Marvels Cine shooters, please help keeping my IMDb page!

Dear Marvels Cine Profile users. A little cry for help 😉
Your assistance is much appreciated..!

My IMDb page is in danger of being deleted because it has only been updated with one short (festival) credit ever since 2004. The fact that i’m working on two feature films to be released in 2013 and 2015 are not taken in consideration. You can help me keeping my IMDb page by adding my name MARTIN BEEK to the credits of your IMDb-listed movie (short, doc, feature), if you’ve used our free Marvels Cine profile/Canon DSLR in any way on that production. Preferably under the crew role of “camera and electrical department->Color Consultant or Digital Image Technician or some other IMDb preset that has to do with camera, color or digital processing. Credited or uncredited does not matter, neither does the year of release.

Many many thanks and kind regards,

Martin Beek – Marvels Film
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3727391/

Marvels Picture Styles, Plugins and donations

Marvels film, Jorgen Escher (colorbyjorg.wordpress.com) and i have published a number of free Picture styles (a.k.a. recipies, picture profiles, looks) and a free plugin for Final Cut Pro.

I don’t want to link to the files directly here, but list the URLs where you can download the latest version of each.

All these products are free and free to use (also professionally) and to share, with the sole exception that you may not charge money for it.

If you like the free Marvels profiles and/or plugins, you can make a small donation via PayPal by clicking the button below. This is voluntary and much appreciated 😉 Donations will be spent annually (usually around Christmas) as a donation to a good cause. On december 23th 2011, the amount of 414 Euros was donated to Save The Children, via eBay MissionFish. Thanks for your donations!

• Marvels Cine Picture Style for Canon DSLR cameras v.3.4
  This special picture style for Canon DSLR (video) D-series cameras such as the 1D, 5D, 7D, 50D and others, has become very popular by both DSLR enthousiasts and professionals equally. Several feature films and many short films shot by the Canon 5Dmk2 have been shot using the Marvels Cine picture style.
  Also referred to, in many publications on the web, as: Marvels Advance, Marvels Flat, Marvels Cinestyle, Marvels Cine, Marvels Advanced flat, Marvels Panalog, and other…
  These are all names for one and the same product and it’s official page is here: https://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/marvels-cine-canon/

• DSLR Moire Filter for Final Cut Pro v.1.01
  This FCP plugin battles the disturbing problem of micro-moire. Micro-moire manifests itself as red/blue color streaks and pixels that appear in natural and irregular patterns, such as hair, water and grass. Micro-moire is seldom visible on the camera’s LCD display and sometimes not even on a 7? external monitor. Many a good shot has been spoiled. Get them back off the shelf and run them through this new filter!
  Cameras that are prone to deliver this artifact are the Canon D series DSLR cameras, such as the 5D, 7D, 50D and others.
  The official page is here: http://colorbyjorg.wordpress.com/plugins/

• Panasonic AF100/101 flat picture style for cinematic look
  This is a set of manual settings for the Panny AF100/101 camera that was used for shooting several short movies and a feature film production.
  The official article is here: https://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/panny-af100-af101-flat-picture-style-for-cinematic-look/

• Sony EX-1 flat picture profile for cinematic look 
  Before we had HDSLR cameras, i had to use either 16/35mm film cameras or HD videocameras with a “Depth of Field” adapters. I’m glad to say that this all belongs to the past now, but i still have fond memories of my first Sony HD camera, which was the EX-1 and later the EX-3. We used both the RedrockMico and Shoot35 DOF convertors and Nikon & Zeiss lenses. To program the camera in such a way that the imagery was matching 35mm film, we developed this picture profile.
  The official article is here: https://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/all-new-sony-ex1-picture-profile-for-cinematic-look/

• Red Epic & Red Scarlet looks files: coming soon…

Marvels Cine Picture Style 3.4 test movie

UPDATE: please follow the link “marvels cine for hdslr” at the top of this blog for more information and updated profile.

Jorgen Escher has published some new information about the Marvels 3.3 and 3.4 picture styles we will be using on an indie feature length production this year. He explains the differences between 3.3 and 3.4 and my (our) motivations to make changes to the default 3.3 style.

Jorg (for short) has also published a short test movie on his blog and on Youtube.

You can find Jorg here:  http://colorbyjorg.wordpress.com.  Jorg is an optical reserach engineer with the Fraunhofer institut, Darmstadt Germany and knows a lot about colorimetrics.

Follow that guy! @colorbyjorg

Phil Holland’s test images w. Marvels Cine 3.3 picture style

UPDATE: please follow the link “marvels cine for hdslr” at the top of this blog for more information and updated profile.

Click on the block above to jump to Phil’s article.

Installing Canon Picture Styles For Dummies

Just joking; i don’t want to appear presumptuous 😉  Here is a short step-by-step instructions to upload a Picture Style to your Canon D series or T2i DSLR camera, for those who have trouble figuring this out in a hurry. So a better title for this post would’ve been “Installing Canon Picture Styles for the Impatient”. (Looking for styles? Look here and here!)

1. Surf to Canon’s instructions here, and/or follow the steps below… UPDATE: another nice and useful link.
2. Install or update the latest version of Canon’s EOS Utility for your PC or Mac from this link:  http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0010513.asp Donb’t worry about the camera model; the software is  identical for all models.
3. Connect your camera to your computer via USB and switch it on.
4. Start the EOS Utility and click the menu button “Camera Settings / Remote Shooting”
5. Select the camera icon (red) and ‘Picture Style’.
6. Click ‘Detail set’.
7. In the new window that appears, Select one of the User Def. items from the drop down menu at the top of the screen, and then click the ‘Open’ button.
8. In the dialog window that opens, select the Picture Style file you have previously downloaded. This will transfer the style to your camera.
9. The uploaded profile will now reside under the selected User Def (1..3) picture profile on your camera.
10. Go shoot some footage..!

11. Stay up to date by “Liking” http://www.facebook.com/marvelsfilm

Finally, the new Marvels Cine Picture Style 3.x for Canon DSLR

UPDATE: please follow the link “marvels cine for hdslr” at the top of this blog for more information and updated profile.

Stay up to date by “Liking” http://www.facebook.com/marvelsfilm

Update: Phil Holland has published an article with pictures about his experiments with this new picture style here.

Canon Neutral style, contrast all down                                 Marvels Cine 3.3 style

As i wrote before in an earlier post, i was not particularly satisfied with the version 2.x picture styles i published as alternatives (NOT replacements) to the renowned and widely used Marvels Cine Picture Style for the Canon D and T/Rebel series vDSLR cameras.

With all due respect to Bart Keimen who provided most of the 2.x styles, i was not confident in using them for production work, and i sticked to the good old Marvels Cine style. I was contacted in december 2010 by colorist and formerly Fraunhofer institute scientist Jorgen Escher, who offered to help me with developing and testing a new Marvels Cine picture style successor.

After having shot a lot of footage with many many styles on both commercial and indy production work since 2009, using the 7D and the 5DMKII, and after receiving much feedback and many test reports and -footage from you all, i’ve come to a number of conclusions.

• the Canon picture style editor sucks
• picture styles that are too flat (pronounced S-Curves) do result in chromatic anomalies such as “plastic skin”, and gaps/irregularities in the histogram
• the standard method of flattening (contrast all the way down, color 2 pegs down) is not flat enough
• the Neutral picture style is colorimetric not ideal, to use as a basis for developing new flat styles
• the Canon picture style  still sucks
• the middle part of any S-curve (approx. 40-75% brightness ) should be kept linear to protect skin colours and exposure. The camera already has it’s own s-Curve that changes with the build-in style! Let’s not forget that! We are applying a curve to a curve! Using reference cards and precise measurement reveals this, and enables people like Jorg, who know what they’re doing, to draw a new curve on top.
• white balancing and exposure is often judged wrongly when using a too flat style, and therefore results in underexposure and more colour problems – specially when using the camera’s LCD and omitting the camera’s Histogram display or when using an external monitor
• the above can be solved when exposure and white balance is taken after selecting the unchanged Standard or Neutral style and then switch to the flat style for shooting – and i don’t like that!
• did i already mention that the Canon picture style editor sucks?

Taken all this in account, Jorg has provided me with an all-new Marvels Cine Picture Style v.3.3.
It’s less flat than “super-flat”, is less flat than the first Marvels Cine, uses 10 curve nodes, does not touches any colour and is based on the Standard style as a base, instead of the Neutral style.
Exposure and white balance – special those of the skin – can be safely set using this new style if you judge these settings by eye.
The new style can made more and less flatter by adjusting the Contrast setting. Even if contrast is set in the middle position (4), it’s still flatter than the usual way of flattening the untouched Neutral style (w. contrast on zero).
The style is slightly more colourful than other flat styles, because it uses the Standard style as a basis.
The Standard style setting is used as a basis for this new style, because the s-curve required this in respect to the skin colours – for colorimetric and exposure reasons.
Jorgen tells me that he has created this style’s S-curve and .pf2 file WITHOUT the Canon Picture Style Editor, but does not want to tell much about this process YET.

And i am happy with it!! I hope you like it too. I invite everyone to try this new style and share with me their findings, comments and links to test footage. I hope to be able to provide you with examples after this weekend too.

I also want to encourage users to experiment with the base style setting of the new style (suggesting switching Standard, Neutral and Faithful).

The new Marvels Cine Picture Style v.3.3 can be downloaded here (zip archive – please read the README file before use!). The Marvels Cine Picture Style v.3.3 file by Marvels Film has been licensed following a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported licence. CC BY-NC-ND

Courtesy of Jorgen Escher -> http://colorbyjorg.wordpress.com – @colorbyjorg

Cheers!
Martin

About the Picture Profile and S-Curve of Canon video DSLR cameras

Hey Martin,

I have another question for you, since I’m just beginning to learn in the ins and outs of gamma curves:

I noticed in the original Marvel’s Cine Flat Profile 1.2, the gif of the gamma curve you posted seems to have a fairly pronounced toe, but not so much of a shoulder. This looks like to me that you’re pushing the apparent middle part of dynamic range a bit higher up. And I’ve noticed in my tests that the picture occasionally looks a tad dark if I expose for it correctly with a incident meter light meter (especially in low-contrast scenes.)

Should I be compensating +1/3 or +2/3 a stop for proper exposure with this profile? Or should I be exposing normally (with a light meter) and adjusting the picture to my preference in post? Or should I just not use a light meter and eyeball it instead?

Am I misunderstanding the gamma curve?

-Dave

Hello Dave.

What really is going on, is that we apply a curve on a curve. The sampling, filtering and further post-processing of the camera’s image-sensor is a very complex matter and we can’t imagine (and are not being told) what goes on “behind the scenes”. You can get an insight into the complexity by reading this wikipedia link on the Bayer Filter. After the camera eventually has rendered an electronic representation of a real world image, many extra circuits – both analog and digital – are put to work to turn it into anything useable and digital. With the extra handicap that the video image is further processed and compressed.

The picture profile settings (and a few extra image settings that can be accessed through the menus) are just the tip of the iceberg of the motherload of parameters and circuits that can be tweaked. Not only “simple” electronics are involved, but quite a lot of physics as well.
The eventual image (based on the selected preset profile, e.g. Neutral or Faithful) already has a quite complex curve applied to it electronically sometime during the processing described above. In fact, there already is something in place that resembles an S-curve! What we do by altering the curve, making that existing curve more pronounced. It also means, that when we pull it too much, relations between color channels are disturbed, resulting in “plastic skintones” and other weird and unexpected artifacts.

To get back to your first observation. The Canon D cameras all seem to underexpose when using an external light-meter, and this seems to have to do with the way the camera handles the ISO setting. Specially when you are using a flat profile, you can push it much more, maybe indeed to +2/3. The built in histogram display is your friend here! Try to Google on the subject and you will find many discussions regarding this issue. Some propose to lower the ISO setting on the meter.

You are right about the curve. It is S-shaped and you can see a typical picture of the Marvels cine profile below (many people have asked for this, so here it is!). Because it’s applied on top of an existing curve (we have no other option, we have no Raw), the actual resulting curve is hard to calculate/visualise without reliable measurement. Digital video cameras such as the Sony EX-1 can deliver a number of test signals to the post-processing electronics, so the effect of curves and painting can easily be analysed. The Canons don’t have this option. What one could do, is shooting calibrated multi-level grayscales and analyse the results. A graph can be drawn from those results, most probably resulting in a wobbly s-curve.

Click for enlargement

Also, changing the profile’s Contrast setting alters the curve – it is NOT linear. So, having said all this; using your eyes and the histogram is still your best option, and getting some experience with the profiles and the resulting footage.

I am currently using the new Magic Lantern firmware patch that gives me a spot-reading, so i can e.g. expose human skin on 75% and check highlights. This and watching the histogram gives me good results.

I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2011!

Martin Beek.

New and updated versions of the latest Marvels Cine picture styles for Canon DSLR cameras

UPDATE april 2011: please follow the link “marvels cine for hdslr” at the top of this blog for more information and updated profile.

UPDATE  JAN 8 2011: New version available from this post!
After getting hands-on experience and feedback from users of the new Marvels Picture profiles (2.3 and Panalog) posted below, i am currently pushing forward (in our planning) the development of the new and final Marvels Cine Flat profile “3.1”.  I, as a filmmaker with a specific taste for the elusive “film look”, am not entirely satisfied with the s-curve that has been provided by Bart Keimen for the recent profiles. I am currently test shooting with an all new picture profile that is much more advanced than any other profile and with an s-curve that is not only mathematically correct, but also mimics the s-curve of film stock AND offers control over it’s “flatness”. The profiles will no longer be made with the Canon Picture Profile Editor, but with an in-house developed application; it’s crude and not sexy, but can calculate curves based on mathematical functions instead of user/mouse input. The mathematical functions have been provided by Jorg Escher of Fraunhofer and we’ll work together next week to finalize the application and provide one or more profiles to work with. So, for now, i regard the “2.3” picture profiles as betas for  you all to experiment with.

---

 

Hello all.

We are happy to announce the release of two additional versions of our latest “Marvels Cine 2.1 Panalog” picture style. And two all new Flat picture style files; all for your Canon D-range (pun not intended) DSLR cameras.

Two additional profile versions have been made from the latest v.2.3 “Panalog” style, addressing style settings only – for your convenience – and two are new profiles based on the latest “Panalog” version, but with the color correction disabled, offering only the slight s-curve to “flatten” the picture without color changess.

As from now, i will configure two versions per existing Marvels style, one for low contrast situations and one for high contrast situations. These are using the same s-Curve, but with different Contrast settings, that you can alter yourself to taste.

Here is the list of all available Marvels Cine Style picture profiles for the Canon cameras. .pf2 and zip files provided, as well as a one-file download of all styles.
Please use this post as the official and final download page for all Marvels Picture Styles.

• new: Marvels LOWc 2.3
  Slight “best of both worlds” s-Curve for useful flattening of the picture, without introducing flattening artifacts such as “plastic faces” and other 8-bit color gamma defects. Optimized for low contrast shooting situations (e.g. indoors, night).
  Classification: No color correction. Light flattening.
  Version 2.3 of december 5 2010, by Martin Beek and Bart Keimen, Marvels Film.
  Permanent download link: .pf2 file zip file
  
  
• new: Marvels HIc 2.3
  Slight “best of both worlds” s-Curve for useful flattening of the picture, without introducing flattening artifacts such as “plastic faces” and other 8-bit color gamma defects. Optimized for high contrast shooting situations (e.g. outdoors, film lighting).
  Classification: No color correction. Moderate flattening.
  Version 2.3 of december 5 2010, by Martin Beek and Bart Keimen, Marvels Film.
  Permanent download link: .pf2 file zip file
  

• new: Marvels Panalog LOWc 2.3
  Slight “best of both worlds” s-Curve for useful flattening of the picture, with color correction based on a mapping of the Panavision Genesis Panalog Style, using a Panavision Genesis camera, a macBeth color card and a Canon 7D. Optimized for low contrast shooting situations (e.g. indoors, night).
  Classification: Advanced color correction. Light flattening. Panavision Genesis simulation.
  Version 2.3 of november 28 2010, by Martin Beek and Bart Keimen, Marvels Film.
  Permanent download link: .pf2 file zip file
  
  
• new: Marvels Panalog HIc 2.3
  Slight “best of both worlds” s-Curve for useful flattening of the picture, with color correction based on a mapping of the Panavision Genesis Panalog Style, using a Panavision Genesis camera, a macBeth color card and a Canon 7D. Optimized for high contrast shooting situations (e.g. outdoors, film lighting).
  Classification: Advanced color correction. Moderate flattening. Panavision Genesis simulation.
  Version 2.3 of november 28 2010, by Martin Beek and Bart Keimen, Marvels Film.
  Permanent download link: .pf2 file zip file
• Marvels Cine Flat Picture Style v.1.2 (“Classic”)
  The renowned and widely used (+23.000 downloads) Marvels Cine flat picture style.
  Featured in many DSLR indie movies, music videos and even feature films.
  The above profiles are NOT a replacement for this extra-flat cinestyle s-Curve profile – this profile is still actual, being used and updated. Should be manually adjusted for low/high contrast situations using the camera profile’s “Contrast” setting. Dial contrast completely down for high contrast and to “-2” or “-3” for low contrast shooting situations.
  Classification: No color correction. Very flat.
  Version 1.2 of december 5 2010, by Martin Beek
  Permanent download link: .pf2 file zip file
• All-in-one up-to-date archive (zip) of all Marvels Cine Picture Styles
  Permanent download link: zip file

Please use the links above to download Marvels picture styles. Webmasters/bloggers: please update your file links.

Feel free to distribute!

Cheers!

New Marvels Cine picture style for Canon!!

UPDATE: please follow the link “marvels cine for hdslr” at the top of this blog for more information and updated profile.

We are delighted to announce our new Picture Style for the Canon D series HDSLR cameras: “Marvels Cine 2.1 Panalog“. This picture style features a mild S-curve and is less flat than other flat profiles. It also includes an advanced color correction scheme based on a Panavision Genesis Panalog cinema S-curve. It is the Picture Style we’ll be using on our Canon 5D MKII b-camera for our new feature film “History of fear”. The profile was originally devised to match the Panavision Genesis with the Canon 5D MKII.

The panalog color correction is performed on a Genesis DPX raw framegrab of a correctly exposed MacBeth colorcard and Kodak grayscale card, with the camera set to a Panalog 4 s-curve, colormatrix off, saturation off and filter pre-set to 3200 K, recording in RGB 4:4:4 SQ, with the nominal sensibility indicated by Panavision Spain of 400ASA. Courtesy of Alfonso Parra.

The original Genesis DPX framegrab file (5.7 MB)  is here.

It can be viewed with the Panavision DPX viewer available from the Panavision website here.

This is not a replacement for the renowned “canon 7d picture style with cine-gamma (s) curve” style, but a new and additional picture style for all you independent shooters out there who want a professional semi-flat profile.

The picture style is developed by Martin Beek in cooperation with Bart Keimen for Marvels Film and can be downloaded here:

http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/marvels_cine_v2.1_panalog.pf2

Thanks to Jorgen Escher (Fraunhofer institut), Alfonso Parra AEC and Robert Dury (Panavision rental UK).

I have shot a few seconds using standard 5600k daylight setting and used the standard FCP filters to put the blacks on zero, dialed up the saturation and lifted the overall luminance to read 70% on the face. No other filters or color correction applied. You can watch this test here, showing “before” and “after”:
http://www.youtube.com/user/marvelsfilm#p/c/5D2A185F5F5C92C2/2/beJH1hGYlC0

Don’t be alarmed by the noise; this was shot indoors on a cloudy day with ISO 640 and a slow lens; slightly under exposed, at F4 wideopen. This test is to demonstrate the color rendition, not the exposure as such.

The picture style is released into the public domain and can be copied and distributed freely. The file link above will remain hosted on our server until the end of days, so feel free to link to the file. For those having problems downloading the file, we provide the following ZIP file download: http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/marvels_cine_v2.1_panalog.pf2.zip.

UPDATE NOV 26 2010: you should use the whole ISO numbers (“native ISO”) for contrasty shoots (100-200-400-800-…) and the “broken” ISO numbers (125-320-640…) for low contrast scenes.Why? Because the native ISO’s maybe produce a slight bit of extra noise, but do provide much more headroom for highlights.  Also switch off the Highlight Priority setting in the camera when shooting video.

Cheers!

Martin.

Resuming hardware reviews and new 5D & 7D picture profiles coming up

I’ve been caught off balance by the passing away of both my mother and a good friend this spring. I postponed all hardware reviews and major blog articles.
I am planning to resume all activities – and making this blog infromative and attractive again – before the end of this year.

I have planned the following hardware reviews that are all confirmed – hardware either on the way or arrived:

• RedrockMicro Micro Mattebox
• Cinevate Cyclops DSLR jumbo viewfinder / loupe
• 5DtoRGB conversion software
• DollyTrax v2.0 affordable camera dolly
• Shoot35 affordable FollwFocus

Further, in october, new 5D/7D picture profiles coming up! New and updated Cine profiles, mathematically optimized. Among onthers, a flat profile that is just a tad flatter than the neutral profile with “dial everything down”; just a very slight inverted S curve, but enough to lift the blacks and roll off the high lights in a more pleasant way.

Just keep visiting regularly!

Cheers! – Martin.