For people who shoot on 7D, and 5Dii

I'd recommend not doing this. It destroys skin tones, and turns mids to a pasty nastiness. If you want crappy looking footage, shoot with that profile. The flat picture profiles were a fad when these cameras first came out.

Stick with the neutral or standard profile with contrast 2-3 clicks down and use a good curves filter when editing. You'll be glad you did.
 
All of the switched pictures styles in that video were terrible, way to saturated and way too bleedy, just shoot neutral and color grade in post, the people with the best looking footage do it all in post, trust me.
 
I don't think shooting flat is nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It's just not as good as not shooting flat. The less you modify (compress) your footage in post, the better it will look because DSLRs shoot a very fragile codec (plus, less time spent behind a computer grading is a good thing to me). Instead of spending a lot of time with my nose deep in scopes, all I need is a minor level adjustment, and a complimentary push to my lows and mids. Then I have clean, vibrant footage.

I personally don't like the Neutral setting; Standard looks too MS painty to me... I shot this video with the Landscape setting, saturation and contrast two clicks up, sharpness all the way down.

Whatcom Falls from Landis Tanaka on Vimeo.
 
Another tip: set up your shot how you want it, then take a still photo in video mode. If you press the INFO button, you now have a histogram! It's not as accurate since its analyzing a different format, but it helps nail a good exposure. If done right, you won't even need to do a level adjustment in post.
 
Indeed. From what Ive seen in other videos it looks really pasty.

A friend sent me this last night, so I personally havnt shot in any of those profiles. The only one i loaded on my camera was the flat, because i thought it would help with urban shoots, I have yet to play around with it.

Eheath: I didnt like the vectra profile either. Way too "picnic"ish for me. Something youd see in a highschool girls picture on FB haha.

A question to both of you: would the flat help a low light, night urban shot? Or would the pastiness take over too much? Also could you balance out the pastiness in color correcter, or not?
 
Really interested in a knowledgeable answer to this question as well. Trying to 'fix' the pastiness would result in a very over-processed final look would it not?
 
What exactly are your reasons for using a flat profile in low light? why do you think it's better? In the end, the 7d isn't going to be able to capture a ton of detail in shadows at night, the camera just cant without adding noise and other junk. I think it's funny how everyone is trying to make the 7d perform like a $50,000 camera, when it can't. It's pointless to try and fight the limitations in my opinion. You'll have better results if you shoot with the camera and cater to its natural tendencies, you will get a much nicer image.

I was part of a crew who shot some in store video for a major electronics chain. We were using 7d's as b cams on the shoot. We were shooting with the Neutral profile. The end results were great. The 7d out performed the A cam and actually looked better. The footage was graded at a proper post production house on a proper color correction system. There is more detail in the 7d image than meets the eye, it just takes a skilled colorist to bring it out. I really think that shooting with any flat profile is not the way to go, but, that's from my personal experience and what I have learned from shooting with DSLRs in a professional setting.

Why fight the cameras natural tendencies? It's not a RED, it's a 7d/t2i/5d etc.
 
What do you know? Flat profiles are the best cuz it lets my sweet magic bullet effects do a better job, all you need for doing good edits with a 7d is a handle, flat profiles, magic bullet and twixtor. NOOB

(if you take me seriously then you are the NOOB)
 
Exactly!
Ive been messing with the minimal settings the t2i has because of these exact reasons.
No way i want to sit and color correct every shot. Or any of that crap in Looks. Wayy to much time when its practically a one man project and you can just shoot it right to begin with.
I do not understand why people just dont shoot it the way they want it to start off with. Yeah maybe you want to do something complicated, but most people want the same basic rich look (which is fine). why sit there, shoot flat, and then edit it in post when you can just shoot it that way to begin with? I just dont understand.
Another reason I love the HVX still is that you can shoot almost any look you really want just by changes settings on the camera if you know what your doing.
DLSRs dont have as many options, but can still get pretty close.

Good looking shots btw. I actually think i liked that look with the sharpness all the way down. I think mines only down a couple clicks. Ill have to give those settings a shot.
 
I turn it down on all my cameras because sharpness should be determined by optics and not computer chips, in my opinion. As soon as you have a camera trying to sharpen an image, you get a bunch of artifacts (on any digital format, not just DSLRs).
 
I dont really have any reason other than an experiment in my house with all the lights off and lighting things with my flood lamp. My results concluded that the flat profile helped brighten the image a lot, but as you stated before, it created lots of noise and pastiness.

After reading more on 5Dcinema, I reconstructed the experiment and modded the neutral profile to my liking.

Im not and wont expect my 7D to perform like a red. Among otherthings, Im just trying to make the most out of it and create the best image it can. Which is a learning process considering I havnt had it for very long at all.

Thanks for your response tho.
 
The tricky thing about DSLR's is that the 8-bit H.264 codec is already very compressed and therefore very fragile. Having worked with thousands of hours of DSLR footage in post, my recommendation is to shoot VERY slightly flatter than what you want your final product to look like. Underexposure can work amazingly in some situations, but it's extremely easy to underexpose the entire image and lose tons of information. You can always increase the contrast in post anyway.

DSLRs are good cameras due to their sensor size, not their colorspace. Shoot with your final color in mind. Extreme color manipulation in post is very difficult.

If you're looking for phenomenal DSLR advice, check out Shane Hurlbut's blog. He's the best DSLR cinematographer in the game right now. http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog
 
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