One of the most popular methods for color correction with DSLR footage is to shoot with a flat picture style. This usually gives you more latitude when trying to grade footage in post. Canon has worked jointly with Technicolor to develop a new “flat” picture style for Canon DSLRs. One of the most popular Flat pictures styles, and one that I often recommend is Marvels Cine Picture style.

I thought It might be interesting to put these “flat” picture styles head to head and see how they compare. I also threw in Marvels Cine Picture style version 1.2 to get an idea of how the “flat” picture style has evolved over the last couple of years.

After spending some time playing with the footage in Colorista, I found that the new Canon Technicolor CineStyle gave me a little bit more wiggle room when grading the test shots. I would like to point out that I didn’t find the difference between the Technicolor and Marvels Cine 3.4 picture styles to be very dramatic. The difference was so slight that It really could come down to personal taste. The original Marvels Cine 1.2 held up quit well, although it’s very easy to see that the flat picture style has advanced quit a bit since it’s release.

You can download Technicolor CineStyle picture style here, and Marvels Cine Picture style here. You will need to install the EOS Utility program that comes on a disk with your camera before you upload a picture style to your DSLR. Marvel has a great post with pictures covering the picture style installation process.

One other cool thing is that Red Giant now offers the original version of Colorista for free.  So if you’re new to color correction, that’s a great place to start. Once you’re hooked on that, you can always spend some money and upgrade to Colorista II down the road.

My tests were shot on the Canon 7d with the Canon 35mm f1.4 at 1/60 ISO 200 and f1.4. If you’d like to see some results of this flat style on the Canon T2i Check out Zech’s blog post.


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Filming, lighting, Software