Ever since I started shooting 2 years ago with my first Canon DSLR, I've always used neutral 0,-4,-2,0. Unless I wasn't going to grade the footage I would use the standard profile. Shooting neutral set at 0,-4,-2,0 has always made for a nice flat image that gives plenty of room in post to grade and get a nice looking final image.
Last year a few different picture profiles came out that could be downloaded on to your Canon DSLR. The one everybody talked about was Cinestyle. Cinestyle is supposed to give the flattest starting image out of all the profiles. I held off to see how others reviewed Cinestyle. Most liked it but said that it was an over all noisy image after grading. I have never used it because my editing software didn't have the needed lut curves to recover the information from Cinestyle profile.
I recently heard of another profile called Flaat made by Samuel Hurtado known by @Simillaar on Twitter. He made his profiles off of Canon's preset with his own added touches and best of all they can be graded without the lut curves, so any editing software will work with Flaat profiles.
Flaat profiles are set to give less noise in the final image over other profiles, and ease of grading for skintones. There are 2 sets of picture styles one based off the portrait profile, and the other neutral. Both sets have their pros and cons. The portrait set has color shift issues. Blue tones tend to go a little heavy on the cyan side, but overall has better skintones. The neutral set was made to avoid this color shift but the skintones don't turn out as nice.
There are four sets of each.
Flaat 09 gives 9 stops of dr
Flaat 10 gives 10 stops of dr much like Cinestyle
Flaat 11 gives 11 stops of dr
Flaat 12 gives 12 stops of dr but can be noisy
I choose Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p
You can find the Flaat profiles here
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/download.html
I had just gotten a Kowa Bell & Howell 16h anamorphic and I wanted to try it out and decided to give the Flaat profiles a go against what I've been using neutral 0,-4,-2,0. I set both Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p at 0,-4,-2,0 also.
I shot using all three profiles on a Canon t3i with a Jupiter 9 85mm taking lens and the Kowa anamorphic lens. I used lightcraft nd fader when I stepped down to f2 and my Smallhd dp4 for framing the shots. The last three images I removed the fader nd and shot at f8. All three profiles start off with a flat image looking close to each other.
After all the footage was shot I began to edit in Sony Vegas pro 11 to get a timeline and graded in Magic Bullet Looks 2. I used a basic curve,contrast and 3 wheel color correction for all the clips. The curve adjustment for all were the same and I added the same amount of contrast to the clips. All the clips grading wise were very simialr in how I had to apply the color correction to each to get the vectroscope get to the upper third of the wheel known has the skintone line. Also with looks 2 there's a skin overlay which shows little dots over the person. The more dots the more the colors are corrected for skin color.
Neutral is easy to grade to get to the skin tone line in the vectroscope. And the image looked close to my subjects skin tone which is fair. The bokeh seemed to stay alittle flat but i wasnt graded for an overall image just the skin tones.
Flaat profiles are just has easy to grade. I applied close to the same correction to get the vectroscope where it needed to be.
Flaat 10n once graded for the skintone line ended up with more of a yellowish tint on the skin. But seemed to have more overall color in the image compared to neutral.
Next was Flaat 10p once graded for skintones gave a nice overall image. The skin color looked very good and the over all image looked nice and more colorful.
Here are the frame grabs of each. I noticed once rendered there was a color shift in the images making them more contrasty and yellowish.
Last year a few different picture profiles came out that could be downloaded on to your Canon DSLR. The one everybody talked about was Cinestyle. Cinestyle is supposed to give the flattest starting image out of all the profiles. I held off to see how others reviewed Cinestyle. Most liked it but said that it was an over all noisy image after grading. I have never used it because my editing software didn't have the needed lut curves to recover the information from Cinestyle profile.
I recently heard of another profile called Flaat made by Samuel Hurtado known by @Simillaar on Twitter. He made his profiles off of Canon's preset with his own added touches and best of all they can be graded without the lut curves, so any editing software will work with Flaat profiles.
Flaat profiles are set to give less noise in the final image over other profiles, and ease of grading for skintones. There are 2 sets of picture styles one based off the portrait profile, and the other neutral. Both sets have their pros and cons. The portrait set has color shift issues. Blue tones tend to go a little heavy on the cyan side, but overall has better skintones. The neutral set was made to avoid this color shift but the skintones don't turn out as nice.
There are four sets of each.
Flaat 09 gives 9 stops of dr
Flaat 10 gives 10 stops of dr much like Cinestyle
Flaat 11 gives 11 stops of dr
Flaat 12 gives 12 stops of dr but can be noisy
I choose Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p
You can find the Flaat profiles here
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/download.html
I had just gotten a Kowa Bell & Howell 16h anamorphic and I wanted to try it out and decided to give the Flaat profiles a go against what I've been using neutral 0,-4,-2,0. I set both Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p at 0,-4,-2,0 also.
I shot using all three profiles on a Canon t3i with a Jupiter 9 85mm taking lens and the Kowa anamorphic lens. I used lightcraft nd fader when I stepped down to f2 and my Smallhd dp4 for framing the shots. The last three images I removed the fader nd and shot at f8. All three profiles start off with a flat image looking close to each other.
After all the footage was shot I began to edit in Sony Vegas pro 11 to get a timeline and graded in Magic Bullet Looks 2. I used a basic curve,contrast and 3 wheel color correction for all the clips. The curve adjustment for all were the same and I added the same amount of contrast to the clips. All the clips grading wise were very simialr in how I had to apply the color correction to each to get the vectroscope get to the upper third of the wheel known has the skintone line. Also with looks 2 there's a skin overlay which shows little dots over the person. The more dots the more the colors are corrected for skin color.
Neutral is easy to grade to get to the skin tone line in the vectroscope. And the image looked close to my subjects skin tone which is fair. The bokeh seemed to stay alittle flat but i wasnt graded for an overall image just the skin tones.
Flaat profiles are just has easy to grade. I applied close to the same correction to get the vectroscope where it needed to be.
Flaat 10n once graded for the skintone line ended up with more of a yellowish tint on the skin. But seemed to have more overall color in the image compared to neutral.
Next was Flaat 10p once graded for skintones gave a nice overall image. The skin color looked very good and the over all image looked nice and more colorful.
Here are the frame grabs of each. I noticed once rendered there was a color shift in the images making them more contrasty and yellowish.
Video of the skin tone test
http://youtu.be/0HAYzA7K3MY
I decided to shoot around the back yard to see how each would grade and to see if there was a shift in color once rendered.
I shot 2 different images both 3 times with each of the profiles. Neutral, Flaat 10p, and Flaat 10p.
All clips were graded the same, I applied the same curve adjustments,contrast and color correction. The color for all 3 look very close. The only difference is the flaat profiles have a brighter overall image.
There seemed to be no color shift after rendering these clips.
Video of grading test
http://youtu.be/kzA_3oiXjEA
After shooting with the flaat profiles I really like the image that flaat 10p provides. It gives a nice image in regards to skin tones and a brighter overall image with nice colors in the highlights and shadows. If your looking to try a profiles that doesn't require a lut curve or one that doesn't add extra noise give the flaat profiles a try.
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| t3i kowa 16h Smallhd dp4, Jag35 rails, Sachlter Ace tripod |
Love this review!
ReplyDeletegreat review!
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