Here at the Javits Center having a poke around the Expo. First thing - immediate reminder that this company is far more than a camera manufacturer. Massive international business, productivity, and imaging solutions would be more appropriate. That said, for such a giant company, they seem to at least be listening to what their camera owner's want and expect.
If you're using Canon lenses with IS on your Canon body - make sure to turn the camera off before changing lenses. When you're in video mode and the IS is turned on, it's constantly working unlike when shooting stills where it's only on when the shutter is half pressed. Put your ear to it and you can hear the IS working indicated by a soft "grinding" sound. Canon recommends you don't change lenses when the IS is working or you can damage it. I made the mistake once and it definitely created an error with the electronics. The IS began behaving very strangely but restarting the camera with the IS off and then turning it back on a few times seemed to correct it. Either way it can't be good.
On a lens related note - I recently picked up the new 70-200 2.8L IS II. This lens is sick. So sharp and the fall off is just gorgeous. I cannot wait for the 24-70 IS. It seemed like they were going to give it to us there for awhile but all the rumor sites are now predicting it won't happen. If they're going to announce it, the Expo in NYC next week or Photokina would be the obvious venue. Fingers are crossed. And one last thing - go check out Step Up 3D if you want to see how far you can push your audience's ocular discomfort. They really pushed it way harder than others have and the 3D was probably the most striking I've seen yet. I did however feel a little cross eyed when I left the theatre. The only saving grace was the cuts were very fast which didn't give you the time to linger and they would give you little breaks by going back to a shallower, wide shot for a few beats after very extreme shots.
I was curious about the real differences on the video level between the various Canon HDSLR Picture Styles so I set up the DSC Labs RED CamBook Chroma Du Monde 28R and evenly lit it with ambient daylight.
Converting the camera's HDMI OUT to SDI, I set the exposure in the recommended way for the chart, putting the grayscale's crossing point at just under 60% on the waveform. I then made no exposure changes and just dialed through the various Canon Picture Styles capturing the waveform and vectorscope data from the Leader monitor.
Camera and Lens: Canon 5D Mark 2, Canon 24-105mm f/4 Zoom
All styles were adjusted to the following "standard practice" specs:
Contrast: all the way down
Sharpness: all the way down
Saturation: down 2 points
For Neutral and Faithful, the two "out of the box" Picture Styles that I find to be well suited for video, I looked at Saturation -1 as well to see how much difference 1 point makes on the scopes. The answer is a lot. Most people would agree that the colors on these cameras are over saturated and need to be backed off a bit to look more natural and less video. When adjusting a video camera's colorimetry using DSC charts, the theoretical goal is to ensure faithful color reproduction by aligning the primary colors into their targets. The color response that this creates however may not be suitable for all projects it may even look a bit over saturated compared to the low sat "film like" color matrices found in many prosumer camcorders.
Have a look:
Let's have a closer look at Faithful, Saturation -1
This is about as close as we can get to hitting our targets with the Canon 5D Mark 2. In my opinion this setting doesn't look as nice as Saturation -2 so as always, your eye is really your best tool for image evaluation.
Canon Picture Styles: Looking at these thumbnails alone, it's a little hard to tell the difference.
Waveforms: Glancing at these however you can see that there is a small difference in gamma response from Style to Style, Neutral being the most compressed in comparison.
Vectorscope: Even with the saturation turned down, Portrait and Landscape are very extreme color looks compared to the more muted tones of Neutral and Standard. Faithful on the other hand, does what it say it does and offers the most accurately aligned video colors of the bunch.
In order to really see the differences though, you need to look at the chart in the context of video. Here's a file for you, feel free to download it and take into FCP where you can open up the scopes and really scrutinize the differences between Picture Styles.
Note: RED CamBook has a highly reflective surface so must be angled back to avoid seeing yourself in it which is why the image is skewed in this video. . There is a small amount of gamma lift that happens in Vimeo upon conversion to their format. Why does it do that? I don't know and I'm still searching for a workaround.
Canon 5D Mark 2 Picture Styles and Chroma Du Monde from Ben Cain / Negative Spaces on Vimeo.
As for the Canon 7D and 1D Mark IV? From what I discovered from the tests Jem and I did at Sekonic, the color response from the various Picture Styles is very similar to the results found here.
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