Graded Canon c100 footage

First off ,I would like to thank Neumannfilms for making his footage of the c100 available to download.  The footage can be found here:  http://www.neumannfilms.net/canon-c100-review/

I won't go much into the specs of the Canon C100 in this post. All that will go into my next post on what I would like to see in the rumored new budget Cinema camera from Canon.

After grading the footage from the C100, I got to see just how it handled. It handles pretty good, but the C100 has a price tag of $6500 and to get the most of the camera in 8bit 4,2,2 you'll need either a Blackmagic Design Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 SSD video recorder for around $328 plus SSD drives or an Atomos Ninja video recorder for just under a grand plus the SSD drives. Now you're looking at a price tag between $7000 to $8000 for a recorder and SSD's. For a price of $6500 I would like to see at least 8bit 4,2,2 in camera.

Grading the C100 footage straight from the camera I noticed when adjusting the curves to get some detail back instead of rising the mids I was dropping the mids a lot just to get some of the highlights and shadows back in the picture.  Another thing I noticed was skintones were alittle harder to get. The Vectorscopes were spread throughout and to find the "skintone" line took some time to get an even line on the scopes without it being spread throughout.

I will say the colors of the C100 look very good. The image is a step up from Canon DSLRs with a little better DR but nothing that just screams miles ahead better.  I was really impressed with the low light abilities, a few of the shots were at high iso's, one at 10,000 and one at 20,000. There is some noise but nothing a pass in a noise reduction program can't take care of. I thought the anamorphic file looked the best. After cropping and grading it looks the most cinematic.

 Test footage
http://vimeo.com/56536600 




Still grabs from the test video all are straight from the camera

pk films logo

I decided to mess around in Hitfilms today to see what I could come up with for a logo. I wanted to keep it simple but with some elements I like :) When I have more time to really dig into Hitfilms I will make it 3d animated. Thanks for looking.

Link to the logo
http://vimeo.com/56480139 

Kiron 28mm f2

I was looking for a lens around the 25mm range faster then f2.8 for my gh2 and Canon DSLR's.I went to KEH camera and started to look around the site and I found a Kiron 28mm f2 in excellent condition in Olympus mount for under a 100 dollars. The lens came quick and I tried it out and notice the aperture wasn't stopping down it was stuck wide open. I called KEH to see if maybe they had another Kiron in stock to exchange. They didn't but offered to charge me for a lower condition lens which was really nice of them. 

I went outside with my t3i and the Kiron lens. After taking a few pics, I wasn't mad at all that the lens wasn't stopping down. The bokeh the lens produce is really dreamy and even if it did  stop down, the lens would stay at f2. One of the biggest features of this lens besides the bokeh is the ability to focus down to right around just under a foot, making this lens a nice macro lens. I'll be using this lens mainly for close up shots because of its ability to focus so close and the bokeh . For the video side of things the Kiron has a nice focus throw for use with a follow focus. I tested the lens for video with my Gh2 and here is the quick test I did. 

Overall I'm very impressed with this little lens. Its fast aperture and close focus makes this lens a great buy. I'll be using this lens a good bit for both pics and video.

Test video Gh2

http://vimeo.com/54735097 

pics using the t3i

blurry pic but the kitties were fighting over camera time haha

Cineplus lightform Cinema

I use the Flaat profiles when I do shoot on my Canon dslr's for the added dynamic range it gives. Plus I like how easy it is to grade and the nice skin tones the Flaat profiles produce.

I started to look for a color profile that doesn't need grading, for the times I need a quick turn around or for someone that doesn't want the footage to be graded. I found Cineplus lightform picture profile. For a 19 dollar donation you'll get Lightform C, Lightform N, and Cinema picture profile. You can find the profiles here.
http://www.cineplus.ch/

From Cineplus website. "Relight enhanced dynamic range"
"Reskin perfect skin tones out of the box"
"Regrade grading ready headroom"

Lightform comes in 2 profiles. Lightform n "with neutral untouched colors, for those who want full control of the image in post production. Lightform n is suppose to have better highlights, skintones"

Lightform Cinema "with an enhanced version of the highly sucessful look of cineplus cinema picture style. More filmoc overall tones."

Both Lightform n and Lightform cinema can be graded and you can push the curves with out destroying the highlights. It is recommended to use these settings. Sharpness at 3, contrast at -4, saturation at -1 and skintones at +1. But if you want more of a balanced finished look set contrast at 0.

I loaded the Cineplus Lightform cinema profile on to my t2i. I already have Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p loaded. So I decided to see how it looked compared to them and Canon's standard profile. I set lightform Cinema at the recommened settings but I left contrast at 0 to see how good the image would look without any grading.

t2i Smallhd dp4 Glidetrack slider

This is the test footage
 http://youtu.be/eEhCX8mSqbg

When I was editing the clips the Flaat profiles were brighter and the colors more vivid. The Cineplus Lightform Cinema images looked flat and the colors were dull without doing any grading. The skintone shot looked like there was no saturation at all.

I went back to the edit and wanted to see how Cineplus would fair with a quick grade. I adjust the curves and added a little contrast. The images got a lot better with the colors coming to life.

With my first test with Cineplus I have to say you need to grade to get a nice image. I was hoping this profile would give a good image out of the box for quick turn arounds. But a quick grade does give a nice image and the time it took to grade isn't bad at all. On the vector scopes skintones were at the skin line just needed curve adjustments to really get the colors.
I'm going to shoot more with Cineplus with the contrast set at -4 to see how it grades. Now that I have my t3i back from repairs I will add Cineplus Lightform N also to see how it grades.

Here are some grabs from Cineplus Lightform Cinema with and without grading.

graded

graded

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Add caption

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graded

Gopro Protune review

Gopro just released the long awaited Protune firmware update. Protune unlocks some really great and much needed features to the Gopro Hero 2. The features it adds include. 24fps allowing the Hero2 footage to be cut with other cameras with out the need of frame rate conversion.
Higher data rate is now at 35mbps giving higher quality image with virtually zero artifacts.
Neutral color profile giving more flexibility in grading the image.
Log curve encoding allowing more detail in the shadows and highlights.
Cineform Studio automatically detects Protune and applies the adjustments to the images. Cineform Studio also offers a variety of color presents and color correction controls to help get the most out of the image. Also with the new firmware the hero2 is wifi enable and there is an Iphone app to make adjustments and view right on your phone.

Downloading the Protune settings is as easy as plugging the usb cord into your workstation. Cineform automatically detects that the Gopro needs to update the firmware after a few clicks  its loaded. Once loaded you'll have to go into the menu to enable Protune then you can select 24p.

I grabbed two of my gopro hero2's one with Protune and the other without. Sachtler ace tripod and Smallhd dp6 for framing. I started out doing quick timelapse with both Gopro's side by side. Took around 500 pics on each. After the timelapse I walked around the backyard and filmed the same footage with each. Not having the skeleton case I handheld the Gopro in one hand and held the dp6 in the other.

After I got all the footage and downloaded it. I started to look at the Protune footage next to regular Go Pro footage and the Protune is really flat. Like shooting with Flatt profile or Canons neutral profile turned down to 0-4-2,0. I opened up Cineform and put the Protune footage in and clicked on the button that says protune and the footage was brought alive. The colors became vivid and there is a lot more shadow and highlights brought out. I didn't adjust anything else. I wanted to see what it would do on its own. The one shot I did to see how Protunes would handle skintones I didn't do anything else too it and with this shot it appears that with all the added contrast you will differently need to touch any shot with people in them. The skintones weren't ideal at all very punchy and overly yellowish. I'll do some more testing with skintones. It might of been me using just the outside light.  Next I batched all the pics for the timelapse comparison right in Cineform which is really nice, no need to run a different software just to make a timelapse and clicked the Protune button and it applied the color correction to the whole timelapse. The colors on the timelapse looks good. Nice and vivid and the colors are nice and contrasty. The other Gopro footage I left it untouched.

 There were a few things I noticed after the install of Protunes. One being with the Smallhd dp6 hooked up it didn't show recording time like it did before the new firmware.I'll need to playback the footage to make sure it recorded which is not ideal if on a set and you have to take the time to check.  The other thing is you can no longer select the narrow setting for framing with 24p.

Overall I like the added features of Protunes. It makes the color correction in one step and you can further tweak them if you like. Without any other adjustment to the color correction it gives a really nice looking image.  The 24p feature is probably the best addition you can now film with the Gopro and not worry that you'll have to adjust the frame rate to match other cameras.

timelapse footage 
http://youtu.be/jieVl33iz50 
Protune on top, non Protune bottom


frame grabs from both go pros

hero 2 

protune

hero 2

protune

hero 2

protune

hero 2

protune