Like quite a few other HDSLR shooters I was quite excited by Technicolor’s release of their Cinestyle picture profile for the Canon 5D mkii. Tests on the web are quite limited at the moment so I decided to try my own. The subject is not the best to test out the true strengths (plenty of lens flares etc.) of the profile but it’s a start. I also used a 7D and not a 5Dmkii.

No LUT applied

Shooting with the Technicolor profile took a bit of getting used to in terms of getting the correct exposure. I switched back and forth between neutral and Cinestyle a few times so I could judge the difference. It definitely looks drastically different on the camera LCD screen but I’m sure it will take no time to get used to.

LUT Applied with Red Gaint LUT Buddy

One thing I did have problems with was Red Giant’s LUT buddy. Whenever I had applied the LUT and tried to export, FCP wold crash. After a bit of searching about on the inter-web I discovered you need to press the apply button on the filter. The filter also seems to generate huge FCP files after export which is not too good!

I also did a quick grade in Apple Color to get a feel for the new look.  It could just be my imagination, but the lows and highs seem to clip less when checking out the original footage on a histogram.

Graded with Apple Color