Camera Flat Settings

If you have been following the world of HDDSLR film making, then you no doubt know that most serious users are using "flat" settings for their picture settings. Reducing sharpness and contrast all the way down, and saturation a little, produces an image that doesn't look as good out-of-the-camera, but is easier to color correct and fine tune in post.

But how flat is too flat? And should you go "super-flat," as some users do?

Director, author, and producer of Colorista II tutorials, Stu Maschwitz, posted some interesting Tweets about color settings for HDSLR's yesterday:

Had an Interesting conversation with a colorist about difficulties he had with 5D footage shot with one of those flatter-than-flat settings.
He confirmed my experience, that the in-camera flat settings like the ones I use are good. Anything "flatter" adds nothing, causes issues.
...he was just having to work hard to achieve natural skin tones. The superflat setting had rendered them very pasty.
There's a sweet spot with compressed originals. There's such a thing as too flat, and such a thing as not flat enough.
A few folks have asked, so sorry for the repeat - I am still using and loving these settings on both my 5D and 7D: Flatten Your 5D

Read Stu's post linked above to see the actual settings he recommends.

Of course, if you have no intention of doing color correction in post, then you might want to leave things the way they are!


Note: Maschwitz is also Creative Director for Red Giant Software's Magic Bullet product line.

ProLost: Flatten Your 5D
On Twitter: 5tu

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