7D/5D: more film-like video with custom picture styles
UPDATE: I've got a more complete and correct (through trial and error) look at this issue in this post. You may want to skip ahead.
When shooting video, my new 7D, like the 5D, tends to overly crush the blacks and produces a very contrasty image with clipped highlights, especially in a sunny daylight situation. It looks like any consumer video camcorder.
But there is a way to really improve the video image quality and it can be done through custom picture styles. The folks at marvelsfilm have come up with a really good one for the 7D (should also work for the 5D). It dramatically lowers the contrast and makes the image much more post-production friendly. http://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/canon-7d-picture-style-with-cine-gamma-s-curve-free-download/
I played with their "cine style" today and I think it's a huge improvement over any of the built-in Canon ones. In addition to that, here is a funny basic video tutorial about picture styles and video with some good links http://vimeo.com/7256322
And here is a downsized 1080p test sample of the same shot with the Canon standard setting (right) and the Cine custom picture style (left).
When shooting video, my new 7D, like the 5D, tends to overly crush the blacks and produces a very contrasty image with clipped highlights, especially in a sunny daylight situation. It looks like any consumer video camcorder.
But there is a way to really improve the video image quality and it can be done through custom picture styles. The folks at marvelsfilm have come up with a really good one for the 7D (should also work for the 5D). It dramatically lowers the contrast and makes the image much more post-production friendly. http://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/canon-7d-picture-style-with-cine-gamma-s-curve-free-download/
I played with their "cine style" today and I think it's a huge improvement over any of the built-in Canon ones. In addition to that, here is a funny basic video tutorial about picture styles and video with some good links http://vimeo.com/7256322
And here is a downsized 1080p test sample of the same shot with the Canon standard setting (right) and the Cine custom picture style (left).
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Even though this article is about the 5D, but works equally well for the 7D. I played with the picture style "flat+10" that can be downloaded from that site. It may become my standard style for shooting movies now.
For users of Apple's Final Cut Studio Suite, the following post talks about how Apple's "Color" application seems to be able to recover clipped highlights and crushed blacks. I have not tried this myself and I am not sure if this is only true for orginal camera files (H.264) or also for transcoded ProRes files (which is the format of choice for people on Macs editing with Final Cut Pro). http://prolost.com/imported-data/2009/1/20/5d-crushing-news.html
No matter which method is used, I am glad there is a way around those nasty high contrast video pictures which both the 5D and 7D produce out of the box.
I just sold my Sony EX1 and purchased the 7D. Because there are so many differences I wont get into any others than what you have brought up here, the quality of the RAW footage. The Sony had many ways of creating so called picture styles. The confusing thing for me, coming from the still world, was the jargon. The words for everything were totally different in the video world which took me some time to translate. However, once I did the Sony could shoot nice flat footage on a contrasty sunny day allowing me the extra room to add the appropriate amount of contrast and color later in FCS
Because I had used a 5D M11 for underwater footage, I was introduced to modifying the canon picture styles. However, had not had the time yet to create my own or get a good one for my 7D.
Thank you for pointing these out
I have downloaded them and will try them soon
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Thanks Marc.
I'm looking for a style that's flat enough to give me some headroom in post, but contrasty enough so that my footage doesn't look completely washed out during editing. Since you are much more knowledgeable when it comes to image grading
Thanks in advance!
--- Markus ---
Really wish there was an editor that gave one many more handles to wrangell it with. Something else to consider is old lenses! Old lenses with little contrast can make a difference and might just create a soft low contrast look and feel?
I have an old Nikon 20mm prime that I will give a try just for this reason.
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From what I have seen, you really need to go a lot less contrasty to make it look more film-like - not sure if an old lens would be enough to achieve that. Pictures styles seem to work reasonably well for that. Even starting out with Canon's NEUTRAL, dialing back the contrast and moving up the sharpness a bit in the camera could be enough for many situations.
I'd really be curious what you think of the "flat+10" style created by Ben Syverson. (http://rebelsguide.com/dl/styles/flat10.pf2) Seems to preserve a lot of shadow detail without flattening out everything like other cinematic styles. Marc, please do share your tests with us when you have a moment. Thanks.
image on the left taken with Canon's standard style, image on the right with flat+10
and do you know if it was done with the Canon utility?
Thanks
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I do not know what utility the style was created with. I'd assume it was the Canon utility. What you're seeing in the sample above is the flat +10 style. I may have set the contrast to -3 instead of the -4 and the sharpness to +4 instead of +3. But those are only minimal changes to the original flat style. The curve is the same and untouched.
The sharpening part is the really puzzling thing about video with the 7D. Video shot with any of the default styles (standard or neutral) looks almost a bit blurry. Finer detail is definitely lacking. By simply switching to the flat+10 style I am able to get a much sharper image out of it. Aren't the default styles also using some sharpening? I cannot check this right now, since I sent my 7D back in exchange for a new one. And when I bring up a RAW image in the Canon Picture Style Editor and switch to Neutral, the utility uses sharpening +3. Now that can't be right. I don't know why the app is doing that.
But the slightly blurry video was also noticed in a German 7D review, which focused only on the camera's video capabilities. They had no remedy for it. They thought Canon may have done this on purpose to set it apart from the 5DMII (which they said produced slightly sharper video images). So I was quite surprised that I was able to get much more detail into a 1080p image by simply using a variation of the flat+10 picture style.
Here is another example. It's a screen grab of two 1080p test images, scaled down in Quicktime Player and put on top of each other. The left one was shot with the camera's neutral style and the right one was done using the flat+10 one (with contrast set to -3 and sharpening to +4 instead of +3). The modified curve was left untouched. Surprising?
stunning! I am testing my 7D now
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Here is standard with contrast at "0"
Here is flat+10
and just so you see the whole enchilada, here is landscape picture style
I believe the flat+10 is a very useful picture style for everyday use. I did drop the files into FCP and was able to add the appropriate contrast as I am used to doing. A+ on the picture style
Regarding the sharpening, I need to test!
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Marc,
to answer your question, I got an e-mail from Ben Syverson, the creator of the "flat+10 style", who is a computer programmer by profession. He's the author of dvMatte Pro Studio 3 for Final Cut Pro and Motion (http://dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=dvmattep3).
"Flat +10 and the others are all pretty straightforward. I just used the Picture Style Editor. With Flat +10, there's a slight S-curve, and it adds 2 point of Lightness to the HSL of the midtones and shadows. The result is that it raises the black level slightly, giving a bit more detail in the shadows.
Hope this helps!
- ben"
I have been tweaking his style even further with Picture Style Editor. I'll post the results soon.
--- Markus ---
This is good news actually! I was thinking it might be some million $ program needed to tweak the profiles.
I am looking forward to seeing what you get.
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So I started tweaking the Flat +10 picture style to compensate for the red push. Then I remembered that the folks at Marvelsfilm over in the Netherlands had put a lot of time and scientific effort into the creation of their own cinematic picture style for the 7D and I decided to give that one another try. Not only did the reds come out very nice without further tweaking, I think the fact that their gamma curve is even flatter will come in very handy in post. Even without any further treatment, the Marvelsfilm style looks more natural and a lot less video-ish than other styles.
Here is a link to their website that provides a download link and talks in great detail about their style: http://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/canon-7d-picture-style-with-cine-gamma-s-curve-free-download/
Below is a gamma curve comparison of the two picture styles plus Canon's standard one.
And here are three test shots with some bright red fabric.
I did include Canon's standard setting - just to demonstrate how absolutely terrible it looks. All 3 pictures are blown-in cropped screen grabs from the 1080p 100% original size shots, so that it's easier to see what's going on in the red fabric.
First is Canon's "Standard" picture style:
It almost loses all the detail in the red fabric
This is the "Flat +10" custom picture style:
There is still too much red clipping going on in my opinion
And this is the "Marvels Cine v1.2" style
No clipping here and it's easy to put some contrast back into the shot in post
THX1965, I just want to thank you for your continued work and posting on this issue here on Dgrin. I have little to contribute to the conversation. But, I'm listening in closely and will likely be trying the Marvel picture style for my next project. I'm often discouraged by the tendency for Canon to clip the reds. This looks promising.
Thanks:lurk
www.ackersphotography.com
Philip Bloom achieved this with his 5D Mark II & 7D with Canon's own Neutral Pictures Style , modified so that sharpness was all the way down, contrast all the way down as well and saturation down one notch on both cameras.
http://philipbloom.co.uk/2009/12/12/the-tale-of-lucasfilm-skywalker-ranch-red-tails-star-wars-and-canon-dslrs/
Color grading was done in Final Cut Pro with Magic Bullet's "Looks".
Looks very interesting. They have a free trial version. I think "Looks" is a lot easier to use and better suited for simple work on a MacBook Pro than Apple's COLOR. I'll be giving it a shot for sure. http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/categories/color-correction/magic-bullet-looks/
Colorista looks very nice too... http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista/
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<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/15899547" frameborder="0" height="225" width="400"></iframe>Canon 5D Mark II Picture Style Test from Tyler J. Clements on Vimeo.
This is simply a test showing the default Picture Styles along with additional styles created by others.
Very interesting. I totally agree with you - "3, -4. -4, 0" looks very good. I am also not in favor of turning the sharpness all the way down (like some people are suggesting we should do.) What picture style did you base this setting on? "Neutral" or "Standard"
I based it off of the Standard Picture Style. I haven't tried it on the neutral but I'm sure it has a pretty good look to it.
Does anyone know how to load marvels cine 3.3 pictures style onto canon 7D? In fact, how do you load any 3rd party picture profile?
thanks,
nico
It's the first result here. Magic, eh?
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I just wanted to add a few updated thoughts on this topic. It's been a while since my first picture style posts and my first observations (especially the ones about sharpness) are in desperate need of some corrections.
Many photographers are disappointed that their video footage doesn't look as good as the stills they're shooting with their DSLR's. Well, creating great looking video footage is serious work. It starts with shooting with the right Picture Style and ends with an extended trip into the world of video color correction, also known as "color grading" among video and film professionals.
I have quickly put together a list of what I have learned over the past year or so. Still learning, still experimenting. Hope this helps.
1) there is no way around Picture Styles when shooting Canon DSLR video. If you don't pick one, the camera picks "Standard" for you. If this is good or bad depends on what you want to or can do with your video. "Standard" produces a contrasty, fairly saturated image with quite a bit of in-camera sharpening. For the casual videographer who just wants a quick video and doesn't want to go into detailed video post production, this is fine.
If you want to give your video footage the same kind of post-processing love you give to your stills, then "Standard" is the worst possible choice. But - this means work. Actually more work than correcting stills.
2) So if you want to go down that laborious post production route, try to shoot neutral, rather flat footage with no in-camera sharpening. You could experiment with one of the in erlier posts mentioned "flat" pictures styles, but most of the time, it's enough to simply pick "Neutral". If you want to go a step further, modify "Neutral" and set Contrast to -3 or -4 and also move Saturation down 1 or 2 notches. That should give you a flat enough image to with work with in post production. If you use a super-flat custom picture style, pay attention to skin tones. I they are too de-saturated/off, it may be harder to get them right later in post.
3) Highlight Tone Priority "on" can be helpful for video in high contrast outdoor situations. Blown out highlights always look like cheap video and our goal here is to produce "cinematic" looking footage.
4) So, with any of these neutral/flat picture styles, the resulting video will look more or less milky and soft. Ideal for color correction work later. Sharpening will be a final step after everything else has been done and corrected.
5) There are many ways to proceed from here - on a Mac or Windows system. It doesn't matter what editing program you use, you want to convert your H.264 files into a lossless, minimally compressed real-time editing HD format - even if your editing program can handle H.264 footage (like Premiere). H.264 is way too compressed for editing and serious color correcting work. You don't want to keep going down that road. It's like working with a heavily compressed JPG image and staying in that format for every tweak and correction.
On the Mac side - you could use Apple's high quality ProRes codec with Final Cut Pro as a non linear editor. I am sure Premiere Pro on the Windowds side offers its own solution for upgrading to a high quality HD codec.
6) this gentleman here takes prepping HDSLR footage to a whole new level: http://vimeo.com/19908622
7) My favorite color correction program/plugin is Colorista II http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-colorista-II/
It works with Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and After Effects on Macs and Windows machines. It's relatively easy to learn and gives you outstanding creative control over your footage. It's a gigantic leap forward from built-in color correction tools that ship with Premiere or Final Cut. Here are some great tutorials for Colorista II and color correcting video footage in general - highly recommended! http://prolost.com/blog/2010/8/10/colorista-ii-tutorials.html
You could also use Apple's Color which ships with the Final Cut Suite for example. It's very powerful but quite a bit harder to use and learn. Colorista II, for example, has some very unique tools/helpers for creating pleasing skin tones, something Apple's Color does not have.
8) After Effects: if you are serious about cinematic video, there is almost no way around After Effects. Plugins like Colorista II have even more power in After Effects. And I really like the sharpening tools in After Effects. Very powerful. Very high quality.
9) I know all this goes way beyond picture styles, but here is an outstanding plugin for removing noise and artifacts from video footage - and we do run into noise quite a bit when we're shooting even at medium high ISO settings.
http://www.neatvideo.com/ It's available for every platform for all popular video editing programs, including After Effects CS5.
I hope I didn't make all this too complicated. I just wanted to paint an overview of the entire process. We cannot talk about picture styles and not have a clear understanding of what that possibly means later on in post. This is by no means complete. There are many roads that lead to great looking footage.
That Colorista II is a powerful plug-in!
Watching a video tute over at Red Giant, I was instantly reminded of one HUGE thing that carries from Stills to Video: Get it the best you can straight out of the Camera. That may at first blush appear to contradict you, but it really doesn't. One or actually two of the scenes the gent in the tute starts correcting were, in essence, poorly shot or poorly thought out: Lighting. Just as important in Video as in Stills.
The power of a post processing plug-in combined with the Likes of FCP or AE makes for a ton more control and tweaking. Sometimes useful just to save an otherwise nice shot, and often useful for taking it higher!
I am sure you know all this, but as an addendum, it needed saying!
You are right of course, but may I remind you of one thing - and that is easily the biggest difference between working with stills and moving images - you're moving around with your camera, your actors/people are moving around in a shot/scene. Things around you may change constantly. Not every frame of every clip may have what you as a photographer would call "perfect lighting". Not even on an expensive Hollywood production, let alone on low budget projects. It's just not possible, nor is it necessary, since the narrative flow of a scene in moviemaking is way more important than the perfect image quality of a single shot.
In many of those Colorista II tutorials, Stu Maschwitz (one of the creative brains behind this software and an industry post production pro) uses those "problematic shots" on purpose as an example. (And remember - you mostly look at single frames in these tutorials - in reality you'd always have to judge the flow of the entire shot.) But it's exactly those problem moments you have to find a solution for - especially in dramatic filmmaking and especially if they're important to the flow of a scene.
I have started an in-depth analysis of the Picture Style Editor over here:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?262094-Adventures-in-the-PSE
Picture styles come in all shapes and sizes. Was once the craze to 'go flat or go home!' I'll be showing what is possible, and giving out free picture profiles.