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Technicolor Cinestyle vs User Def presets?

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calif0rnian

Can anyone tell me the difference from the Technicolor Cinestyle preset vs if I make one myself that is identical? Is there anything revolutionary to Technicolor's preset?
If anyone can elaborate a bit, I would love it!


Thanks,

Ian
 
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The most important element is that the data is recorded in a logarithmic rather than linear fashion. It's not revolutionary as this has been used for years in professional digital cameras and in scanning film, but it's something completely new for DSLRs. If you made an identical profile yourself, then by definition it would be identical… Could you make an identical profile yourself? If you have to ask, probably not. While I don't intend to use this profile for everything I shoot, from the tests I've seen it does seem like considerable step forward.
 
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What I meant was the profile... I could in theory just replicate the settings profile just like Technicolors? What makes their file different from a custom preset? Was more in this direction I was thinking :)
 
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calif0rnian said:
What I meant was the profile... I could in theory just replicate the settings profile just like Technicolors? What makes their file different from a custom preset? Was more in this direction I was thinking :)
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In a previous thread someone linked to comparison shots between the two. They used the same settings on the camera for each shot, and there definitely was a difference.
 
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calif0rnian said:
What I meant was the profile... I could in theory just replicate the settings profile just like Technicolors? What makes their file different from a custom preset? Was more in this direction I was thinking :)
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Well, that IS what makes Technicolor's profile different. I'm not entirely why you'd want to make your own identical profile anyway, given that theirs is freely available? Given that this has been the results of months of work between people at Technicolor, Canon and members of the ASC I don't really think you're likely to improve on their effort.
 
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The Canon picture profile editor is a terrible piece of software for making any significant changes to the gamma curve of your images. As a result the various popular custom 'flat' profiles out there tend to result in compromises to the midrange of your image which can really mess up important things like skin tones. It appears so far that the technicolor profile avoids those problems, probably because by working directly with canon they can bypass the limitations of the profile editor software. Unless you have a similar direct pipeline to Canon I think it's unlikely you could create a similar profile - and it really begs the question why would you? Their profile is free, so I'm not sure what you'd gain by trying to replicate it yourself instead of just using theirs.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
The Canon picture profile editor is a terrible piece of software for making any significant changes to the gamma curve of your images. As a result the various popular custom 'flat' profiles out there tend to result in compromises to the midrange of your image which can really mess up important things like skin tones. It appears so far that the technicolor profile avoids those problems, probably because by working directly with canon they can bypass the limitations of the profile editor software. Unless you have a similar direct pipeline to Canon I think it's unlikely you could create a similar profile - and it really begs the question why would you? Their profile is free, so I'm not sure what you'd gain by trying to replicate it yourself instead of just using theirs.
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Sorry, I think you're all misunderstanding... I was just curious to what made Technicolor's picture style different from the ones you can make yourself. Now with that being said I realized while reading it that they developed it with Canon, so they probably just didn't do it in Picture Style editor. :)

Thanks again for explaining, I appreciate it.
 
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Don't have them online, but ran my tests this weekend. In low light situations at least it's the pretty much the best thing I have ever seen for these cameras. A fair bit of the frame was underexposed in some of my tests and the cinestyle pulled every bit of the detail out. It was nothing short of amazing. Definitely do as Shane Hurbutt suggests and use a profile close to your final look to get the exposure then switch to the cinestyle for shooting otherwise there will be a strong tendency to underexpose because in monitor badly underexposed areas still look really good.
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Don't have them online, but ran my tests this weekend. In low light situations at least it's the pretty much the best thing I have ever seen for these cameras. A fair bit of the frame was underexposed in some of my tests and the cinestyle pulled every bit of the detail out. It was nothing short of amazing. Definitely do as Shane Hurbutt suggests and use a profile close to your final look to get the exposure then switch to the cinestyle for shooting otherwise there will be a strong tendency to underexpose because in monitor badly underexposed areas still look really good.
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Well I shot an entire short film just last week with Technicolor's Cinestyle, and working with it now, holy cow!
Although because of my old Takumar 50mm (great lens) I've been having issues getting the lightmeter working properly, and exposing is a tad hard sometimes.
 
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Yeah, I am shooting exclusively on old Takumars (well except my 28mm which is an old Yashica off an Electro 35). I'm lucky in that I have the pricey monitor with false color, histogram, etc...
Shane Hurlbutt had always poo pooed flat profiles saying he preferred to bake in as close to his final look as possible, but he has changed his tune with this profile. As I said, he does recommend focusing and setting exposure with someting close to your final look, then switching to cinestyle right before you roll.

The difference between "neutral" and the cinestyle literally looked like 3 or 4 stops difference in the underexposed areas.

Next on the agenda is seeing what it does with the more problematic overexposed areas. From what I have heard, not nearly as dramatic, but an improvement.
 
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calif0rnian said:
Is there anything revolutionary to Technicolor's preset?
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The answer to your question likes within the link that Chili posted below:

chilipie said:
logarithmic rather than linear fashion. It's not revolutionary as this has been used for years in professional digital cameras and in scanning film, but it's something completely new for DSLRs.
Click to expand...

Unless you were to have an extremely detailed and technical understanding of the differences between logarithmic vs. linear color space there's no settings you could create yourself that would be "virtually identical." Because the technicolor stuff is designed for log; it's fundamentally different from that which your average (or even somewhat knowledgeable user could) replicate with purely in camera settings in the factory firmware.

Also, you should be able to do some testing with your camera and your light meter and find a point at which they agree; metering at 160 ISO (for example) is not going to necessarily net the same result as your sensor at ISO 160 in terms of exposure. If you are strictly talking about in camera metering, then ignore what I just said.

I find I make more use of the spot meter at the moment in my GH2; but that is a hold over from my way of exposing in stills with an AE-1.
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Yeah, I am shooting exclusively on old Takumars (well except my 28mm which is an old Yashica off an Electro 35). I'm lucky in that I have the pricey monitor with false color, histogram, etc...
Shane Hurlbutt had always poo pooed flat profiles saying he preferred to bake in as close to his final look as possible, but he has changed his tune with this profile. As I said, he does recommend focusing and setting exposure with someting close to your final look, then switching to cinestyle right before you roll.

The difference between "neutral" and the cinestyle literally looked like 3 or 4 stops difference in the underexposed areas.

Next on the agenda is seeing what it does with the more problematic overexposed areas. From what I have heard, not nearly as dramatic, but an improvement.
Click to expand...

Yeah man, it seems with Cinestyle a lot of the shadows are more visible, but also the grey areas are still kept. I'm fascinated how much more there is to work with.
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Don't have them online, but ran my tests this weekend. In low light situations at least it's the pretty much the best thing I have ever seen for these cameras. A fair bit of the frame was underexposed in some of my tests and the cinestyle pulled every bit of the detail out. It was nothing short of amazing. Definitely do as Shane Hurbutt suggests and use a profile close to your final look to get the exposure then switch to the cinestyle for shooting otherwise there will be a strong tendency to underexpose because in monitor badly underexposed areas still look really good.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update. Ive been checking some tests online on vimeo if anyone is interested. Just search for technicolor.
 
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I did a whole short film just recently with Cinestyle. I have to say I am pretty impressed with it, there is just so much more you can do without ruining the shot. That being said, I had to deliberately underexpose a lot of my shots, because for some reason the camera reported weird exposures and having it exposed correctly it looked overexposed. This was with the vintage super takumar 50mm though... Not sure why.
 
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calif0rnian said:
I did a whole short film just recently with Cinestyle. I have to say I am pretty impressed with it, there is just so much more you can do without ruining the shot. That being said, I had to deliberately underexpose a lot of my shots, because for some reason the camera reported weird exposures and having it exposed correctly it looked overexposed. This was with the vintage super takumar 50mm though... Not sure why.
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A few people have suggested setting exposure while using a picture profile that emulates your final, graded image, and then changing back to Cinestyle for recording.
 
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