Preston Kanak, mostly known for being the new addition in Philip Bloom’s team (of two) realized a video test shot on a Canon 5d Mark II between different visual styles for DSLR, and presented under his 3 minute short film category.
The video shows almost identical footage shot with the same settings and with only difference their ‘picture profile’. As you can see from the picture above, the test compares Neutral, Marvel, Cinestyle, the famous picture style from Technicolor that you can download for free here, and Cinema, the newcomer released last September and available for $19 here.
The video gives you a great opportunity to find out where your visual sensibility goes, depending how you are planning to shoot. Once graded, Cinestyle is the picture style that talks the most to my eyes, but if I was planning to go straight from shooting to sharing I’ll probably pick Cinema.
Watch Kanak’s video test and
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January 19, 2012 at 6:10 pm ·
Honestly I still love the dynamic range and contrast level of the Cinestyle profile. I want all the detail possible when I drag this 8-bit compressed colorspace into Premiere.
If I had a myriad of quick projects though, this Cinema picture style would save me a step.
January 20, 2012 at 8:53 pm ·
Cinestyle was by far the best setting. You crushed the blacks so bad in the grading with no detail, the daylight shots looked like a HORROR FILM with pitch black shadows – now you are welcome to grade that way – but it’s not realistic nor shows the superior dynamic range of cinestyle.
Also, why not sharpen it in post?! Interesting, but way flawed. Next time, do some grades that shows details in the blacks as well as you crushing them if you like that look and or blowing out the clouds.
duplicate comments? WTF? it won’t post?!
January 21, 2012 at 2:56 am ·
Dear gv,
although I’m flattered you think I filmed this test, if you read the article, you’ll see that Preston Kanak did, so you might want to ask him directly why he didn’t do it the way you would have.
I believe this test was made so people could see the different settings available. Again, at the beginning of the video Kanak explained that he accentuated the saturation for the purpose of the exercise. I’m pretty sure he is not planning to shoot a feature that way and will work thoroughly in post on his footage.