How to increase the Canon 7D dynamic range (Tutorial)

How to increase the Canon 7D dynamic range (Tutorial) from Luka on Vimeo.

Tutorial on how to use picture styles to increase the dynamic range of the Canon 7D / 5DMkII.

Custom picture styles are an amazing feature that almost compensate for the lack of a raw codec for video capture on the Canon DSLRS. The default picture styles on the camera are geard towards producing nice results out of the box but are not very good if you intend to do color correction and grading in postprocessing. This tutorial shows how to use custom picture styles that produce very flat, high dynamic range footage (similar to real film cameras).

The actual picture styles have been made by other people, and here are some references:
Super Flat, Genesis Panalog and Velvia:
http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3401

Marvel’s Cine Style:
http://marvelsfilm.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/canon-7d-picture-style-with-cine-gamma-s-curve-free-download/

If you have problems downloading them, you can get them from here in one package (http://www.crnkovic.org/video/picture_styles.zip). I do however recommend that you get them from the original sources and read the forum posts/blog posts associated with them.

The final example footage was shot handheld (Zacuto rapid fire + zfinder) at Skogskyrkogården cemetery in Stockholm. I scouted the place for a possible future shoot and the footage I shot was never meant for release – it did however come handy in this tutorial as it was all shot using the super flat picture style.