I see there are several different opinions on whether or not shoot flat when not recording RAW, some say it's mandatory others say it's a bad idea.
A quick disclaimer first, I own a 70D (ML still in beta), a 6D (ML RAW resolution lower than 1080p) and a 5D Mark IV (ML... God knows when). So currently my best choice is still shooting without ML, especially when doing multi camera stuff.
Now I have tried grading ALL-I 1080p footage shot with flat profiles and I must say, with less than stellar results. I've tested ML 1080p on my 6D and it's awesome, but I can only record 1080p 6 seconds at a time so it's a no go.
I have purchased both James Miller's DeLUTs profiles and EOSHD C-Log profiles, have given them a try and while the results with DeLUT 2 have been good, I decided to turn on the Live View histogram in my 5D4. When I did, what I've found, correct me if I'm wrong, is that what flat profiles actually do is just raise the black level, lower the white level, or both. Whether anything above or below those points is clipped or compressed to me is irrelevant as in practice what's happening is I'm losing color resolution, again, correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyone tried this with their cameras? Turn on histogram, select picture style, look where the black and white clipping points are, compare with other picture styles? By the way I'm starting to understand the preference by some well known DSLR shooters for the "prolost" and Marvels picture sytles, because they don't compress any levels and thus let one use the full color resolution.
Maybe I'm missing something, but if we have 256 levels for each channel which is already too little, why on Earth would we want to reduce that number? No wonder people talk about banding when using flat picture styles.
A quick disclaimer first, I own a 70D (ML still in beta), a 6D (ML RAW resolution lower than 1080p) and a 5D Mark IV (ML... God knows when). So currently my best choice is still shooting without ML, especially when doing multi camera stuff.
Now I have tried grading ALL-I 1080p footage shot with flat profiles and I must say, with less than stellar results. I've tested ML 1080p on my 6D and it's awesome, but I can only record 1080p 6 seconds at a time so it's a no go.
I have purchased both James Miller's DeLUTs profiles and EOSHD C-Log profiles, have given them a try and while the results with DeLUT 2 have been good, I decided to turn on the Live View histogram in my 5D4. When I did, what I've found, correct me if I'm wrong, is that what flat profiles actually do is just raise the black level, lower the white level, or both. Whether anything above or below those points is clipped or compressed to me is irrelevant as in practice what's happening is I'm losing color resolution, again, correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyone tried this with their cameras? Turn on histogram, select picture style, look where the black and white clipping points are, compare with other picture styles? By the way I'm starting to understand the preference by some well known DSLR shooters for the "prolost" and Marvels picture sytles, because they don't compress any levels and thus let one use the full color resolution.
Maybe I'm missing something, but if we have 256 levels for each channel which is already too little, why on Earth would we want to reduce that number? No wonder people talk about banding when using flat picture styles.