Dumb question #10010 .. why flatten?
 

I've watched Tyler Ginter's setup for the 7D* numerous times and am smart enough to follow the advice of experts, but don't understand this business about flattening ..yet, clearly hear the confidence in his voice. Maybe one of you can enlighten..

..and did I not hear something to the effect; "..you can sharpen in post production"? So perhaps this is something you do to prepare for upper level productions..

I appreciate the help. Thanks.

Jim

*

I didn't see the video but presumably he means shooting flat to achieve maximum dynamic range and yes, the flavors would be brought out in post.

Philip Bloom talks about it in his "How to shoot great video with the 7D". You set the settings in a way so that you have a bigger range to work with when color correcting I believe. So if you don't do color correction don't flatten your image.

.... thanks Bri, Kelly. My guts told me that. I am already behind the curve, so the last thing I should do it put myself further back. Thanks/Cheers.

Jim

Jim never a dumb question. Tyler did a very nice job. I have Phil's video and both are informative. Thanks for posting the video.

Most people who think they are flattening the image are actually just raising the pedestal and effectively rendering a much narrow dynamic range despite believing the contrary. With in-camera contrast adjustments, the camera has quite a dynamic range that you don't see until you display the footage on a proper monitor.

Most people are blindly raising the shadow detail until it is visible on the camera's LCD, which is wrong because that LCD is nowhere close to the final output device. Get better at judging exposure and learn to ignore the camera's LCD. The best way to retain highlights is to not lose them in the first place.

Honestly, I am still playing and learning the 7D but I have chosen to shoot with "flattened" settings and when I view my footage on a proper LCD monitor, it still looks contrasty and saturated. Not that it is a bad thing but I would have expected that it would look....well...flat. And so far it certainly doesn't. In fact it is quite brilliant and looks almost color corrected already. Is anyone seeing this behavior also? Maybe I am missing something.

I flattened my 7D using Tyler's instructions and to be honest for my workflow it's not working, It does give a greater dynamic range, but it has a minimum iso of 200, which in the Caribbean shoot I was doing recently, meant stacking a 4x, 8x ND and a polarizer and still not getting f1.4.

I'm a stock video producer, I want as much done in camera as possible, so I have gone back to picture styles and deleted the high light protection and set to 100 iso.

I'm sure if you are an Indie film producer shooting under theatrical lighting then flattening makes sense.

The custom presets are a must however for having your shooting styles preset, such as 30p and 60p on C2 and C3