which leaves CineStyle as only making sense in very specific workflows involving other cameras (mostly film)
 
Again, I haven't experienced the issues people complain about. It works for me, so not inclined to devote a lot of effort to testing out alternatives. The only issue I have ever had with it is some banding in large areas of the same color (a beige wall in the background for example) and some skin tones going south, but that only happens if you try to push it too far. If you aren't going for a moderate to low contrast final look, then it's best not to use it.
 
robat19 said:
I'm new to the world of Cinestyle, and I'm trying to install LUT Buddy on Premiere Pro. I have installed other plugins from Red Giant and they show up fine, but for some reason LUT Buddy does not show up. Can someone help me?
Click to expand...
Before you go the LUT Buddy route, please take a look at Tim Kang's s-curve preset for PPro. Do a Google search on "Technicolor Cinestyle s-curve preset", then look for the link to Timkang.com. I'd post the link myself, but pasting links on an iPad is a pain. Tim has keyed in the entire Technicolor LUT into a PPro preset that you can just copy into the PPro preset folder, and IT WORKS! It's MUCH faster than LUT Buddy, trust me.


Later: looks like the Brightfield link covers the same ground as Tim Kang's. Either one should work much, much better than LUT Buddy.
 
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no, I don't know about any of these - Flaat is not distributed with a LUT or standard curve, but from my work with flaat footage I've found that it's really easy to create your own: load footage, apply curve to taste, adjust saturation, and grade from there - really really easy, as in "even I can get great final colors now, including skin tones" - still, if you want to see what kind of curves turn Flaat footage into something that looks similar to Cinestyle+LUT, scroll down to the end here: http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/technical-tests-1.html
 
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