As Endless Picnic reaches its first year anniversary, more and more feature films shot with HDSLRs are making their way to theatrical release. But aside from the occasional big budget Hollywood project that incorporates 5D or 7D footage (Black Swan, 127 Hours, Captain America, etc.) most are shown digitally, and rarely get transferred to film and projected.
Given that, I’m extremely happy to report that we’re in the middle of a truly exciting project: transferring test footage I shot on the Canon 5DMKII with a small crew in NYC, to a 35mm print stock, to be followed by a comprehensive evaluation of the results as projected on the BIG screen at Goldcrest Post in NYC.
Why the test? It’s for the exciting indie feature film East of Broadway Endless Picnic is producing with Hostage International, starring Haaz Sleiman, scheduled to begin production in February 2012.
Now on to the details…
PHASE ONE: TEST PREP
Given the limited production time and budget alloted for the tests–as well as a significant cap on the amount of footage that would be transferred to film, only 6 minutes–I knew I had to choose what to evaluate very carefully, and be as rigorous in my methods as possible.
At first, this seemed remarkably daunting. Where would I start? With something tried and true, like sharpness/resolution tests of DSLR lenses? If so, Canon zooms versus primes? Zeiss primes versus Canon primes? Or how about full frame sensor depth of field tests? (More …)
eco_bach 4:49 pm on December 12, 2011 Permalink
interesting and thanks for posting. Have you considered also considering Jorgen Escher’s latest Marvel’s CInestyle in your tests? http://colorbyjorg.wordpress.com/
Samuel Hurtado 7:10 am on December 13, 2011 Permalink
“I found that the CineStyle, while protecting the shadows and highlights admirably, desaturated the image to such a point that trying to return the saturation to skin tones resulted in a kind of unpleasant look–as if the footage had been pushed too far”
Same findings here. And still, I found a way to use CineStyle without suffering all these issues: these are the 3 custom picture styles I carry in my camera:
* CineStyle, with contrast = 0 and saturation = +3 (sometimes only +1)
* CineStyle, with contrast = -2 and saturation = +3 (sometimes only +1)
* CineStyle, with contrast = -4 and saturation = +4 (sometimes only +2)
Extended dynamic range, but just as much as I need for each shot, and pretty nice colors right out of the camera. Have you tried something similar to this? Did you like it, or you still find issues? (I’m not a pro, my eyes are still not well trained to find every IQ issue)
much more here:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/picturestyles/picturestyles.html
Alex Ricciardi 1:23 pm on December 13, 2011 Permalink
@eco_bach – Thanks for the tip! I hadn’t heard of Jorgen’s Marvels Cinestyle, but I’m a big fan of his DSLR Moire removal plugin. I’ll certainly check it out!
Alex Ricciardi 1:25 pm on December 13, 2011 Permalink
@Samuel – To be honest, I hadn’t done really extensive testing with modifying the CineStyle preset. Your post about it is extremely informative, thorough, and clear. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting. We’ll be sure to play around with some of those settings you suggested.
Samuel H 6:21 pm on February 15, 2012 Permalink
wandering around the web, I found this again today, so I thought I could post an update to my thoughts on picture styles: unsatisfied by the noise with CineStyle, and with the difficulty grading Marvels Cine, I ended up creating my own suite of picture styles: Flaat 1 through 4:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html