What Are Picture Profiles?

Today, I’m going to talk about picture profiles for video, what they are and how they can affect your final look.

What Are Picture Profiles?

They are a pre-set group of parameters that make up the characteristics of an image. For example, this was shot in a log picture profile and this is shot in a standard picture profile.

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What’s The Difference Between The Two & How Do They Affect Real World Scenarios?

Well, if I shoot in a standard picture profile, I don’t have to do much color correction later in post when I’m editing. All the colors look already, quote unquote normal. And it will allow for faster delivery of the content. And that would be true and effective for things like v logs and documentary work. Now, all the log picture profiles look bad straight out of the camera. They do give you some advantages that you don’t get with shooting standard picture profiles. For example, shooting a log allows the camera to capture more dynamic range in the images, which might help you a lot better with exposing for your highlights like this lamp to the side of my setup. If I shoot this in standard, the lamp could get a little too bright for me to bring down later when I’m editing.

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Log makes you do more work in the editing process, but it does give you a higher level of flexibility when you’re recovering those highlights or changing the colors of a clip.

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Shooting In Standard Gives You Less Technical Flexibility, But It Gives You Much Faster Workflow To Work With Because You Don’t Have To Do Much With The Coloring.

I’d say if you want to shoot a short film, a music video, or if you’re filming something with multiple cameras where you know you’re going to have to match the colors later, it would be better to shoot in log if possible.

Also, there’s options that are kind of in between log and standard picture profiles. For example, on the GH5, there’s standard and there is log, but there is in the middle other options that are called CineD or Cine4 for example, these options give you a little less contrast than the standard modes, but a little more contrast than the log modes. And so they could be a pretty good in between option for if you just don’t know which one to go for and you just want to go for something right in the middle.

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One Last Thing To Keep In Mind Is That Different Picture Profiles Will Expose The Images Differently.

You might have to change some of your settings when switching between different picture profiles, exposing needs a whole other video on its own. So I won’t go into too much detail into that, but just know that if you’re switching between different picture profiles, you might need to change some of your exposure settings. These picture profiles are named differently across different camera brands, so I’d research them based on which camera you have and perhaps do some tests at home if you do have a camera or if you don’t, there is even apps out there for phones that allow you to shoot in log picture profiles.

If you don’t like reading and prefer video, you can watch the full video here – What Are Picture Profiles? | Explained | Origin Films. Also make sure to check out our blogs page or our instagram page to learn more tips & tricks and upcoming news.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, like always put them down in the comments below and I’ll see you in the next one.