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Cinematography

How to Set Up Menus for Cinematic Capture on the Canon 1DC

Canon 1DC

The Canon 1DC is a powerful new tool for filmmakers. Today I’m going to walk you through how I set up the menus on this camera for cinematic success!

Canon 1DC

In the spring of 2012, Canon, writer/director Po Chan and the Hurlbut Visuals production arm collaborated together on the short film project The Ticket to showcase the new Canon 4K DSLR 1DC. I was very excited about the opportunity and challenge to shoot with this new camera. As all of you know, a DSLR is not inherently a movie camera. The original intention was to shoot stills, and video was an afterthought. Canon informed me that the video division and the still division came together for the first time and this was the result; hence the C after the 1D. It was a start.

“Getting Your Menus Dialed In”

There are many functions you will need to turn off and on to finesse the camera to deliver the quality of images, just like I did with the 5D MK II. But before we get to this, let’s set up the GREEN STAR area of your menus.

Start your menu set up by adding the functions that you use all the time into the Green Star area. The limit is six settings.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Green Star Menu-No Settings

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

How to add your favorite settings

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Shane’s favorite settings saved to My Menu:
CanonLog, Picture Style, Format Card, White Balance (Color Temp), Movie Rec Size (Frame Rate)

Once you have all of these items moved to your Green Star area, this will be the only place you need to go. Color temp, formatting, frame rates, Canon Log, etc. are all in one location and at your fingertips. No need to surf through sub menus to get to your desired function.

“What to Turn On and Off”

Now go through your menu section to turn some things off. Peripheral illumination is a still photo function that takes lenses that would fall off on the edges and illuminates those edges. Not good for video.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Disabling Peripheral Illumination and Chromatic Aberration

Canon Log is one of the best functions of the 1DC. This is where the still and video divisions at Canon really knocked it out together. You want this function on, which will give you twelve stops of latitude at 400 ISO. It turns the DSLR into a cinematic machine, giving you the ability to shoot in situations with high contrast while holding the interior and exterior exposures. Turn Canon Log ON.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

How to Enable Canon Log

 

“More things to turn off”

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Disabling Highlight Tone Priority and High ISO Speed Noise Reduction

Highlight tone priority is another hold over from the still function side of the camera. It suppresses highlights and tries to give you more latitude in those highlights. No thank you. It only messes with your image. Canon Log disables this function but if you are shooting picture style mode, it will affect it.

High ISO speed Noise Reduction is something that you do not want to have on as well. This only makes your image softer and not in an artistic way. It is better to use higher end noise reduction tools in post than in camera.

In your Gold Wrench area, please adjust the Auto Power Off to 15 minutes. The 1DC overheats quickly and this is a wonderful reminder to yourself. If you get busy and forget to power it down, the camera will remember.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Setting Auto Off to 15 minutes

Mirroring is a new function to the DSLR, the ability to actually operate on the back LCD screen and have your director or focus puller view an external monitor as well. This would have been huge on Act of Valor.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

How to enable/disable LCD Mirroring

But if you want to playback on the camera to check a take, then mirroring has to be turned off or you will not see playback. This is the power of this small 4K in camera capture device. I find myself shooting a shot and taking it over to the director to show him. It is so fast and immediate, which keeps your speed and set up count high. I have wasted so much time in my day waiting for playback or trying to get a signal out of the camera to video village. It is getting much quicker with hard drives and everything being computer based, but when you are in the thick of it, knowing that the camera can do it all is a great option. Knowing all of this, I prefer to keep the Mirroring OFF.

“Muddy Waters”

One of the functions that you do not want to enable with Canon Log is Canon’s view assist function. This is a rec. 709 LUT that takes the flatness out of the image, adding contrast and color saturation so that you can light better. The problem with this view assist is that it is too heavy handed in its contrast. With it on, you will underexpose your camera more than you should, and this camera with its 8 BIT color space gets muddy quickly. What do I mean by muddy? Muddy is a term for underexposure that feels dull, not with life. The blacks get a brownish, black contamination and look like Muddy Waters. When this camera is underexposed and you push it to the exposure that looks good in post color correction, you will start to get a very noisy, muddy image, especially if you are using the very sensitive sensor at night and shooting with higher ISOs than 400. I advise shooting with this 1DC sensor up to 2000 ISO, but no higher. After this, it loses BIT depth to about 6 BIT. Your color gets thin, like you are starving the sensor of exposure and color information. I found that 1/3 of a stop over-exposed and rating it with your light meter at 320 ISO worked like gang busters.

So with all of this, it is best to turn View Assist OFF and use a monitor that has a built in Canon LUT like the AC-7 OLED display by Small HD. The engineers at Small HD have dialed in a Canon Log LUT that gets you exactly where you need to be on exposure.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Disabling View Assist

 

“Save These Functions to Your Card”

Now that you have all of these functions turned on and off, you are going to save all of these internal functions to a CF card.

Menu Cinematography filmmaker film movies tv shooting DP lights

Saving your settings to a CF card

You have now saved all of these to your CF card. Label this 1DC Camera set up. Now you can take this from camera to camera and with a couple of button pushes, all of the cameras in your 1DC arsenal are the same. This is a huge development. Keeping everyone on your team operating with this new protocol is so important. It gives you a base to work with and you can feel good knowing that all cameras are functioning in cinematic capture mode.

“To Recap from My 5D MK II B&H Series Where the Same Rules Apply”

• Shoot at 1/50 sec shutter to feel like a 180 degree film shutter
• Shoot at 1/80 sec shutter if you are shooting at 60fps to crisp up the image
• Set camera at 400 ISO for its most latitude in Canon Log
• No native ISOs so you can shoot at any ISO
• Do not shoot over 2000 ISO in Canon Log
• Do not shoot over 4000 ISO in Picture Style mode
• When shooting in Picture Style mode, use “Neutral” Picture Style with -4 Contrast, -1 Saturation
• Camera over heats and that affects color space. Turn off when you are not lighting or shooting

Adjusting picture style settings

Loading saved settings from CF card; Loading settings into another camera

Loading saved settings from CF card; Loading settings into another camera

Now you have a camera that takes the best of the still world and the video world funneled into a cinematic movie maker. Next week, we will go into rigging and accessorizing your 1DC.

How are you using this new 4K DSLR? What settings do you prefer?

October 10, 2013/by Shane Hurlbut, ASC
Tags: Blog, Camera, Canon, Canon 1DC, Cinematic Capture, Color, Color Correction, Digital single-lens reflex camera, Exposure, Film speed, focus, Hurlbut Visuals, Illumination, latitude, Lenses, Light, light meter, movie maker, NAB, Photographic film, Photography, Shutter, SmallHD, The Director
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https://www.filmmakersacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1dc_4kbf_sm-1.jpg 274 435 Shane Hurlbut, ASC https://www.filmmakersacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Filmmakers-Academy-Filmmaking-Courses.svg Shane Hurlbut, ASC2013-10-10 09:03:502022-02-10 17:32:07How to Set Up Menus for Cinematic Capture on the Canon 1DC
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27 replies
  1. Bill Noel
    Bill Noel says:
    October 16, 2013 at 11:47 AM

    Thanks for the tips! They’ve sure helped with our 5D Mrk II and Mrk III useage and made them workhorses for our projects. Just beginning with the 1DC – lots of testing and experimenting now…that won’t really ramp up until we upgrade main workstation to handle 4k with fewer hoops.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      October 17, 2013 at 6:01 PM

      Bill Noel, you are so welcome and thank you for the support.

      • Willy B!
        Willy B! says:
        January 28, 2014 at 9:42 AM

        Hi Shane!

        As if you haven’t heard it enough, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! Your blog and approach to education is priceless. I was wondering if you could pass along any experience you may have in the process of converting 4K 24p to US Broadcast 29.97 fps for commercial use. As a user of the 5D MKII and C300, I have been excited to shoot with the 1DC, however I need to deliver in 1080 29.97 H.264. I’m excited to see 4K scaled to 1080, however the fps requirement have me a little nervous. Have you faced the same issue and if so, what invaluable “Shane Advice” might you have?

        Thanks in advance and all the best!

  2. Nigel
    Nigel says:
    October 26, 2013 at 12:39 PM

    Thanks for the tips Shane. Going to disable CLOG view assist for next shoot as I was losing too much shadow detail. Reverse for highlights though, was seeing too hot and they were actually there.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      October 29, 2013 at 7:43 AM

      Nigel, Yep, that thing will kill you. They used a REC. 709 LUT and their Canon Log is not an C Log which the Rec. 709 was built for which is a much flatter file

  3. Craig
    Craig says:
    October 27, 2013 at 2:00 AM

    As usual, straight up, useful information. Thank you. Looking forward to the rigging segment.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      October 29, 2013 at 7:42 AM

      Craig, thank you for the kind words and support. I had to push the Accessorize your 1DC a little back, but it is coming. Promise

  4. Kiak
    Kiak says:
    November 26, 2013 at 10:19 AM

    Hey shane, thank you for your post !

    In the picture above show that in Canon C-Log menu, ‘ Did you set Saturation all the way down to the left side ? ”

    Thanks ! :)

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      November 27, 2013 at 4:25 PM

      Kiak, You bet, thank you for the support. No I did not change the C-Log settings.

  5. Kevin Falk
    Kevin Falk says:
    December 5, 2013 at 10:35 PM

    Exactly what I was looking for.
    Just got my 1D-C and after reviewing the test footage I shot today I was slightly disappointed.
    But now I can’t wait to give it another go tomorrow.
    Great info that all makes since.
    So cool about the safe setting to card as well as the Canon Log info.
    I had the view assist on and totally under exposed. Hope my Small HD DP6 has Canon LUT!
    Thank you Shane!

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      December 12, 2013 at 3:06 PM

      Kevin Falk, you are very welcome, get out there and tear it up. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

  6. Jason Bowdach
    Jason Bowdach says:
    December 11, 2013 at 12:41 PM

    Thanks for the fantastic tips for DSLR video shooting. Do you recommend the same PP settings for the 5DMIII as well? Cant wait to see how this puppy performs as a backseat cam in need for speed.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      December 12, 2013 at 2:59 PM

      Jason Bowdach, the 5D MK III is a little different. I have given those pearls in other posts it think.

  7. Breton
    Breton says:
    December 19, 2013 at 5:28 PM

    I am curious why you say not to shoot over 2000 ISO in Canon Log? Isn’t one of the best selling features of this camera how well it can perform at high ISOs?

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      December 27, 2013 at 8:16 AM

      Breton, if you are showing the 1DC on a 15 inch laptop then you can crank that baby up to 12K. If you are projecting on a 60′ screen in 8000 theaters across the country then I would not advise any higher than 4000 ISO and 2000 ISO to be safe. The higher the ISO the more BIT information you loose on this camera

  8. Ulisse
    Ulisse says:
    December 28, 2013 at 12:19 AM

    Hi and thx for your info.
    I want also say that the push auto focus don’t work when the camera is in C-LOG mode on, this sometimes is annoying :(

    Regards

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      January 1, 2014 at 10:32 AM

      Ulisse, yes I noticed that as well. Quirks of DSLR’s

  9. Glen
    Glen says:
    March 1, 2014 at 5:42 AM

    Excellent tips. Looking forwards to taking this camera to Antarctica next week. Thanks Shane.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      March 3, 2014 at 12:30 AM

      Glen, you bet, glad I could help

  10. Sahan
    Sahan says:
    March 3, 2014 at 6:39 PM

    Good article! can please post a article about cinematic lighting? that would be great! :)

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      April 22, 2014 at 7:00 PM

      Sahan, yes many to come, thanks for your support

  11. Alex Cornell
    Alex Cornell says:
    October 5, 2014 at 5:20 PM

    Hey Shane! Just got a lot of 1DC footage back from Iceland. Set everything up according to these settings — Canon Log, ISO400 etc. The footage coming in is very soft and I’m wondering if that’s just how the image is, or if it’s symptomatic of some other issue I didn’t account for. I haven’t graded it yet, so obviously will gain some ground there, but it’s coming back really squishy, with not nearly as much detail as I expected. Could be a lens thing..but was shooting all L Canon glass. Anyway, would be curious if you’ve noticed soft details ever, and if there is anything that can be done

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      October 10, 2014 at 8:45 AM

      The 1DC is inherently soft because of the Motion JPEG compression. Compared to a C500 for example, it is definitely a softer image.

  12. Ezra Trice
    Ezra Trice says:
    July 15, 2015 at 8:22 PM

    Hi Shane,

    I’m working with a 1DC now that has firmware 1.3.4. For some reason shutter speed 1/50 is not available in any shooting mode. I am in movie, neutral picture and want to shoot in 4K with a shutter set to 50 but my only options are 30 or 60. Can you think of a setting that may be engaged that would turn off the option for 50. I reset camera setting but nothing changed up.

  13. Brendan
    Brendan says:
    September 1, 2016 at 4:10 PM

    Hi Shane. Considering buying a Canon 1DC for shooting weddings and short films and wondered what your advice would be? Canon 1DC or Canon 1DX MKii?

    • Shane Hurlbut, ASC
      Shane Hurlbut, ASC says:
      December 16, 2016 at 4:07 PM

      The Canon 1DC I have found it a powerhouse for your application as well it takes the best photos that I have ever seen.

  14. devin
    devin says:
    January 16, 2017 at 5:51 PM

    Shane, I just picked up a used 1DC, I wanted to thank you for the blog information, much appreciation. I think the 1DC is a sleeper camera, especially if you are a stills photographer as well. I picked up mine for less than 3K. I could buy two for what I’d drop on a 1DX MKii. It’s just a beautiful camera. Thanks again.

Comments are closed.

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