I had tried CineStyle several months ago with my Canon 600D/T3i. At first, I didn't like it. But the more I've worked with it, the more comfortable I've become.

Since then, I have gotten more experienced with it and have used it a lot with my 5D Mark III. I now use it almost all of the time that I shoot. As Paul suggests, I think the log curves and lookup tables (not available in Vegas) are just starting points anyway. The point, to me, of CineStyle is that you simply have more latitude in creating the look that you want, rather than baking it in while shooting. This will, no doubt, lead to a barrage of posts saying that you should get the look you want in the camera. I see their points. For me, I usually prefer to have the ability to change the look in post.

Back to your point...

I've been using Magic Bullet Looks to do this, but you can do it with Vegas color tools, too. What you are usually trying to do with CineStyle in post is return contrast to the image and, perhaps, add more saturation to the colors. You p[robably have tried the following already, but in case you haven't: The Sony Color Curves fx is one way to do this, but I find I can usually get most of the way to where I want to be by simply adjusting the Sony Color Corrector gain and offset. While looking at the Video Scopes histogram, I bring the offset down until my blackest black is (almost) at the lowest (legal) point and then push the gain up until the whitest white is (almost) at the highest (legal) point. This assumes, of course, that the scene has a black black and a bright highlight. I then usually push up the saturation 10% to 30%, depending on the end look I'm going for. If the white balance was fine, this is about all of the adjustment that I need to make to "correct" the image.

In Magic Bullet Looks, I usually get all the adjustment I need (for correction) using the 3-way color corrector.

The point of all of this is that you are adjusting to how you want the final picture to look, not some theoretical curve. In many cases, I make the adjustments to one shot and then copy and paste the fx to other shots, then I tweak each one to the final look. Again, then benefit, to me, is that I have quite a bit of latitude to adjust. The downside to some is that you must make adjustments and can't simply take it out of the camera and edit it without color correcting. For that, I've found Marvel's Advanced Style v3.3 or v3.4 to be very good.

Again, you might want more contrast than this, but the above adjustments will put some contrast back in. You can use the Sony Contrast fx or Sony Color Curves.

Paul,

Thank you for your response and the "CC Preset". I now have it in VP.

You are correct, the topic was covered a year ago (almost to the day). I was aware of the original post. There was some hype and excitment in the community and a lot of discussion at the time. I thought that with the passing of a year, maybe something new has come up.

I was mostly interested to know if anyone is routinely using CineStyle over the past year and editing in VP. Sounds like there are at least two of you.

Thanks again for the response and the preset. I'll give CineStyle another go.

Rich