So trying to pack a lot of information into the highlights and darks results in wasted information. This would be a pretty crappy strategy because the underexposed stops are very noisy making it difficult to spot detail. If a picture style wanted to distribute the luminance values evenly to each of its 10 stops of light, that would mean each stop would have about 25.5 luma values to work with. Different picture styles allocate theses luminance values differently to each stop of light.

The luminance values in 8 bit video range from 0-255. Lets say you have a picture profile that has 10 stops of dynamic range. It is impossible for one picture style to be good at everything. But I would not lose much sleep over this. Clipping the blacks at 16 is fairly aggressive, and you can spot the difference if you do direct comparisons. So when the creator of Marvel’s Cine Style picture profile starts crying about how Technicolor’s CineStyle sucks because of the loss in dynamic range, don’t pay much attention to it. So technically you get a lower dynamic range but its not a big deal. So visually, if you were to crush everything below 10 or 12, you would not notice the difference because your pixels never go below 10 anyway. The truth is it is very rare to get pixels with values below 10. What this means is that by using CineStyle you technically lose detail (usually noisy, ugly muddy detail) in the darks which you will never get back. Anyway, Technicolor decided to clip the blacks and so the CineStyle picture profile only sees color from 16-255. It sucks because we want infinity color values per channel! With more color you get less banding and a truer image. The Problems With Technicolor’s CineStyle Picture Profileįor 8 bit video (which is what most DSLR shooters have to work with) you get 256 values per cRGB channel (which are numerically assigned from 0-255, with 0 being black). Personally, I feel the obsession over CineStyle is unwarranted. It was designed to use a LUT and mimic the old Technicolor look, but most people use it without applying the LUT (including me). By now I am sure you have heard about the Technicolor CineStyle picture profile. There are so many different picture profiles available for Canon DSLRs that you can easily get lost. Keep in mind I shoot on a Canon, so all my discussions will be centered around my use of Canon. It may seem counter intuitive to start babbling about workflows, but I think if you have a decent workflow it will allow you to consistently get a semi decent look from your footage.

Picture style cinema