October 23th 2009: DOWNLOAD UPDATED! Please re-read and reload files.
We have worked on a Cine gamma picture style for the Canon 7D camera for the last few days, that can be compared with our PP settings for our Sony EX-1.
I think we might have a little premiere here – to our knowledge this is the first release of a Picture Style on the web for the 7D..!
Thanks to my collegue Bart Keimen (Marvels Film) for his measurements, calculations and general maths-mumbojumbo i couldn’t quite follow in the first place… 
The Canon 7D standard picture, also with Contrast dialed down, was too punchy for our taste as well as too saturated. With this new picture profile you can achieve a more refined “Cine” look.
This Picture Style, that can be downloaded to your camera with the EOS Utility, introduces a S-gammacurve that lifts the black levels is shadows and “low-mids” and compresses the highlights, resulting in an over-all increased latitude – and a decrease in contrast. This can be compared with a Sony Hyper Cine Gamma profile. Some viewers will translate the picture as “flat”, but it will give you much more control in post. Also, this profile is ideal for use with these particular 7D cameras that have problems with the Highlight Priority setting; the dynamic range of this profile has already been “moved” towards both highlights and blacks.
In isolation, I find that the cine gamma look is a bit more “true to life”; it handles overexposure more gracefully, and IMHO looks a little bit more like the way film handles highlights.
Since you still have control over the Picture Style settings, you can adjust the strength of the S-Curve by changing the Contrast value. Move it down to exaggerate the S-curve and move it up to flatten the S-Curve (more linear).
Marvels Film Cine-gamma S-Curve v 1.2 curvature
We have compiled a Picture Style for download. The sharpness, tint, saturation and contrast settings can still been altered.
You can download the Picture Style to the camera’s “User Def. 1″ memory by using the Eos Utility as follows.
- Download the following Picture Style file to your local harddisk (one file in ZIP archive): http://www.martinbeek.net/canon7d/Marvels_Cine_Gamma_7D.zip (updated oct 23 2009)
- Unpack the zip archive
- Connect the camera through USB and switch it on in LiveView
- Start the program and select “Camera settings/Remote shooting”
- In the middle of the control screen, click “Register User Defined style”
- Select User Def. 1, 2 or 3 at the top of the new page and click the button with the Open File icon
- Select the Marvels_Cine_V1.2_rel.pf2 file
- Click on OK
- The Picture Style is now downloaded to your camera. First close the Eos Utility before you disconnect the camera
- Enter film mode and press the Picture Style selection button (the one under “Menu”) at the back of the camera
- Use the thumbweel on top of the camera to scroll through the styles; you will see “Marvels Cine 1.2 as new selectable style
- Happy shooting!
Cheers!
Martin Beek.
I am trying to add this to my 7D, but when I get it set up, I can’t change the ISO like I can in M. What am I doing wrong? I have gone through a few times, but keep getting the same results.
This is an interresting issue! I’ll test again with my 7D tomorrow since i have a shoot tomorrow evening with that camera.
I’ll get back to you a.s.a.p.
Martin.
thank you!! can’t wait to try…
This sounds great. Just loaded it on my cam. My question is, do you still suggest turning on HTP? It seems the picture style has it off (or maybe you cannot adjust that with picture style).
Thanks for this. I was really looking for someone more numbers savvy to do this like the dozens of people who came up with great EX-1 settings.
Benjamin
I personally leave HTP off at the moment, because it still produces unexpected artifacts, like vertical stripes and other patter noise at all ISOs.
Our Picture Style already has better dynamic response in the highlights – but, admitted, it’s not the same. Let’s wait ’til Canon comes up with a solution.
Martin
I just tried this picture style for the first time this evening. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, but all the skin tones take on a weird orange or greenish tint, depending on the white balance selected. I was shooting under a variety of existing indoor lighting, including tungsten, florescent, and bright indoor halogen lamps. It was impossible for me to achieve anything close to a decent white balance with this picture style, other than going through the custom white balance process. No other white balance setting came close to being acceptable. Skin, particularly on faces, was also completely devoid of any detail, to the point where it was on the verge of appearing posterized.
Perhaps I just need to play with the contrast and tint, but something looks very wrong to me. I’m assuming you would see the same problem if it was actually something in the picture style, so I’m left wondering… what am I doing wrong?
David. You need to dial down the Hue setting to “0″. I put it on +1 (greenish hue) to emulate the EX-1 Cine color matrix. Think Fuji Film
Still, remains the fact that you should manually white-balance once your start experimenting with gamma curves. The green channel is known to be problematic in the 7D (not well calibrated in factory), so manual whitebalance is always the advised procedure.
Martin
David, I tried it last night and saw the same thing. Faces appeared almost like clay and everything seemed yellow/orange. Will try dialing down the Hue (is that the same as color tone), and try again.
Thanks, Martin for making this though.
This is so weird. I’d like to find this out a.s.a.p.
Spent a few hours experimenting. Used a model. No problems here, so i am both flabbergasted and concerned.
Keep me posted!!
Martin
Martin, I have some samples to email you. What is your email address? Mine is benjamin.j.eckstein@gmail.com.
Thanks,
Benjamin
Do I feel stupid or what?
It took me some time to figure out even where the USB connector was (it’s not marked on the body and doubles as an AV connector), but I’m having trouble following your install instructions.
What does “•Start the program and select “Camera settings/Remote shooting” mean? Is this a program that’s not included in the zip file download? All I can find is the ‘marvels_cine_V1.2_rel.pf2′ file. If it’s a camera program, where is it found in the camera menus? Sorry for the stupid questions but I’m a very long-time Nikon user and this Canon 7D is the first EOS I’ve ever had & I’m unfamiliar with the menus – which I’ve looked through and can’t find anything similar to what’s described here.
I am a Sony EX1 owner/user and I use cine-gamma curves on my other Sony camera (F900R) so I am anxious to see how this curve looks.
Thanks for any tips and/or a noob step-by-step.
The program needed to upload the Picture Style to your camera is the EOS Utility included with your camera. You can also download it from the Canon support page.
Cheers
Martin
Thanks Martin, that’s all I needed. First test shots look great, nice curve – good shadow detail. Will update after some EX1/7D comparison tests this week.
Thanks a lot
Martin,
would it be possible to get the picture style in form that it could be edited? Right now I cannot load it into the picture style editor (for my own tests only).
Please contact me at my email address.
Thanks
Uwe
Thanks for your efforts Martin. Haven’t tested it much yet, but so far it looks good!
By the way, following your steps, the Cine Gamma picture style wouldn’t stay on my camera after closing the EOS Utility. Until I realised I needed to register it as a Camera User setting with the camera still connected to the EOS Utility. You might want to ad this step to your description. I’m running firmware 1.0.9, perhaps it’s a small bug in the new firmware.
Greets,
Richard
Thanks Richard, that is all correct indeed; i’ll add it to the steps a.s.a.p.
Martin
Thanks so much for this! I can’t wait to experiment.
I was very excited to try this, unfortunately you can’t download the EOS utility from the Canon site.. and since I am traveling, I can’t get a new copy of the disk. Do you know if there another way to upload them to the camera? Can it be done manually? You mention that lowering the contrast on the settings in the camera itself doesn’t work the same way…
This look sso very promising for optimizing the 7D and perhaps later the 1D mark 4 do you have any samples that show your new S-curve gamma footage?
Love your ps!!. Looks what I’ve been looking for. I’ll check it in a comercial shot next week.
At your service..!
Ps. with tungsten, the contrast should be lowered a tad – sometimes skin colors kan look posterized if too low (tungsten) light.
Martin
Very cool! But does the this 7D picture style also work well with 5D MKII??
I heard that 5D MKII picture styles do work well on the 7D but how is it the other way around?
thanks for download
my softwarte (mac) WONT let me ADD any looks with the EOS software.
the entire area is grayed out on the interface.
i tried to load the doftware off the CD that came with my camera on 2 machines and the result was the same!!!
when i called Canon , they had NO idea why this was happening…
NICE.
any ideas would be appreciated!
thanks
Thank you so much for your effort! But I do have question. Can it be that this picture style introduces a slight color shift towards green? I noticed it when I shot the same object first with “standard” and then with the new “cine marvels”? style. Since the style is locked, I could not take a closer look at it in the Picture Style Editor. I tried putting the color tone fader on -3 in the camera which did help a bit, but I am wondering if this is the way this style looks, of if it’s something strange in my 7D.
Markus. Did you download the style after novermber 1? There used to be a (deliberate) green shift there, but not as much as you picture.
The 7D is known to have problems with calibration of the green channel, so maybe you have a model that suffers from that – maybe other users of this profile can comment on that here. I can’t find the problem with my camera (luckily). Thinks like this become more apparent if you lower the contrast…
Martin
Martin,
I have your style version from October 26. But now that you pointed me in the low contrast direction, I am noticing it with other low contrast picture styles too. When I load a RAW image and apply “standard” – gray is neutral, when I apply your or any other low contrast style – gray shifts slightly towards green. Is that the problem with the green channel calibration you were talking about?
Thanks.
Markus
Is it just me or is this flattening too much? You guys are reducing the dynamic range of the camera as it won’t record complete blacks or whites and compresses all the colors into the middle. That’s why skin tones start to look weird as there is no contrast!
Mikko… please.
Try to read about the subject of dynamic range before you start commenting.
For example, watch this nice little clip someone made:
http://www.vimeo.com/7256322
As an owner of several motion digital cameras which allow users to internally adjust gamma curves – Sony F900R, EX-1, and Varicam, I am quite familiar with this process.
Think of the entire box in the graph above as a ‘bit bucket’. You only get so many bits on a camera chip (bit bucket)and how you utilize them is essential to how much dynamic range you record. By bending the uppermost (highlights or whites) part of the curve, you increase the dynamic range by adding additional length to the curve. ‘normal’ video shows an almost straight linear curve from bottom (black) to top (white). It runs out of the graph area very quickly, and looks very much like the ’standard’ picture style in the Canon 7D – high contrast, limited highlight detail. By adjusting the curve’s highlight area back into the ‘bit bucket’ one can suppress highlight overexposure and go a long way towards retaining the data in those highlights which are usually lost when a ’standard’ curve is employed. The trade-off is a ‘flattening’ of the overall picture into a much less contrasty image. This is very easily fixed by tweaking the blacks and mid-tones (gamma) in either Photoshop, Final Cut Pro or any other NLE with 3-point color correction. Because you have preserved the ultimate amount of data possible, these corrections do not usually affect the image in a negative way but rather give you a much more detailed image in both the shadow and highlight areas because you can iris up into the shadow areas without over-exposing the highlights when you shoot.
Another way I’ve always looked at both still and motion digital photography is to equate it with color positive films vs negative films. Digital is exactly like shooting color positive (slides) and traditional still and motion film is usually shot with negative films. In negative emulsion films it is important to protect the shadow or dark areas whereas in positive film, one must take caution to protect the highlights. Cinematographers love to shoot film outdoors and shoot digital indoors for this reason. We are trying to level the playing field by utilizing gamma curves for highlight suppression. This then is what gamma curves like Marvel’s accomplish – with a lot less effort than it requires on broadcast digital cameras.
Hope this helps to explain things a little clearer.
Hi, the link to download the profile it’s broken.
Woops! My bad. I’ll fix it right away!
Martin
Ok! Thanks!
Works great for me.
Hi…
First, thanks for the settings.
I haven’t tested it yet, but I was just surprised you had sharpness at 3, isn’t it better to have it at zero (I’ve heard)?
Also I’m trying to match the 7d image (and my 5d too) as close as possible to my EX1… would you mind sharing your Ex1 PP settings? (I’m using the latest Ravens’ PP as of now, the one I found on Philip Bloom’s blog)
Thanks for the great help.
Ludovic.
ludovic.jolivet@gmail.com
I have been told by Canon Europe’s head of technology, that putting sharpness on “0″ is not a wise thing to do, since it does some calcualtions on all colour channels too that are important for the overall image quality. I put it back one tick from the standard settings nowadays; is that 3 or 2?
You can find my EX1 profile settings (as used for a number of short movies and music videos) somewhere on this weblog. Search for MY EX1 PICTURE PROFILE.
Cheers!
Martin
I have the same issue as the first poster. Everything has gone swimmingly, and I’m very pleased with the image. Perfect for CC grading, however, I have no ISO selection, the iso is being determined by the camera. This results in a sort of “auto gain/auto exposure. In my work, this won’t work. suggestions?
Hey, that is great, about the sharpness! I was beginning to think that it was actually *softening* the image as opposed to keeping it normal – kind of like what people do to get softer portraits… no?
Shot an interview yesterday as part of a documentary on the 7D with sharpness at “2″ – but i think it is still a little too much. I’ll go for “1″ instead of “0″ or “2″.
Had color on 2, contrast on 1 – all with Neutral profile.
Have a look here: Documentary test shot Canon 7D & Tascam D-07: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtG43GBgosk
Martin
Martin,
why did you decide to use Canon’s neutral picture style and not your own “Marvels Cine Gamma”? Not having to tweak in post since you were in a controlled environment when shooting the footage?
The lighting conditions were indeed under control. The “daylight” was tungsten light with filters. The image was already very soft; almost too soft. I did not only decide to use the neutral profile, but to throw-in some extra contrast too. Even then i’d to dial the gamma down in post because it was all as flat as can be.
Martin
I believe I have the same problem as Benjamin Eckstein (see post from October 25,2009): “Faces appeared almost like clay and everything seemed yellow/orange” when using the Marvels Cine Gamma picture style. Was the source of his problem discovered? Thanks.
Kelly.
No, that is still a mystery – as are a lot of things with the 7D internal processing – we have bought a black box that is largely undocumented. There are differences in green channel calibration because the Canon QC is (too) relaxed, which can explain the yellow/orange appearance. I use the profile mainly with daylight, with contrasty scenes. All digital video cameras, including the Red one, produce awful images w. tungsten light; lots of noise and bad skin tones.
Martin.
I’m sorry to come in so late to this discussion but I have a question that you guys may be able to help me with.
I’m using my 7D to shoot live music shows usually in small bars/clubs with not-so-great lighting. For whatever reason these places think red is the color to use for stage lighting and I find that no matter what camera I use, red light is just awful for capturing video.
Is there a picture style that anyone could recommend to get the best results in these sorts of situations where most of the light is red and usually at fairly low levels?
Thanks
Chris. That is not an easy one.
What the camera actually does to white-balance, is boost the blue channel and also the green channel to a lesser extent. Most of the noise will come from the blue channel though.
I have run into that specific problem several times (yellow and red light). If you really want to get a white-balanced pictured from it, you’ll probably notice that skin colors all go waxy and you’ll get a overall green hue. Another option is not to white balance at all; put the whitebalance on the tungsten preset and see what you can correct in post.
In other words, there is no instant solution i’m afraid.
There is one big plus: you’re using a camera that has really low noise at high ISOs, compared to a traditional video camera.
I wish you luck!
Martin
Chris,
I’d recommend creating a special picture style that desaturates the reds more than usual. I did some experimenting with it and I think you are able to capture more detail in red objects that way. You can always push the reds back to normal in post. It won’t be perfect, but I think it could help.
Shoot me an e-mail if you need help with the custom style: markusw-at-mac-dot-com
— Markus —
Thanks for the replies. I’ll work on a setting to pull down the reds and see what happens. I’m working with a new band that plays out often so I should be able to expiriment at some different venues too see if I can get some good results. Thanks – Chris
Hey guys
this is great. thanks a lot.
Martin, you wrote that because you were shooting your interview in extremely flat light, you opted not to use your profile. Im shooting a film that takes place mostly outside, with overcast sky and snow. Id hate to go out there and shoot only to find out the profile was a bad idea in such conditions.
what do you think?
also, with your profile under user def 1, can I shoot in Manual, or does it have to be in C1? I can change to your profile when in M, which makes me think this might be a stupid question.
thanks again for the help.
Aidan
Okay…the file works good in my 5d…but can’t you just get the same settings by altering the sharpness, contrast, saturations, and tone in the camera? I don’t understand why we need to go through this process when you could just post the setting? I think I’m missing something here.
Also…when I turn the camera off and back on the setting is gone and I need to re-load it. Even when I save all settings to the C1 , C2, or C3 switch. (I’m a new 5d user and it’s probably me…but nonetheless I’m not understanding this all)
Thanks for your help.
Okay….did some more testing. It looks like your setting is still there….it’s just that the name switches from “marvel” to “user 1″ after I power off/on. Is this normal?
I also see that your cine-file is not merely altering the settings that can be accessed in the camera’s menu – it’s altering the underlying gamma curve. Absolutely awesome! I color grade all my work, and this is a great addition. Thanks!
Rich.
Some users have complained about skin colors appearing waxy or like clay. Someone even said that people look like plastic with this profile.
I can’t say i agree, but maybe it has something to do with other settings or particular 7D’s.
Do you experience anything like that?
Martin
You’ve said the magic word: Snow! Definitely use the cine profile! You won’t be disappointed.
Martin
Yes, I did notice that with this setting, and the contrast turned all the way down (I figured turning the contrast down was the way to go) you loose some of the texture in some colors…mainly skin tones. But that’s easily remedied by each person doing some testing of their own and adjust the contrast to their ideal settings.
Here’s something I shot over the weekend with your awesome setting: http://www.vimeo.com/9139703
I had the contrast turned down all the way and you can see the result in some of the shots. I just know now to not turn it down again.
Hi there I’m new to my 7D and loving it great deal. I wonder why the camera in usb mode tells me is “busy”, and doesn’t allow me to see anything, nor even the menu. Just “Busy”. And it’s not recognize on the mac although the iPhoto launches immediately as I plug it in. The CD with the utilities software didn’t come so I’m waiting for it. Any Idea I’d like to download the marvelsfilm profile.
Thanks to all!!!
Hi Rich.
The contrast setting now controls the S-curve of the picture setting. When dialing it down, it get’s very flat indeed!
I am going to look at your vimeo video now.
Cheers,
Martin