A bit more about the new cine style picture profile v3.4 for Canon HDSLR cameras.
Martin Beek, who works as DP for Marvels Film, has approved my new picture style that i’ve devised for them. They requested this new version (as you can read in a previous article) because they did not like using the Standard profile as a base for the v.3.3 style. I’ve changed this to using the Neutral style as a base for the new 3.4, but that meant that i had to change A LOT about the curve and redo all measurements and tests. This Marvels Cine Picture Style 3.4 (a.k.a. Advanced Flat) will be used to shoot a indie feature length movie. This movie is a Dutch/Italian co-production and a lot of footage will be shot in Italy at the end of this summer. Looks and moods have been taken into consideration with this style, combined with all the pros of the default Marvels 3.3 style regarding “flatness” and skin-tone reproduction.
I have shot and posted a short test movie for both Marvels Film and you all, to see how it behaves regarding skin tones. Remark: skin looks a bit near blown-out on the right of the face in the graded version, but this is due to a gamma lift or broadcast-safe mechanism caused by the Youtube upload. My original seems a tad darker and less amplified than the Youtube result.
Use this link to view in HD: http://youtu.be/XwJl5oYzdH4?hd=1
Martin Beek has translated and edited my German instructions and explanations to him as follows.
(About the test movie on Youtube) Right image is unaltered image from camera (5Dmk2) using the Marvels Cine 3.4 style. Left image is after some simple contrast adjustment, no color grading. The last “bonus” part is a run through Magic Bullet Mojo.
The original image was white-balanced manually on a reference white card, but my camera has a slight shift to orange, that i have to correct in-camera one of these days, for the rest you can see that this new picture style offers the best skin tone rendition of all flat styles we’ve came across including our own previous styles. No “plastic skin” or other artifacts.
The style differs from the standard Marvels Cine 3.3 in two ways. This style is using the neutral style as a basis instead of the standard style. This is a setting that can easily be changed in-camera to personal taste. Further and most important, Jorgen Escher has delicately changed the curvature of the S-curve in such a way that the 65-75% luminance range, where among others skin tones live, remains linear and not curved. Some of you will notice that this was already a feature of the current 3.3 style, but since this profile is using neutral as a base, we had to adjust the curve.
This is NOT a replacement for the standard Marvels Cine 3.3 style, that can be downloaded here: http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/marvels_cine_v33.zip
This new v3.4 is an addition or alternative to v3.3 for those that don’t like the looks of the v3.3 in regard to orange/yellow skin tones.
IMPORTANT: Canon L glass AND the Canon DSLR cameras all tend to lean to orange/yellow. This is not a flaw of the Marvels Picture Styles – pick a raw image for inspection and see for yourself. We can only try to prevent further amplification of this hue in our styles by keeping the skin-tone luminance range linear and untouched.
The new Marvels Cine Picture Style v.3.4 (a.k.a. Advance Flat 3.4) can be downloaded here: http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/marvels_cine_v34beta.zip
Jorgen Escher 