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
http://vimeo.com/23183751
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
http://vimeo.com/23181797
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
http://vimeo.com/23185070
Very beautiful footage! I also enjoy the grading. Have you used HTP? It looks so clean and noiseless. My footage with cinestyle looks noisy and compressed even in good light conditions. Great to see this! Cheers
There was no HTP used. Bringing down the blacks as I did in this video will hide some of the noise. I think the max ISO used was 320
Great, and generous, test! Got to say, I prefer the Cinestyle-only video, with no grade and no LUT, to the others… the contrast just looks so film-like. I don’t know, but if there was some way to retain that flatness while deepining the blacks a tad you’d have a perfect image…. Beautiful shots by the way, esp the one of the swans.
Hi Tim, thx for the preset. Couldn’t get LUT Buddy to stop crisnahg both my AE and PPro, even though 2 weeks back one of them was working just fine gives me peace of mind knowing I can come back to this in a pinch in PPro. I was wondering if you happened to make one of these for AE. I’m saving my life with the Neat Video Reduce Noise plugin and would love to handle everything in AE simply for the faster render pipeline. Thx again.