Hmm… your original files seem overly contrasty… Didn’t you modify the default image parameters in the camera itself to give you a flatter look? Prolost said it best here.
I usually shoot with my various cameras with the flatter image look they are able to give me, in order to be able to color grade better.
Posted by Eugenia on 08/06 at 01:07 PM
Stu’s article would have been a wonderful reference if he’d written it about three weeks earlier.
In camera we set the contrast as flat as possible while also setting the detail to its next lowest setting. It worked out okay.
Posted by Art Adams on 08/06 at 02:03 PM
Art,
Some nice ideas, but coming from a stills background, I would say that 90% of what you have achieved with filters could easily have been achieved in-camera with no time overhead.
You were using a 5D Mark II, a camera that is immensly capable and one that can very easily have looks applied via Canon’s own picture style editor. Additionally, the EF 85mm / 1.2 L lens is often descrbed as ‘The Jesus Lens’ by stills guys who are in the know - its bokeh is legendary when wide open, so why stop down to f8 and then add artifical bokeh in post?
The whole concept of post is necessary to give a look, but is increasingly being used as a replacement for shooting correctly in the first place.
Nick.
Posted by Nick WB on 08/07 at 04:35 AM
“Why stop down to F8?”
As Art said, “I originally set this shot up at F2.8 but only the hinge on the front swing was in focus. I decided to stop down to F8 to hold focus on the first swing…”
Now, had I been the shooter, I might have stopped down to f8, but I’d use a tilt & shift lens to keep the distant playset defocused (and also might have let me get away with using f4.8 or f5.6). Mind you, this only works if you have a tilt & shift lens, grin.
Posted by Adam Wilt on 08/08 at 02:31 PM
Adam, Hi,
I agree your point, but the lens is SO capable, that by opening up and moving the focus point ever so slightly, the overall result would have been better than the softening in post. The bokeh on that lens is delicious. I have just uploaded this to my server to illustrate the point (It is slightly on the noisy side, as it was shot at 1600 ISO on the old EOS 5D)
http://tinyurl.com/kofpsd
I do have tilt and shifts (grin) and the 90mm is divine for creating soft effects - probably my favorite lens of all time.
Posted by Nick WB on 08/09 at 03:57 AM
Hi Nick-
Does the style editor manipulate video files? I have it, but haven’t tried it—as best I can tell, you can’t ordinarily get it if you don’t own the camera, and I don’t, so I had to get it from the owner.
As for in-camera filtering, I suppose you’re right to some extent. We were dealing with a four-year-old, so it was nice not to have to deal with precise placement of grads and such. Time was critical. But the other point I would make is that I’m not a camera owner/operator and my filter collection is limited to ND’s and hot mirrors. Any other filter is going to be rented with the camera, and the point of renting cameras like the 5D, or the EX cameras, or the smaller Panasonics, is not to spend a lot of money. These days adding $50 worth of filters to a camera order can, on some money-strapped projects, be a big deal.
And I suspect that there are a lot of 5D owners who don’t bother with filters anymore because they’ll tweak their own work in Photoshop.
As for stopping down to f8, as I said in the article the depth of field was too shallow in the foreground so it was easier to stop down and add the “focus blur” in post. Had I known this lens’s bokeh was legendary I probably would have shot two shots—one at f8 and one at f2.8—and blended them in post, using the f8 shot on the left for the swings and the f2.8 on the right for the background.
Posted by Art Adams on 08/09 at 03:21 PM
Hi Art,
The picture styles do manipulate video files. The quickest way to try this is to go into the menu and choose Picture Style > Monochrome and shoot a few seconds. The picture styles are customizable through the camera menus or via the Picture Style Editor that gives many options for contrast, colour, sharpening and more.
See the site here: http://tinyurl.com/ksq4d2
One of the quick ways to check a look is to shoot a RAW file and use the pull down menu in the included Digital Photo Professional (DPP) to see the effect of all the picture styles on the image.
Photoshop et al are fine for manipulation, but there is much to be gained from good old fashioned camera skills and filtering is much a part of that. Still cameras shoot RAW (as so some video cams), but noise levels in the final image are much higher if the white balance is tweaked in post as opposed to filtering the camera correctly when shooting.
So saying, you are absolutely right when talking of the key reason for 5D: cheapness and smallness - there is nothing like it for unobtrusive shooting and a small bag on the shoulder - especially when little people are involved!
Posted by Nick WB on 08/11 at 06:45 AM
Hi Art-
Finally read this post all the way through—I just bought* a 5D, used it on a shoot already, and now I’m just figuring out how to manipulate the files after, even if I’m not going to be the post person most of the time. Still need to know what’s going on. Thinking of buying (There’s that euphemism again) Magic Bullet. I take it that you find it much more useful than using the 3way color corrector in final cut?
Also, did you convert the files to ProRes to work with them?
You seem pretty happy with the apple cinema color display. That’s the high end of what I can spend on a monitor I’m using to learn with as opposed to one I would buy as an editor hanging out a shingle as a colorist.
Happy New Year!
Steve
*This is my Euphemism for burning out my credit card despite the slow year, and pretending that a busy december at all made up for it. Still- it’s my first new SLR in 30 years and there’s quite a learning curve compared to my old Olympus.
Posted by Steven Bradford on 12/31 at 12:27 PM
Hey Steve,
Grab a Dell 24” - about half the price of the Apple and good for accuracy + much larger color gamut (there is one for around $500 - google for recommendations). If you can stretch, spend $200 on an EyeOne Display 2 to get the monitor perfect.
Set your 5D2 to shoot in sRGB and use a custom white balance and you are most of the way to good colour. Magic Bullet Colorista is excellent for the rest.
Have fun!
Nick
Posted by Nick WB on 12/31 at 12:36 PM
Hi Steve-
Magic Bullet was fun for a while, but I’ve finally become dangerous in Color and I love it. It’s the real thing. It’s buggy, and there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it does amazing stuff. Magic Bullet Looks is faster, and you don’t have to leave the timeline to use it, so just go with whatever fits your style.
I bought two Apple Cinema Displays because they were cost effective at the time, but I’ve since learned that they really aren’t pro, or prosumer, monitors. No two are the same, and each time I bought one I had to return it due to inconsistencies in color. One’s LCD died while under warranty and the replacement LCD is a completely different color from my other one, and I can’t quite get them to match.
I’d love to recommend them, but I can’t. HP has a series, the Dreamcatchers, which is supposed to be excellent but might be a bit pricey.
Nick’s advice looks good to me.
Posted by Art Adams on 12/31 at 12:58 PM
Thanks! Art do you think there is an advantage then to using magic bullet before diving into Color? I have the color from FC Studio 2. I like not leaving the timeline.
Nick, thanks so much for the monitor advice. I’d been looking around on the web at different monitor recommendations, and discovered that Dell, it looked promisin. Apple has their curren Cinema display in a refurb for $599, but it only works with the latest macbooks. I also was checking out the much more expensive LaCie but it seems to have some issues too. The one I find is the Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP, for around $430. I may pull the trigger today so I can put it on last years taxes.
And I’ll start shooting my stills on sRGB now. I’ve been shooting at the highest JPG level, as I’ve been figuring out the camera, got a few hundred shots down. Just wish I could shoot video in sRGB mode! I really need to completely understand the histogram too. I’m an old time waveform monitor and vectorscope guy.
Are you saying that it’s better to set the camera to a single WB, say 3200 or 5000, and only correct with filters? If so, which is better? Or is it okay to use the incamera WB settings? I really like that I can dial in a specific numeric WB, never had that capability before, which is real handy for low light or theatrical shows and other environment where the WB is all over the place from multi sources.
Posted by Steven Bradford on 12/31 at 05:11 PM
Magic Bullet is modular and easy to use. Color is way more powerful but not quite as easy. Your call.
For stills work I’d stick with Adobe RGB as that color space is much bigger than sRGB and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have that available. I believe the camera defaults to sRGB for video mode.
The histogram is easy. Check this out:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml
The histogram won’t be available in video mode unless they’ve radically upgraded the camera software.
You’ll want to white balance carefully with the 5D in video mode. It’s only recording 8-bit VBR so it’s highly compressed and baked-in. You don’t want to have to fix it later.
I have no idea whether it works noticeably better if you use filters to white balance. Keep in mind every silicon sensor is naturally daylight balanced because silicon is less sensitive to short wavelengths of light: since it is less sensitive to blue you need a lot more of it to make a clean blue signal. Daylight has tons of blue, so no problem. Tungsten, not so much—which is where some cameras (like the RED) get in trouble. Most cameras deal with this issue without bothering the user, and the 5D in still mode has no problem with tungsten stills. But it might be worth doing a test with video under tungsten light and see if there are any changes in noise or color rendition.
Video mode on the 5D is its own animal.
Posted by Art Adams on 12/31 at 05:49 PM
Steve, Art, Happy New Year!
The camera shoots in whatever color space is set, so avoid Adobe RGB for video, it will give de-sat and incorrectly colored images in FCP. sRGB is very close to Rec709 without the cutoff for 16 / 235
Steve, turn off the auto white balance, but set a custom white balance for each scene that you shoot (check manual - very simple). This will give the best results. If you can, shoot stills as RAW - this makes a huge difference for any tweaking that you do to the images as you have the full 14 bts of data per pixel to work with. Lightroom / Aperture or Capture One will give you the best results for image processing.
With histograms, bear in mind that the extreme highlight stop (right) contains half of the data in the image, so expose as bright as possible without clipping the highlights - look at flashing highlight warnings in the camera menu, but be aware that that highlights in camera represent 0-255, so not all the detail can be held above white in video.
Art, Filters do give the optimum results for noise when working FI under tungsten light, but we are talking very small percentages here.
Steve, going back to the monitors: the Apple 24 is a consumer toy, the gamut is substantially smaller than sRGB and not up to Pro work - hoping for new models soon. LaCie are re-badged NECs but their customer service is renowned for being awful. Dell is a good option or for more, take a look at Eizo - top of the tree in the stills world - any have self calibration options.
Have fun - I have been making the reverse journey over the last 2 -3 years after 20+ years as a stills photog.
Posted by Nick WB on 01/01 at 05:20 AM
Thanks, Art, Nick!
This is very helpful.
And I ordered the Dell last night, along with the Eye One Display 2 calibrator. I’m a hands on learner, but I have to have theory too as I move along, so I can understand what the heck is going on.
Posted by Steven Bradford on 01/01 at 01:39 PM
Glad you have got the Eyeone Steve.
Grab the latest software from the Xrite support site (rather than using the CD) and aim for the following targets (very straightforward - you will see in the software). Worth using advanced mode first time - it will get you to go through the monitor setting to calibrate the color prefectly and then create a profile.
Gamma 2.2, 6500 Kelvin / D65 and luminance 100 - this should set you up perfectly for videos and stills.
Grab a copy of this .pdf http://tr.im/Jbds-his
I wrote it for Canon a few years back, but still relevant except product names). It should help explain some stuff.
Posted by Nick WB on 01/01 at 03:03 PM
In case anyone else reading this article reads through the comments, I thought I’d update my experience, so no one else falls in the same trap I did.
First, the Eye One from xyrite is essentially worthless. I finally gave up on it. The software seems to have been written in years ago, and the calibrations I got were wildly inconsistent. I think this may also be because the DELL is so bright. I could barely bring the contrast and bright controls down to the range the EyeOne wanted to see.It apparently expects to see older CRT monitors, even though the software supposedly supports LCDs.
After a few months the Dell started going black intermittently. Dell support consists of messages boards on which customers talk to each other. This is a known problem with no consistent solution. ultimately the monitor went completely black. It’s “on” because the USB connectors work, but the power switch and display are dark. Dell won’t support it because I bought it from Amazon and don’t have an official Dell order number. This is no longer sold new, so if someone tries to sell you one used, run away!
Posted by Steven Bradford on 08/03 at 01:03 PM
Many video people have been very impressed with the Eye One, indeed Shane Rosss wrote about his experiences with one and a Matrox MXO setup a while back. Eye One devices are known for their consistency which is why so many people use them. The software looks a little clunky, but it is consistent (ensure you have the latest version), and it is updated regularly)
Eye One Match software (and its professional cousin Profile Maker Pro) is designed for LCD monitors and has been in use for calibrating such devices for nigh on 10 years. Correct use allows the matching of screens on laptops, workstations and LCD TVs. Perhaps most most usefully for video professionals, a calibrated LCD matches very closely indeed to a broadcast monitor.
There is an issue with the latest LCD displays being extremely bright; currently the calibration standard luminance for a monitor for both stills and video is around 120cd/m, the average LCD now comes in at 3-400 cd/m but the calibration standard is there to ensure that everyone can see the same image on screen.
The video world is starting (at last!) to adapt common standards that have been the norm for stills work for 10-15 years.
Interestingly Sky have been carrying out a mass trial in Brazil, where users are utilising a cheaper XRite Huey device and modified software to calibrate their home TVs.
Posted by Nick WB on 08/03 at 02:47 PM
Well, mine doesn’t work worth a damn. That’s my personal experience. I boxed it up 6 months ago after it gave me weird false color results. It didnt’ come close to matching itself between setups. It had no more consistency than drawing random color chips out of a barrel would. Sometimes it gave wildly inaccurate color. Couldn’t get any help out of xyrite’s website. Tried both the simple and advanced modes.
If you’re supposed to know how to use it before knowing how to use it, then that’s just as worthless. I can only guess that it’s meant to be used by people who are specifically trained on it. Because just following the directions for the software doesn’t do it. I really need to unload it on ebay or something.
I did finally get a hold of someone at Dell support who would deal with my monitor even though I bought it from Amazon instead of directly from Dell. (The first person I talked to refused to deal with it.) They’ve said they’ll replace, so I guess I’m better off than the folks who have the intermittent black out problem.
It would be nice to be able to have a calibrated monitor for under $800, but this sure isn’t the combination to accomplish it.
Posted by Steven Bradford on 08/03 at 05:44 PM
Steve,
I’m not going to start acting as tech support, but strongly suggest you contact the dealer as there is obviously an issue. These devices so straightforward to use. I provide them to clients as a matter of course to ensure their monitors are showing accurate colour.
Glad to ear your have resolved the Dell issue.
Nick
Posted by Nick WB on 08/04 at 02:59 AM
