Canon engineering has teamed up with Technicolor and the ASC Directors of Photography to produce an amazing photo ‘style’ to use with the 5dmk2.  And the best part?  It’s FREE!

You can download it and the accompanying instruction HERE.

Below you can see the Technicolor profile and how it appears in screen shots vs the Canon profiles built into the camera from the factory.  The photo’s below are simply frames taken from actual video, they are not edited.

Once installed  set the following settings in your picture style:

Sharpness: 0

Contrast: -4

Saturation: -2

Color Tone: 0

And as always, shoot in multiples of 160 ISO when doing any kind of video on your 5Dmk2.  These ISO’s are native to your camera sensor, specifically for shooting video.  For example, you can shoot ISO’s of 160, 320, 640, 1250, and 2500.  I try not to go over ISO 1250 if at all possible.  Something shot at 400ISO for example would have much great noise than something shot at 640.  Again this is only in reference to video, the same is not true of photos.

Upon first use you might feel like the video isn’t what you’d prefer, it’s flat and somewhat desaturated.  That’s a good thing, you can always adjust the exposure levels, add contrast, and add saturation.  Shooting using Cinestyle should be done when you plan to adjust the video in post-production, otherwise you may be better off using one of the original styles for your video.

Here is an example of video I took using Cinestyle.  This is Terry Wollman performing a song off his latest Album -Buddha’s Ear at Vitello’s in Studio City.  This was shot using the 5Dmk2 with a Canon 70-200IS2 lens and a Rode Stereo Mic.