C300: Clog 2 & clog 3 luts

ollywood88

ollywood88

Well-known member
Hi Folks,

After the previous post, I still think we are heading to the c300 mk 2 instead of the c200.

Quick question can anybody recommend some good clog 2 or 3 luts - secret sauce.

We have used previously

- NTOWN
- OSIRIS
- IWLTBAP

Any recommendations would be great

Thank you
 
C300 Mark II, Clog3 in Cinema Gamut, I use Canon's LUT or Matt Porwoll's LUT (scroll down to Custom Log3 LUT <- but the whole post is worth a read.)

Canon's LUT has bit more dynamic range than Matt's despite Matt's being slightly lower contrast. The highlights don't blow out as quickly in Canon's LUT as with Matt's LUT. Matt's LUT excels with some of the colors. Canon's LUT can turn blues a bit purple, Matt's LUT is more accurate on that front.
 
I'm using Lutify these days - https://lutify.me/. I'm either converting log to WideDR with Canon's officials luts and doing a colour transform, or just doing thecolour transform and adjusting levels from there shot to shot.
 
Unless you have a specific need to use Cinema Gamut, you're better off picking a gamut and settings that work for your specific needs, as close to in-camera color as possible. When shooting log, my experience has been that Canon Log 3 is the best all-around solution. Once you have your color gamut and matrix chosen, so you don't need a LUT to put color back into a usable space, you can grade Canon Log 3 with just curves, contrast, highlights, shadows, blacks, etc., and if you really want to use a LUT, use a 1D LUT from Canon Log 3 to Wide DR.

There is no secret sauce LUT that will work for all shots. The closest we can currently get to something like that would be to shoot with an Alexa ;)
 
The NTOWN ones have been great. What others are people using.

I have been shooting quite a bit with Clog 2 and prefer it to the 3.. Some of the Canon conversions lets don't look great to me.

Thanks for your reply everyone.
 
ollywood88 said:
The NTOWN ones have been great. What others are people using.

I have been shooting quite a bit with Clog 2 and prefer it to the 3.. Some of the Canon conversions lets don't look great to me.

Thanks for your reply everyone.
Click to expand...

I did extensive tests with all the gammas. Provided the shot is exposed so there's no clipping (highlights or shadows), all the gammas can produce a very similar result in post in terms of look and color. If the shot has highlights that will clip in Wide DR, even Canon Log 2 will clip after applying a LUT to bring back to 709 / Wide DR (or similar). It appears that Canon Log 2 does less NR processing in camera, and along with greatly boosted shadows, is significantly more noisy in the blacks. And at the same time, provides absolutely no advantage in the highlights over Canon Log 3. Also note Canon Log 2 clips the top code values, and provides less code values than Canon Log 3 (which was developed later). From a purely technical standpoint, Canon Log 3 is more evolved and generally more useful than Canon Log 2 (Canon Log 2 is a close copy of ARRI's LogC). The only time Canon Log 2 could be technically more useful would be outside in an extremely bright lighting condition, where even the shadows aren't that dark, and thus the extra 1/2 stop or so of shadow detail can be useful. Even then, I'd test first against Canon Log 3 to see if it's worth it regarding noise in the shadows and less overall code values + less code values in the highlights.

I found none of the Canon LUTs to provide results I'd use or recommend. I did find LUTCalc to be extremely useful for R&D: https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/ . After all these tests and color work, I now use highly tuned Custom Picture (CP) settings and no LUTs in post to get the basic color/grade looking good (LUTs are cool for specific emotional looks). Example (HD RGB 444 12-bit, scaled to 4K in post + sharpened slightly, tuned custom picture, no LUTs or any color work whatsoever in post): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6gOeOlksWs

Since the C300 II's "4K" sensor is only 4096/3840 Bayer photosites, it cannot produce True RGB 4K output (need at least 5.7K: the new C700 FF is a True 4K camera). And thus it makes sense that for green screen work, shooting 2K/HD in 12-bit RGB 444 keys better than "4K" 10-bit YUV 422. Thus I now shoot everything in 12-bit RGB 444 and scale + post sharpen to 4K in post (which people can't tell the difference from "4K" shot in camera on YouTube). Part of the reason why is 3840*.67 = 2572, which isn't much better than 1920. While it has full resolution 10-bit luma, it's only got 1/2 resolution chroma, which is 1286 10-bit chroma vs. 1920 12-bit RGB. Also note there's a loss for the RGB to YUV conversion. Try it yourself- shoot both ways (4K 10-bit vs. 2K 12-bit RGB with post upscale to 4K + sharpen) and show to clients and see if they can tell a difference in perceived detail (green screen is significantly better in terms of keying, so folks would likely pick upscaled RGB 444 as the 4K shot). Also note that 12-bit RGB 444 is almost 1/2 the file size vs. 10-bit 4K.
 
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