Dynamic Range For 7D & 5D MKll

Some people would argue that you shouldnt shoot flat because increasing contrast in post creates compression artifacts, on the other hand decreasing it doesn't show compression artifacts.

I understand what you are saying Norm, you're talking about data preservation in general. But I think this guy and many others are basing 8bit video on a false assumption.

The assumption is 8 bit video is bad because there isnt enough data.

I think that is false because engineers and computer scientists come up with very complex algorithms to create better and more efficient compression methods. Some of the stuff they came up with AVCHD for the 5d is amazing... Its designed to store lots of Data in a small file. Soooo 8 bit video 10 years ago was crap, but today its not so bad....

Have you ever used a zip file? Its a special file designed to compress data for web transfers, some newer forms of zip files are amazing (see winrar.) 6gigs can be shrunk to 1 gig.
you might be suprised how much you can manipulate 5d footage in post. I do it all the time.

I edit all my photographs in 16bit AdobeRGB, because I have the smoothest color and tone gradation, also Adobe RGB is a huge color space allows for greater editing.

I deliver my final stock images as 8bit sRGB because I have done my edits, which I believe are the best for my images, the end user will "tinker" with them in a much smaller way, so no biggy on the 8bit size.

AVCHD or H264 were developed as delivery vehicle wrappers, never meant to be stand alone formats, so the software developers have made it work as something the original developers never intended.

The whole 12 - 16 bit and flatten the image is a standard workflow pattern to enable high levels of editing by the producer, then deliver in 8 bit colored graded to your vision, which allows a small amount of end user editing.

These techniques are for only when the dynamic range of the scene exceeds 5 stops, normally I choose a picture style from the menu and stick with it for video.

Great blog post
http://www.canonfilmmakers.com/

Yeah I guess The RED people and the DSLR people are in a civil war.
But my problem with a lot of the red people is that they view the camera itself as a status symbol, as if it is the end all camera. They seem so focused on the uncompressed footage aspect.


Just to clarify this is kinda how compression works...
lets say you have a stream of data, lets call this the 'Raw' file:

1001001-1111-0000-101010001

the 'compressor' may recognize certain segments of code and put 'flags' in as shortcuts. so lets say X is a flag for a segment of code, ie
so 'X' equals '1111 0000'
or
X = '1111 0000'
(of course characters dont exist in binary, but its an example :P)

So now the compressed file is
1001001-X-101010001
which is a lot shorter than
1001001-1111-0000-101010001

So this idea that you "lose data" isn't Always true, you can decompress footage if you really want. compressed files are smaller, but that doesn't mean a lot of data was lost. Some data is lost obviously.

OK I would consider this guy more of a pro than any of us, or philip bloom:
http://hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2009/12/27/picture-style-how-do-you-choose/

He worked on the Terminator salvation movie etc, he thinks the settings should be

sharpness all the way down
color tone in center.
contrast in center
Saturation -1 (although since I know after effects so well Im going to crank it up)

So im revising my opinion about the settings, although im still right about compression ;)

If you take the sharpness way down, what does the effect?
I want to shoot with the best settings :-P
(I don't even have the camera...yet)

Do you bring back some sharpness in post? Or just leave it as shot?

I dunno... thats what he says, I havent tried it yet. Ive been shooting with the sharpness kinda high.

The main point of his article is that lowering the contrast all the way down isn't necessarily good.

Ok got it. I'll test with the sharpness down like he says.

I tried it, heres a clip of my cat with the settings.
http://www.ironstriker.com/blog/blogs/index.php/2010/01/05/my-cat?blog=1