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
Marvelsfilm's Blog 
Thanks for posting this! Download doesn’t work. Bad link?
No problems here. I have added a ZIP file link too.
Martin
Interesting Martin. I just shot a quick test in my living room and I can agree with you.
I’m going to do some noise tests this weekend to see how it holds up on the 5D Mark II. Higher ISOs really reveal a lot about custom profiles and their usefulness.
My first initial thoughts at ISO 640 are “very promising”.
Thank you very much for posting this. I have been using your other profile and am very grateful to get to use this one as well.
Just did a quick test in low light and compared to some other picture styles I’ve downloaded and the Marvels Cine Picture Profile v.3.3 is far superior. In fact I have used and tested many of the other profiles available and found most of them do not help at all.
My test was done in low light next to the window just as the sun dropped below the horizon. Switching between the picture styles I could see a big difference. I recorded about 10s of video with each picture style selected, then opened each video in a separate QT player. With the other picture styles they where all to over exposed on the side of the window but with the MCPPv3.3 the light rolled across my suns face. It was not overexposed on the side of the window and the skin tones Iooked perfect. I have to say, this is the first picture style I am actually excited about getting out and testing. Thanks for all of yours and Jorgen’s hard work.
Just wanted to clarify that the other profiles I tested against where not any of the Marvels.
Jim.
Thanks for your kind words. We are very pleased with it ourselves too. I think that many professional filmmakers are reluctant to use the custom picture profiles on the web, because they have all been made in a uncontrollable, unscientific and haphazard way, using a primitive tool. I hope that more shooters will give this profile a try and see for themselves that we really have made an effort to provide a production-proof flat profile that does not degrade the camera’s beautiful image in any way and gives enough playroom in post.
We ourselves have looked at numerous picture styles that promised to be helpful in regard to “providing more latitude”, “having a filmic look” and “extending the dynamic range”. Only few of them succeed in reaching this goal, many of them – even some very popular ones – make things worse. Much has been written about this elusive “latitude” and “extending the range of the image sensor”. Google on the subject and find a lot of discussion along with contradiction and confusion all around. I’ve seen horrible picture styles promising to give more latitude and filmic style, while limiting the dynamic range by lifting the blacks and crushing the whites; completely bonkers…
Let’s be clear, extending the dynamic range of a camera can not be done – it’s a given number. Limiting dynamic range is much simpler; just over expose, crush the whites, lift the blacks and you end up with the equivalent of a Ferrari with a Prius engine.
Making the image less harsh by dialing down contrast and applying a slight “knee” and slope towards the highlights is all we can do besides the main factor: correct exposure.
Because many of the profiles available are too flat, they start affecting parts of the image that need to be left alone; e.g. distorting the gamma of individual color channels.
I am confident eventually, after a year of experimenting and consulting many people, that our current profile is the way to go.
And, indeed, thumbs up for Jorg Escher!
Thanks and regards,
Martin Beek
hi there,
Was wondering how I install this on movie mode on the 60d? because I can only seem to install it on the photo modes..
Cheers
Hello Jade.
I hope that someone else can answer this question, because i have no experience with the 60D. Phil Bloom mentions he uses a neutral picture profile for video on the 60D, indicating that this works identical to the other D series cameras.
Maybe you can find some leads on his website at http://www.philipbloom.net
Cheers!
Martin
Jade,
Once you’ve registered a custom picture style to one of the user def styles in photo mode it will be available as a selection in video mode.
Navigate to the picture style video mode and press set. Highlight one of the user def picture styles and press info. Highlight Picture Style and press set. You will see the custom picture style as a selection along with all the other standard picture styles (Standard, Neutral,Faithful, etc.)
Rob Garza
Hi, Martin. Thanks so much to you and to your fellow developing mate, for this Marvels Cine Profile 3.x I am not very expert at the Canon 550D yet, so I would like to ask you how do me “install” this new Profile. I downloaded the zip file and could find the ReadMe file (which I thought that perhaps could give some instructions about it) plus the “.pf2” file.
I am sorry if this is a very basic question, but I would so much thank you if you could provide me with a kind step-by-step guide to follow the procedure.
Thanks a lot!
Cheers.
Ana.
Hello Ana.
Maybe you should try downloading the file again, because i first updated the article and then later uploaded the new zip file (replaced the old without the readme) so you have probably downloaded the ZIP just before i updated the file.
But, to cut a long story short, i’ll post a short “howto” on my blog next thing! Keep an eye on the blog.
Thanks and kind regards,
Martin.
Most grateful, Martin. I downloaded it again just now, but the result is exactly the same: no precise hints in the ReadMe file.
So I will stick to this blog in order to read what you are kindly going to supply us with.
Thanks so much.
Best,
Ana.
This is a mysterie! Or magic… Nevertheless… it does not really teach you anything and it’s mainly about copyrights. Read my latest post; it’s up now!
M.
Looks amazing so far (tried a few faces ;))
I completely switched to neutral (with all settings dialed down) because of this issue with older flat curves… now I’m back! 😀
Hi. Thanks for posting the new profile!
With this profile, should we apply the native ISO(100/200/400/800) to hi-contrast pictures, and the forced ISO(160-320-640) for low contrast pictures as we did with the previous marvel cine profiles?
Yes! I can absolutely recommend this!
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks Dennis, good to have you back 😉
Martin
Thx
First of all I want to say thanks for making this awesome profile and putting it online to share with the world!
One question, do you suggest enabling or disabling highlight tone priority in combination with your 3.x profile? I have seen many mixed reviews of HTP and am wondering what your take is.
thanks!
Hello Vince.
I personally have stopped using it because it produces vertical banding noise (pattern noise) with almost any ISO number, under some specific conditions. Philip Bloom also reports that he stopped using it. Probably because it produces unpredictable results that are not easy to detect on-set.
HTP further limits your ISO range and gives you an extra amount of noise. Remember than Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) is essentially underexposing all your photos by 1 stop. ISO 200 with HTP is essentially an underexposed ISO 100 RAW data pushed up to look like ISO 200. That’s how it preserve highlights. You’re essentially pushing an underexposed ISO 100 RAW to look like ISO 250 in that image (since you raised exposure in ACR another +1/3 stop).
I personally don’t use HTP as said, but i follow another rule of thumb as an alternative, specially for commercial work that doesn’t allow for experimenting:
1 – use ISO 160, 320, 640, 1250 and 2500 for low contrast / low light shots
2 – use ISO 200, 250, 400, 500, etc. (ISO 100 and 125 are on their own) for well lit / high contrast shots
1, because the broken ISOs have considerably less noise, but also have less latitude (highlights clip at raw 12650)
2, because the whole ISOs have more noise, but retain highlights much better (highlights clip at raw 15300)
Together with Marvels Cine 3.3 this will make your day… 😉
Cheers!
Martin
Martin,
Thanks again for the accurate and thorough answer. I’m firsting on a short production this weekend and my DP is already excited at getting to use this new profile. You rock!
Hi Martin,
I’ve been testing out your new profile now for about a week and composed some thoughts.
It’s been performing very well in many varied lighting conditions, even blistering orange morning light.
I’ve made some sample images if you’d like to check them out. Feel free to use them if you’d like.
http://www.artbyphil.com/cgi-bin/phfx_lb.cgi?images=photography/temp_marvel3x5DIITest
Thanks again for the hard work. I’m going to do a few more tests, but it seems to do the job nicely on the 5D Mark II.
Phil.
That is really awesome! Only one question: what does the “Marvels 3.x flattened and processed” processing exists of?
I’ll use one or two pictures – thanks for that.
Thanks for the kind words and your efforts!
Martin Beek
To clarify here, “Marvels 3.x flattened and processed” means:
I’ve applied a secondary curve to the image that I normally apply to images when shooting out on an ArriLaser. Also at this stage, I’ve applied noise reduction, sharpening, and in this particular example added a fine grain profile from a film stock to give it the appearance of a more natural film look.
Often I have to blend digital content with material shot on Super35 and basically this is a process I’ve been using for a few years now.
Hi,
Sorry I don’t understand “are on their own”
2 – use ISO 200, 250, 400, 500, etc. (ISO 100 and 125 are on their own) for well lit / high
do you mean that is a good thing or a bad thing to use ISO 100 and 125 ? and if it is a bad thing can you explain me why ?
thanks
Vincent.
As you can see from this graph the 100 and 125 ISOs are the noisiest of all under ISO 500; even 400 is better, although they give little more headroom.
Nevertheless i should avoid them for this reason.
Martin
Thank you very much for the profiles. I use them because I don’t know how to make my own and they look really good as far as I’m concerned.
I do have a question however. I have loaded 3.3, but when I go into choose the profile on the camera, there are “ghost” marks (grayed out) in addition to the white marks that set the values for sharpness, contrast, saturation and color tone. Can you you tell me what those gray marks mean?
Thanks again.
Taylor
ok thanks 🙂
Hello Taylor.
I have never seen this before; did not even know this was an option. Which Canon camera are you using?
Martin
Sorry Martin, I suppose it would be best to give better information. I am using the Canon T2i and noticed it after registering Marvel 3.3.
My only concern was that I wasn’t using the same profile you had posted, meaning I don’t know where the sliders are supposed to be on sharpness, contrast, saturation and color tone because the gray sliders are confusing me.
Here are some links to pics displaying what I am seeing on my camera. I am using 3 of your profiles currently and they all seem to display the gray marks. I am not sure what it means.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/_3MnzPc2vuHQTdCPKgAqSw?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/8Gop30O2cv5IRBmMx7jjhw?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/n5C5rci98mdCCb08BAvuxw?feat=directlink
Thanks again,
Taylor
tylor, the gray ones show the old value.
I was extremely impressed with the new style until i tested skin tones. Skin tones renders pinkinsh / orange. Not as bad as the first styles but still too orange for my tastes.
There’s no plastic faces to it though, just weird face colors…
Martin.
We did many faces / skin color tests and i can not confirm your findings. One thing that’s for sure is, that correct white-balancing is of critical importance with flat picture styles.
Having said that, i’d absolutely love to see some examples. Can you send me a short movie or framegrabs?
m.beek at marvelsfilm.com
Thanks!
Martin
I noticed when I first loaded the picture style that the white tabs where off of the gray ones also. You will notice if you select any profile like standard and change one of the setting it leaves the gray mark to show you the default value. All you have to do is select the picture style name at the top and switch to a different one like standard and then go back to the Marvels and it will reset the white marks to match the gray. The only thing I was wondering is, was the Marvels picture style suppose to be where the white marks where first at or the gray? I assumed the gray marks and that is where I started and they work very well.
Regarding skin tones. I have not noticed any problem with skin tone at all. From the day the Marvels Cine Profile 3 was uploaded, I have not been able to stop using it. Every situations I get in, I compare the Marvels 3 to other profile and every time the Marvels 3 is the one I use. The skin tones are almost perfect, even when using auto white balance setting. I shoot a lot of run-and-gun and this profile has saved me lots of time. I can set the white balance to auto and this is the first profile that I can use without having to remember to either white balance or change the white balance setting every time the conditions change and always know I am getting good skin tones.
I don’t know how much more I can say without sounding like a shill but I have also felt guilty for not posting how good I really think the Marvels 3 profile really is. Soon I will edit some footage and post of Vimeo to show my results. For me, this profile is perfect because it not only give me flat video that can be easily graded in avid media composer but the video is not so flat that you can’t use it raw out of the camera with no grading at all, and that is what I have been searching for.
Thanks again Martin
Jim
Thanks for all the help guys. I understand now.
Hey Martin, nice new picture style. A question I have about picture styles is: are you supposed to turn the sharpness up in post or just do the grading without the sharpness? Nobody in their discussion of picture styles has mentioned this, so I was a little confused. It seems that when I’ve turned up sharpness with other picture styles that I get an increase in noise, so I didn’t know if I was doing it right.
Thanks
Jesse
Hello Jesse.
It’s not only the noise you amplify by turning up the sharpness. What the Sharpness filter does, is adding brighter contour halos to dark edges and add darker halos to bright edges, making them stand out. It results in the typical “video look” that we don’t want, and also amplifies any moire problems.
Sharpening in post is always the best option, it is easier to add it than to remove it again!
Hope that makes some sense 😉
Martin
a friend sent me a link to this post… I’ve done some pretty extensive dynamic range / codec / video output tests. I shot what would be considered the worst case real world shot you can do – snow in sunlight. I ran thru several picture styles, and several contrast settings, mainly max and min for each setting. In part 4 I scoped the video out of the camera vs what the camera codec was doing and came away with some surprising results… the video out on the camera isn’t what the codec is recording… its ugly. P1 start here http://www.steveoakley.net/template_permalink.asp?id=172 and you can click to part 4.
I’ll basically concur that you can’t do much to extend the dynamic range of the camera except thru lighting control, and maybe some ND grads. However, you also have to keep in mind the codec is doing other things as well.
In general, in my tests of shooting super flat, I was able to REDUCE the bit depth of the recorded images to close to 7 bits, 128 gradation values from dark to white. so in general shooting flat is really hurting your recorded image quality. trying to shoot flat to look like a RED RAW image doesn’t work because you aren’t working with a 12bit image to start with. you have 8 bits, 235 gradation steps, and you should maximize what you record with those bits, rather then crush them by shooting flat. again, see my tests for more info
Steve.
The Marvels Cine 3.4 style is one of the few that does not lift blacks and crush whites. All levels are there. You mention super flat; if you are literally referring to that picture style, then indeed that one lifts blacks a few values to gray.
The cine 3.3 and 3.4 do not lift the mids. I can’t comment on most of you article, only that i disagree on the line “the old school camera guys have said all along “Get it right in camera !”; i AM an old school camera guy! You can’t get it right in the camera if you don’t have tons of measurement equipment and reference monitors on the set. Well i don’t!
It’s remarkable that your article is in full contradiction of everything many people have written about in regard to shooting flat. I’m not saying you’re findings are incorrect, i just find it remarkable.. I’ll have to read it again fi i have some more time.
Martin
thanks… the results only somewhat surprised me. for the people advocating flat picture styles, I’ll ask them to go and do the same tests – looking are both gray chart and real world images, then bring those into your NLE of choice and look at whats there.
What shooting flat does buy you is that with raised black levels, you almost can’t crush shadow values into nothing. this means you can underexposed a bit on the highlights to save them, while in theory still keeping shadow values however, by raising your blacks from 0 to say 15 or 20IRE, all the adjustment is really doing is reducing the gradation of shadow values by say, 20 IRE / about 35-40 RGB values, while still kind of pushing shadows into your bottom black level anyway.
the other point is that even if you do have a scope around for on shoot use, the V out of the camera is also lying because the codec is compressing the highlight values down to max white of 235 even if video out is over that value. to me this is the biggest problem = you can trust what the camera’s Vout is doing vs what its recording. while its not technically causing you to loose information during recording, it is reducing the gradation range being used to record those values rounding / compressing your highlights.
so that said, I’m very interested in trying out your setting here, and if I don’t have a life between now and NAB, maybe repeat the tests again.
also, where is the curve editor ? I looked for the canon software and it wasn’t to be found. I’d love to be able to try a few things.
Hi!
I tried uploading the style to my 60D. It succeeded. It’s there.
But only in photo mode. ‘User def. 1’ is named ‘Marvels Advanced’.
In video mode it does not work. ‘User def. 1’ is still named ‘Standard’.
Does anyone know what I do wrong?
Regards,
Johan
PS: the utility also indicates that the preset is on tghe ccamera. I uploaded while the ccamera is in photo mode. While in video mode, the option ‘Register User Defined Style’ is greyed out.
ok, I got it
1. Go three screens over. Scroll down to Picture Style. Hit Set.
2. Scroll down to User Def 1, and hit DISP.
3. Make sure the highlight is one Picture Style. Hit Set.
4. From there, you can scroll until you find the setting for Marvels CIne 1.2. Hit menu to exit out.
I have been searching around for a mature picture profile to use and am glad to come across your latest efforts.
Thanks for making this. Thanks for staying with it and developing it. Thanks for having the patience and enthusiasm for ironing out issues.
I look forward to experimenting with the fruits of your work.
Johan H!!
Thanks!! I was just about to gone insane trying to figure this out!
Hey you guys. Sorry that I haven’t answered any of your questions yet, but I am filming abroad for a week with very limited access to the internet. I’ll be back this sunday and will try to answer all questions on this blog and the ton of waiting email.
Martin
Good afternoon. I’m a Japanese cinematographer.
Please allow for poor English.
At The Marvels Cine 3.4 style
“Standard” to use as the base and appears yellow in the highest part.
Using as a base a “neutral” is okay.
Do you think about it?
We indeed switched to using Neutral for 3.4 as preferred base style. I can’t acknowledge the yellow highlights with Standard, but standard has other issues as far as i can remember with posterization.
Martin
Hello. I installed your Marvel Cine 3.4 to my 60D. but that picture style appears only photo modes. not in my Video mode. So can you please explain whats wrong with this?
big help.
Thank you . .
Hello Amila.
There are more people who had that issue. This post seems to help. Let me know if that solves it for you:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eos-60d-rebel-t2i-eos-550d-hd/474320-cannot-load-picture-style-video-mode.html#post1496299
Martin
@Martin marvelsfilm;
Yeah Martin. i resolved my problem and it works properly. this is the Documentary that i ve done last days Using Mavel Cine 3.4.
Check it out : http://www.vimeo.com/22652324
Thank you . .
Quick question about the Creative Commons licensing. The license is limited to non-commercial work. Does this mean that as a for-profit production company, I cannot install this to my cameras and use it in our work?
Hello Mike.
I admit that this statement is not entirely clear. You can use the profile for any commercial production, no problem. The licensing is meant to prevent people to sell picture styles collections for money (distribution), which has has happened in the recent past – e.g. CD’s and download archives. And, to be honst, there is no way to proof that footage has been shot with any picture style… So, please go ahead!
Martin Beek.
hi. i’m trying to remove the marvels picture style from the camera menu but haven’t been able. is there a trick to doing it?
Hi. Can you help me REMOVE the marvel picture style from my camera? i can’t seem to load the technicolor picture style now (the open folder icon in the EOS utility remains greyed out). I’ve tried everything but doing a hard reset (removing batteries from camera for several hours.) hope some one here can help. thanks!
Hi Marvels Film,
Are we supposed to retune the setting like contrast, saturation, sharpening after installing Marvels Cine profile?
Zed
If I download the Cine Picture Style and use it while filming a project that I am being paid for, does that violate the CC licensing?
No problem at all! Selling the style is what’s prohibited.
Happy shooting!
Martin
I’ve been using the cinestyle 3.4 for awhile and have just been doing a color correction in Avid Media composer with the master curve in the color correction toolset. I’ve just been eyeing the curve is there an official curve associated with each cinestyle or does anyone using avid have curve settings they use?
and Marvel, thx for the great user style!!
jayson
http://www.woodybrando.com
Hi Marvels, can cinestyle be used on a nikon D7000? If so cheers but if not why not?
Thanks in advance
thanks for sharing the profile. im slowly getting the hang of all this. cheers
HEY! CAN SOMEONE HELP ME, PLEASE? I´M trying to download it, but i just can´t find the link to download it to my computer. sorry my english. i meant. i´m seeing this page here, but i can´t find where i can download it.
Hi, I do believe your blog could be having web browser compatibility problems. Whenever I take a look at your web site in Safari, it looks fine however, if opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping issues. I merely wanted to provide you with a quick heads up! Apart from that, fantastic website!
Thanks for posting this, I have been trying to figure this out!
I have fun with, lead to I discovered just what I used to be taking a
look for. You’ve ended my 4 day long hunt! God Bless you man.
Have a great day. Bye
Quality video editors please, that’s my show right there!