I am frequently asked about picture style. There are so many internet sites making RAW picture styles, Flat picture styles, Panavision Genesis Picture Styles and all the picture styles in between for the Canon 5D, 7D, and the 1D. It is confusing to know which one to choose and I fell into a trap.
Coming from the world of film, I am used a lot of latitude and uncompressed 16 BIT color space. I want whatever will give me the most range so I have options when I get to the point of color correction. I like to bend it, shape it, stretch it, push it to have maximum flexibility and creativity.
So, I downloaded a RAW picture style from the Internet. It claimed to increase latitude in the highlights as well as digging into the shadow areas. I shot 9 shorts, 2 commercials and 25% of the Navy Seal movie on this. What a BIG, HUGE MISTAKE! It was fine for the controlled lighting set-ups that I had on the short films and the 2 commercials, but when it came to the big yacht take down in Key West it buried me.
Picture Style Menu
The Elite Team and I quickly learned that while shooting day exteriors, the downloaded RAW picture style made it impossible to gauge a correct exposure on the back LCD screen due to the light contamination. You could not tell whether it was overexposed or underexposed because it was so stretched to give you both ends. Consequently, we underexposed 25 or so shots trying to gain contrast. I will never repeat that mistake again!
After this error, we needed to rethink our approach. The Elite Team and I had a think tank session and came up with a new strategy. We designed a RAW file that I liked with the Canon computer software, that we called SEAL RAW. Our approach was to start with a neutral picture style with -1 saturation to expose our day exteriors and to light our day interiors, night interiors and night exteriors. Once the exposure was set on the day exteriors and the lighting was dialed in just before rolling, we switched from the neutral setting to SEAL RAW and then recorded on that picture style to give us the ultimate latitude. Our neutral picture style was equivalent to the final look of the film. In theory, it is similiar to a DIT superimposing a final picture look up table on the raw files of a RED One, Sony F35, Sony F23, Panavision Genesis, Arri D21 etc.
Neutral Picture Style
-1 Saturation to Desaturate the Reds
This is what works for my lighting and visual style. Which picture style fits your vision?
Tags: Cinematography, creativity, HDSLR Cameras
Shane 
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This is definitely a constant headache for me. I was shooting in the super flat ProLost settings and it works well* so long as I’m the one doing the shooting and editing and can control all my own work in post. Sometimes I’m just shooting some stuff to hand off to a client without editing first and if the first thing they see is a super flat image that is soft in color…I’m not sure they’ll understand.
Now I’ve decided that the smart thing to do is to look at the image on the LCD myself and see how each notch, on each setting dial affects the image. Once I have something that matches my vision, I’ll go with that.
Greg Connors, or Shane, or anybody else I would love to receive a curated version of the 92 picture styles.
I appreciate everything you put on your site and I think you are an excellent contributor to this community, I really enjoy that you share your experience but also ask for other people’s opinions.
*although I did notice adding sharpness in post is definitely adding sharpness to any artifacting that is present from compression.
Hi Shane,
A few weeks ago I was talking to a guy who works at Bad Robot and he told me to put my Sharpness all the way to the left, my Contrast all the way to the left, and my Saturation 2 points to the left. What would be your opinion about having my contrast all the way to the left? I’ve shot 3 spots with it and I’m happy but I wonder if I might be missing something. Also if you have a new recipe I would love to hear about it. Thanks!
Chris Saul, The Bad Robot guy is spot on. That is exactly what I do and then I bend the toe and shape the shoulder a bit. Your recipe is perfect, keep creating.
¡Hola, Shane!
I’m having to make due with the 5D’s built-in LCD, for the time being. That said, I’ve been overexposing shots (not that many, but enough).
Here are some examples:
http://www.dirtybasstard.com/leaves.jpg
(exposure matches what the LCD was giving me)
http://www.dirtybasstard.com/birdhouse.jpg
(a smidge brighter than what I was expecting)
http://www.dirtybasstard.com/pipe.jpg
(somewhat blown-out — NOT what I was expecting)
So … until I can graduate to an external monitor, what might be the ideal LCD brightness setting? (If there is such a thing.) I currently have it set to 5.
Also, can you recommend a decent monitor that’s under $1000?
As always, sincere thanks for your time.
Cheers!
P.S. In other news, I’ve had “The Skulls” on my PVR for several weeks … plan on finally watching it, this evening. I’ll send you my full review, in the morning.
Steve K, If you do not need anyone else to view this, I would buy a Z-Finder from Zacuto for 350.00 and call it a day. Set your LCD brightness to auto and you will be spot on with your exposures. An on-board monitor will be way worse.
Thanx for the tip, Shane. A Z-Finder has been on my wish list for some time—seems they’re not currently in stock anywhere—do you recommend the 2.5x or the 3x?
> An on-board monitor will be way worse.
Not sure what you meant there. Sorry.
Thanks again.
Have a great one.
Cheers!
Steve K, Hi Steve, you cannot judge color or exposure on any of those on-board monitors. They are just a viewfinder. 2.5X worked for my eyes the best. The LCD screen is the best representation of exposure and color that you can get.
Hi Shane,
Thank’s a million for what you’re sharing! It’s just fantastic, and a real blessing!
My question relates to the on-board monitor issue you were addressing above. I was wondering why I was getting the feeling that the scopes on my Transvideo HD6 were… “cheating” me… And to make I understand, are you saying that the HDMI output of either the 7D and 5D, even knowing that they don’t share the same specs, are both unreliable to evaluate proper exposure? That we should only rely on the camera’s LCD for proper exposure?
Also, on another topic, you were talking about the problems you had with the superflat picture style that you downloaded from the internet, and that it ended up being the wrong way to go. You then decided to create your own RAW look for SEAL… How did you do that? What software?…
Thank’s again!
Francois
Francois, You are very welcome. The HDMI output it perfect out of the camera into a lighting monitor. I use the Dreamcolor HP 2480ZX. You cannot judge exposure off of an on-board monitor. They suck. They are there for composition only. So you have the LCD screen on the back or a lighting monitor. My picture style was done with in the inner-workings of the camera with the picture style editor. I did not use any software. Simple moves of bending the knee and shaping the shoulder a bit, then using the contrast and saturation levels. They are not extreme. You can still gauge your exposure off of your LCD screen very well.
[...] One thing I discovered in shooting this project is NOT to use the superflat picture profiles that are touted by some. The results, even after a significant amount of tweaking in post, are, well, super flat. Especially the skin tones, which I’m not happy with at all. I’ve since getting much better results following the advice of people like Shane Hurlbut, who advocates a simple recipe. [...]