A While ago I posted a video on Youtube comparing the Atomos Ninja 2 ProRes footage to the Canon 7D Mark II’s internal footage. From that someone asked me what picture profile I was using and suggested that I use the Technicolour Cinestyle profile.
If you don’t know what the Cinestyle profile is, check it out here. http://www.technicolor.com/en/solutions-services/cinestyle
I’m very familiar with the Cinestyle profile but I haven’t used it for years. I found the bit rate of my old 600D just couldn’t cope with the flat look.
So since 2014 I’ve been using Vision Colour and Vision Colour Tech from http://www.vision-color.com/. They’ve been great and a joy to use.
Now I’ve got the 7D Mark II, I wanted to see how a flat profile would look on ProRes HQ footage from my Ninja 2.
Have a watch of the video below and then we’ll talk about it.
So what did I think of using Cinestyle again after so long?
Well to be honest I knew what it would do and it gave me a flatter looking image. But not drastically flatter I thought.
Where I did notice it come into play was in the grade.
Now to keep the test fair, I applied a Vision Colour Lut to all the footage (despite the fact that Vision Colour don’t offer a Cinestyle LUT – but they do offer a Vision Colour RAW LUT which is very similar to Cinestyle).
The colour rendition from Cinestyle was most surprising. Mostly because I hadn’t ever noticed how ‘blue’ Vision Colour was. It was particularly visible on this estate house. The Cinestyle shot was much closer to how i looked naturally.
Now I need to go away and test out some skin tones as I didn’t capture any people so that will be in another video.
Image Noise
Ok so this is pretty much where the 7D Mark II lets me down every time and that is with image noise. In the Cinestyle profile the noise is far more noticeable and after grading it does jump out at you like no tomorrow, where the Vision Colour profile almost hides it a bit better in those shadow areas.
At ISO 800 its pretty much an even match.
But at ISO 1600, its not something I’ll ever use with Cinestyle. After grading this is what it looked like (without any noise reduction).
A complete yucky mess.
This has a lot to do with the Canon 7D Mark II so its important to do noise reduction on your footage before you start grading, but I thought I would show you an extreme case.
So would I use Cinestyle instead of Vision Colour?
It really does depend on the project. For a more drama based scenario such as a short film/online series then yes I would use Cinestyle over Vision Colour. Most of my work however is in corporate video where turn around time is everything – which is where Vision Colour will win everytime.
I’d be interested to hear what you all think so feel free to leave a comment.
Until the next one