Tuesday
Mar202012
Canon 5D Mark III Graded
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 9:29AM Dan Chung posted some camera-original clips from his new 5D Mark III. I grabbed one and did a quick color correction.
- Magic Bullet Denoiser II at default settings
- Three passes of Colorista II
To my eye, in this highy subjective and non-conclusive test, the footage holds up better under extreme adjustments than that of the 5D Mark II.
Shot with a production 5D mkIII in 1080/24P, 24-105mm f4L, 5000ISO , Standard picture style, regular Noise reducion.
Reader Comments (21)
Looks great to me. I was worried for a minute , thinking the beginning was graded.
What did you use to grade? AE, FCP?
After Effects.
Looks great! I would love to see your workflow on the three passes of Colorista.
that looks awesome, it's always cool for me to see what can be done with the right tools.
Which compression was used in recording? The Mark III does i-frame, yes?
I believe this is an I-frame clip.
Looks great. No way you'd get clean blacks like that on a Mk II
LOVE the grade! I wish i was a proficient colorist.
nice color, but it's still way too soft: it looks like nothing is ever actually *in focus* with this camera!
I'm not a resolution fetishist, but I'd want it to be at least somewhat sharper than the 5D2; let's hope it's not as bad as most of the early samples are showing
also, I'm betting on my Flaat picture styles to steal a big win for this camera in the high-DR niche :)
(whatever rating it gets in RAW stills, I should be able to get something very close in video mode, and the absence of noise and improved codec should help keeping it all useable)
Looks like Canon have finally dropped the BT601 luma coefs with the MK3? Gone to BT709 according to the header of the ".mov" on Vimeo, although I'd rather look at a native ".MOV" straight off the camera to be sure that Vimeo hasn't rewritten it, the rest of the header is intact though including the full range flag set 'on' as usual for Canon h264 so probably safe to assume.
I don't know AE or PP CS5 well enough, but I have a query regarding grading and Picture Styles like Flaat which show lots of waveforms all with values between 0 & 100 % IRE. Which is restricted range 16 - 235 luma. But Canon source is minus 16% - 110% IRE or more simply 0 - 255 luma, that's why it's flagged full range.
If we import a native Canon file into PP CS5 our waveform shows 0 to 100% IRE because the decompressing codec sees it has to encapsulate the full range of levels, so squeezes them into 16 - 235. Why do that in a 32bit float application? QT does this levels squeeze along with cropping 1920x1080 and upsampling to 4:2:2.
If we switch the full range flag off in the very same native file and import it we see -16% to 110% IRE on the waveform, the levels have not been squeezed they have been transferred without loss and we're free to pull those levels up and down to suit ourselves and final output considering this might not be the last link in the workflow and just want to import / edit / export without loss.
So interested to hear comments on which would seem most wanted approach, have the decompressing codec make choices for you or import without squeezing and do it ourselves to suit.
Disappointing. Been waiting years for Canon to up their game with the MK III and we get another camera that calls 720p output 1080p. So so soft. I sold my 7D for this reason alone - I was constantly questioning whether my footage was even in focus. Here's a review of the MK III with 1:1 comparisons with the GH2 (the camera I switched to after selling my 7D) that shows just how soft the MK III is in comparison to the GH2:
http://www.eoshd.com/content/7551/canon-5d-mark-iii-review
And the GH3 is presumably right around the corner. It looks like Canon is not interested in competing in the DSLR video arena.
Ok, so to illustrate my previous comment, here's a link to a Canon T2i MOV that I quickly remuxed and switched the full range flag off in the container. No transcoding or levels rescaling. To show the 'real' levels in a Canon file and not the 0% to 100% IRE. Right Mouse Click Save As.
http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/flagoff.mp4
I would link to the original MOV as comparision but I'm really short of server space, I can swap the file later if anyones interested.
Also to illustrate the flag and NLE behavior including PP CS5 here's a link:
http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/fullrangetest.zip
Forgive me if everyone is already aware of this and I'm not trying to poop on your wonderful blog, I've read it for many years and basically it respects a better response than "wow", "great" and "that's awesome". just trying to a have a meaningful discussion.
I don't know of any other h264 codec implementation that uses this flag other than Canons. Helpful or a hinderance?
Okay, I'm not anywhere NEAR as knowledgeable as the rest of those posting here, but as informative as some of these comments are I can't help but notice how much emphasis is being placed on the technical aspects of the camera as opposed to the overall aesthetic. Of COURSE there are better cameras and compression methods and output capabilities out there. But does the footage look better than that from a MkII? Does it grade more nicely? Is it better or equal to the MkII in low light? In an affordable, familiar package?
I, too, am disappointed over the price increase. Maybe the camera should have had more bells and whistles for the money. But let's face it: with the release of this camera on the heels of the C300, Canon has delivered its 1-2 punch to budget filmmakers. For now, THESE are your best options for quality if you wanna continue shooting with Canon mount glass. The only question is which one YOU can afford to make a movie with.
@Aaron Green & Steve Wood
I am pretty sure the "3 passes" of Colorista are the 3 independent grades depicted in the video. Not a layered technique or anything like that.
Sorry Daniel, I did in fact mean that it is a three-layered correction.
But I strongly agree with the rest of your comment.
Mr. stu
You are a great person
Will be completed in the near two-year study in the correct colors and the follow-up your tutorials
I have many experiences
But my experiences in my abortive
After correction of the colors I find that there is something missing I do not know what is it ..
I want to ask you that the last my color correction, but I do not know that this thing is allowed or not
Naif, I recommend that you keep looking at color that inspires you, trying your own corrections, and repeat that for many years. None of us ever "get there," we just keep enjoying the journey.
Mr.Stu
Thank you very much for the great advice
I will work with this advice for all my life
Thank you again for inspiration
I wish for you good luck
I've been working on Flaat v2 for the 5D3, here's what I've found so far:
* the good news: picture styles for the old cameras work just as well on the 5D3; that includes CineStyle, and of course Flaat; cutting 5D3 and 5D2 footage shot with the same picture style should be relatively easy, at least in terms of light and color
* the bad news: this means that, compared with my old APS-C canon, with the same picture style, dynamic range is basically the same; if the 5D3 has any extra DR to offer in video mode, it will require new picture styles
* the even worse news: it's not easy to get more dynamic range with picture styles; the information is there, I can see it playing with the RAW stills in DPP, but no matter how hard I fight with the picture style editor, so far 11.5 stops seems to be the limit; unless Canon gives us a new way to control how the RAW information from the sensor is converted to video footage, the 5D3 has exactly the same DR as the 60D or the old rebel
* the still unknown: even if DR is not any wider, useable DR may be better, given the 5D3's lower noise levels and hopefully improved codec; so if you have a 5D3, try Flaat_12p and let us know how it looks!
you can download version 2.0 of my suite of Flaat picture styles here:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html
you'll see there's a name change, now they are called by the number of stops of DR that they get:
Flaat_1 is now Flaat_09 (slightly modified)
Flaat_2 is now Flaat_10 (very slightly modified)
Flaat_3 is now Flaat_11 (very slightly modified)
Flaat_4 is now Flaat_12 (very slightly modified) (it doesn't get to 12 stops, but it's more than 11)
also, there are two sets of picture styles:
* one based on Portrait, for nice skin tones, but with some color shifts (e.g. blue goes a bit towards cyan)
* one based on Neutral, without those color shifts
I always use the ones based on Portrait, the others I only made them because some people wanted to avoid any color shifts. I'd rather have nice skin tones than correct blue, but it's your choice.
Also, note that the recommendation for Tone has gone from =0 to =1.
My bad - still learning. And thank you so very much for the tremendous resources you make available to the filmmaking community.
@5tu:
given you'll be able to get nice skin tones in post anyway, and given your recent complaints about cyan skies on twitter, I think you'll like the "based on Neutral" version of Flaat better than the "based on Portrait" one (or v1, which was based on Portrait too)