I had read online that Marvel's Advanced camera profile provides the best latitude when recording which helps retain the image quality during post production. However, as with any proposed camera setup, I wanted to test it for myself. I had also read good things about the Technicolor CineStyle profile as well as a flattened Canon standard profile. I wanted to test these profiles using a challenging low light scene and see how each shot behaved in post.

NeoScene from CineForm was used to transcode each shot into Apple's ProRes HQ 422. This process also converts the source 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 which also helps retain as much image quality in the final shot.

I also tested the ISO levels looking for the noise characteristics of each under this scenario. This test looks at both the Canon ISO increments and Magic Lantern ISO increments. Magic Lantern applies negative gain to the Canon ISO to achieve a lower noise alternative i.e. Canon ISO 800 becomes ML ISO 640.

Looking at the results I prefer Marvels Advanced profile. The Technicolor CineStyle looks flatter than Marvels however CineStyle only uses approx 95% of the available range to record light values. I read this is to avoid the noisy values which are in the lower light levels however I don't like that not all the information is captured. I see from other tests that this translates to less detail in the shadows.

So I will keep using Marvels Advanced for now.

Here is a summary of my test setup.

Camera Test
- Canon 550D/T2i
- Magic Lantern 2.3 firmware
- 24-105mm lens @ 24mm
- f/5.6
- 1080p 25fps (1/50th sec)