Step by step guide to installing Picture Styles in your EOS camera

All the EOS cameras since the EOS 5D and the EOS-1D Mark IIN have included Picture Styles and the ability to install your own choice of Picture Style in the camera. Very few photographers install the Picture Styles for the reason that they don’t think they give any extra functionality, or usually because the photographer plans on processing RAW images in an application that doesn’t recognise Picture Styles. Only Canon applications recognise the Picture Styles in RAW images.

With the advent of HD movies in EOS cameras with the EOS 5D Mark II, the Picture Style has a new important role since all movies are indeed affected by the chosen Picture Style. In essence the movie is a stream of processed JPEG images shot at 24, 25 or 30 frames per second. It’s become important to get the white balance and the look of the video right in camera. Picture Styles directly control how each image in the video is processed, and professional film makers often prefer to have a flat neutral look to their footage so that the movie stands up well to colour grading in post production. So important is the look of the movie direct from the camera that Technicolor have created a special CineStyle Picture Style for Canon EOS cameras. Primarily targeted at the EOS 5D Mark II to make it deliver film similar in tone to other professional movie cameras, the Technicolor CineStyle can be installed in any camera with Picture Styles, regardless of whether it shoots movies or not.

1 Connect the camera to the computer with the USB cable and run the EOS Utility software that came with the camera. It’s on the disk called the EOS Solution Disk and is probably still shrinkwrapped to the manual in the camera box. Don’ worry if you have an old version, you can download updates to the latest version of EOS Utility by downloading the update from the Canon website [link]

2 Click on the Camera Settings / Remote shooting text and you will see the window normally used for remote camera control and tethered shooting. However this same window is the one that gives access to the Picture Styles.

3 The dialog box shows  the three User Defined Picture Style memories, by default they will likely say Standard, though this camera was using Monochrome in the 3rd memory. Click on the open folder / file button  and browse your system to find the .pf2 Picture Style files.

4 Our system had several Picture Style files available, so for this example the Technicolor CineStyle was chosen to be installed. Click the Open button to load the Picture Style.

5 Now User Def. 3 contains the chosen Technicolor CineStyle Picture Style, and the default parameters of this Picture Style are sharpening, saturation and color tone all set to zero and contrast at -4. Technicolor further recommends setting the saturation to -2 before shooting with this Picture Style. User Def. 3 was selected since it is the easiest custom Picture Style to reach with the camera. Most cameras default to the Standard style, so User Def. 3 is the first one prior to this.

6 Finally you need to select the Picture Style you want to be used by the camera. This can be done from the camera menus, or as shown here from within the EOS Utility remote control and tethered shooting application. You can also adjust the saturation, sharpening, contrast and color tone of any Picture Style here, or in camera.

Choosing the right Picture Style is very important to give room in the post production of the movies, but even for still photographers the wrong Picture Style settings will affect the preview image on the LCD. You might want to check out a previous post on the topic of how the Picture Style changes the appearance of the blinking highlights.

Some useful links

• Canon Inc. Picture Style information and downloads
• Technicolor Cinestyle