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Installing Cinestyle or Prolost Flat Color Profiles on a Canon SL2

What’s up guys, Sagi here and welcome to another Tech Gear Talk. Today I’m going to show you how to install or set up Cinestyle and Prolost picture profiles on the Canon SL2 or 200D, depending on where you’re from. This tutorial will work for any custom picture profile that you find on the web, either paid or free. If you watched my Canon SL2 Cinematic Look Tutorial, you know that one of the things I recommended in order to get that great cinematic look everyone wants is to use a flat color profile. If you haven’t watched that video yet, make sure to head on and check it out so you can get a complete and easy-to-follow tutorial for getting cinematic footage.

Canon SL2 Picture Style

To review, the Canon SL2 has 8 different picture styles, and picture style are designed to make adjustments to the picture profile for different types of shooting. So for example the Standard profile is set to produce vivid colors and contrast levels that people tend to like for general photography. The Portrait style adjusts the color tone magenta-to-yellow to more accurately reproduce natural skin tones. So, if I’m just shooting a regular video for youtube and don’t plan on color grading it, I’m happy with the Standard picture profile. It gives me super usable footage with a nice amount of contrast and saturation right out of the camera so I can immediately start editing. Of course it doesn’t have the best dynamic range but it gives me a much faster workflow. If you’re not familiar with the term dynamic range, at least when used in photography and video, is a measurement between the brightest and the darkest parts of your image. It can also refer to the sensor’s capabilities in terms of how much of a difference between the shadows and the highlights of your image it can capture, without the highlights being blown out or the shadows going to pure black. So while Standard picture profile works well in some cases, when we try to get a more cinematic look, we need to do something different, we want to use a flat picture profile. I explain this in more detail in the complete tutorial so let’s get to the setup or installation part.

Installing Cinestyle on Canon SL2

I’ll have a link in the description that will take you to technicolor.com/cinestyle, scroll down and fill out the email form and you’ll get an email with a download link. Now, go ahead and extract the content of the Zip file to your desktop or wherever else you may want, just make sure you remember the location. You’ll have a folder with a user guide pdf, the actual picture style file which will have a .pf2 and another zip file which we will talk about later. Next, connect the SL2 to your computer using a mini usb cable and start the Canon EOS Utility app. Make sure that you have the latest version or it may not recognize the SL2. I have a link in the description to the download page and you can just find your model on the left, click on it, go to Drivers & Downloads and select the Software Tab and fine EOS Utility, which at the time of making this video is version 3.9.0. Now turn on your SL2 and you will get a screen that shows you a few options, Download images to computer, remote shooting and camera settings. You might think we want to go to camera settings, but we’re going to use remote shooting. This is actually a great feature for when you want to control your camera remotely but that is a topic for another video. The feature we want to use is Register User Defined Style, but you’ll notice that it’s grayed out and I can’t click on it. The reasons is that my SL2 is set to video mode which for some reason disables this option. I’ll go ahead and change me SL2 to photos or “on” and you’ll see that the REGISTER USER DEFINED STYLE is now available. Go ahead and click on it and you’ll get the next screen which gives you three User Defined options. If you haven’t used these they will al be set to Auto. Click the Browse button and locate the Technicolor_cinestyle_v1.0.pf2 file which we extracted and then select it. You will see that after a few second, it will be installed in on your SL2 and you can click OK. This both installed and selected CineStyle as your current picture profile, but let’s disconnect the SL2 from the computer and look at how you would select this option later on. Once you have it installed, you can click on MENU, go to SHOOT3, click on PICTURE STYLE and scroll down to the user-defined selection that you used to install the Cinestyle profile. Click the INFO button on your SL2 to see the detail settings and make sure that Sharpness is turned all the way down, Contrast is turned all the way down, and Saturation is turned down 2 clicks.

That’s it, you’re now good to go. Now you can start shooting with the CineStyle picture style and get great flat footage to start with.

Setting Up Prolost Picture Style on the Canon SL2

If you don’t have the time to install Cinestyle, or you’re borrowing a camera that doesn’t have it installed and you’re in a rush, you can create the Prolost profile very quickly. Again, click on MENU, go to SHOOT3 and then select PICTURE STYLE. Scroll down and select one of the user-defined settings that aren’t being used, I’ll use #2 and click inte INFO button, Start with the Neutral Picture Style, then set the sharpness to zero, which is all the way to the left. Set contrast all the way to the left. And set Saturation two notches to the left and you now have created the Prolost picture style.

Conclusion

So we very quickly installed 2 flat profiles that we can easily use to get better footage with our SL2. If you haven’t yet, make sure that you check out the complete tutorial for Cinematic Footage with the SL2 so that you can capture the best footage before moving on to the color grading and editing phase.

I really hope this article was helpful. If it was, please let me know by sharing it and if you haven’t yet, join our community by hitting the subscribe and notification buttons on my YouTube.

For more tips and tutorials I also recommend that you follow me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @techgeartalk.

You know what I always say, buy it nice or buy it twice!

Good luck and see you soon.

Download Technicolor Cinestyle: (people reported not getting link):

https://technicolor.com/cinestyle

Download Technicolor Cinestyle (backup option, if above fails):

https://www.techgeartalk.com/download-technicolor-cinestyle/

Download EOS Utility:

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/details/cameras/eos-dslr-and-mirrorless-cameras/dslr/eos-rebel-sl2/eos-rebel-sl2

Canon SL2 (200d) Cinematic Look Tutorial:

https://youtu.be/RDs-Zzb0pmE

Cinematic Color Grading Canon SL2 (200d) – tutorial:

https://youtu.be/tTJWelIZlkI

Canon SL2 (200d) playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9Y8hNm43poKzHUQ-5DoPGtTfUm5s_khH

Canon SL2 Camera (updated):

Body only: http://geni.us/tgtcanonsl2
Kit used (for review) in video: http://geni.us/tgtcanonsl218-55
Deluxe Kit: http://geni.us/tgtcanonsl2deluxe

Great Additional Lens Options:

Canon EF-S 10-18mm: https://geni.us/IdiaJQh
Canon EF-S 18-55mm: https://geni.us/Ez1X
Canon EF-S 55-200mm: https://geni.us/iHgE7

My favorite 3-axis Gimbals for smaller Cameras:

Moza AirCross 2 3-Axis Gimbal: https://geni.us/4hgD9I
ikan MS-PRO Beholder 3-Axis Gimbal Stabilizer: http://geni.us/tgtIkanBeholder
Zhiyun-Tech Crane v2 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer: http://geni.us/tgtZhiyunCraneV2
Beholder DS1 Handheld Stabilizer 3-Axis Brushless Gimbal: http://geni.us/tgtBeholderDS1

Microphones for Canon SL2:

Rode VideoMicro Compact On-Camera Microphone: http://geni.us/tgtRodeVideoMicro
Rode VideoMic Pro http://geni.us/tgtRodeVideoMicPro
Rode VideoMic GO http://geni.us/tgtRodeVideoMicGO
Rode VideoMic Pro Plus http://geni.us/tgtRodeVideoMicProPlus

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