FS7: EI. mode question

Duke M.

Duke M.

Veteran
I was thinking about EI mode. Its pretty much straight off the sensor. No noise reduction. No color tweeks. Flat.

Isn't it just a compressed form of internal RAW?
 
does that really matter? White balance is a color tone quality. Color tones can be adjusted in post. Raw light. LOL
 
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Well I love working with Slog3. Thats kind of the long and short of it. It handles very similar to raw in that you can bend the colour and exposure nearly anywhere without breaking the image.

As for the colour balance, well as the file does not have as much flex as a raw file it is helpful to use the right 'ballpark' when shooting.

S
 
I'm warming up to Slog-3 and Cine EI myself, after some initial concerns. A monitor lut is essential for critical focus, and the 3 white balance settings are somewhat limiting, but otherwise it's a great way to shoot. I'm not seeing the limitations in post as I saw with the AVCHD of the FS700.
 
For short shoots and stock footage, I shoot RAW. For most everything else I shoot XAVC-I S-LOG2/S-Gamut. I'll only use a scene file if I have a client who needs WYSIWYG and doens't want to grade. S-LOG XAVC could be considered "Lite RAW", but I find genuine RAW to be much easier to grade.
 
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I switched all my lights to daylight balanced higher end LED lights and keep the camera set for daylight in EI mode for both indoors and outdoors. It takes very little tweeking to get it right in post IMO.
 
jshbckr said:
Doug, any reason you use Slog2 over Slog3? I've found Slog3 to yield much better results, personally.
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S-LOG2 is superior. Period. People can deny it if they want to, but when you talk with experienced colorists and the people who run Sony's Digital Cinema Production center in Culver City, they will tell you flat out that S-LOG2 is better. S-LOG3 came around later as a way to make S-LOG more digestible for people who wanted a curve that could be handled like the Alexa's curve. So, Sony should get some credit for giving people what they asked for, but personally, I don't deal with an Arri workflow so I am free to choose what is better. And that is definately S-LOG2.

One of the best things about shooting RAW with my F55 is that I can choose S-LOG3 or S-LOG2 in post. I've done a lot of experimenting with the same exact same footage, and S-LOG2 always wins. It was nice to hear someone from Sony who ought to know what they are talking about say S-LOG2 was better just a couple of weeks ago at an event I attended.
 
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Doug Jensen said:
S-LOG2 is superior. Period. People can deny it if they want to, but when you talk with experienced colorists and the people who run Sony's Digital Cinema Production center in Culver City, they will tell you flat out that S-LOG2 is better..
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....So, no other opinions allowed then? Thanks for letting us know.
Steve
 
Maybe you should just post a massive list of all these facts and save us all from discussing things and the forum could shut down, that would be great.
And at the same time give us a list of the world's best painter, singer and most beautiful woman - just so we all know.
Steve
 
Slog3 provides more data for the shadows and desaturates the highlights a bit....Slog 2 has more data from mid point on at the expense of the darker tones.....
Slog3 is supposed to mimic film more closely as well as arri, cineon, red,...
to say one is better then the other makes little sense...i prefer Slog3 and agree with some people here that EI mode with a "close enough" color balance setting (not that we have that many options anyway) is pretty much like raw....we all know it isn't raw but i am comparing it to RED raw files and i don't see much difference....grading the internal slog3 is a joy....
i am working with the Koji LUTs and i am blown away what the FS7 can deliver....
 
Doug Jensen said:
What is your problem? Why is it so offenseive to you that someone has a strong opinion?
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Opinions = good. That's not what you do or did - you state things as fact and that if anyone denies it or disagrees with it they are wrong. If doing that is adult I'll stay as a kid thanks.
Steve
 
There are three main approaches to the way log is recorded that I am aware of. Canon (until the C300 Mkii) has based theirs around 8-bit recording. To get away with that limited range, they bake in the exposure adjustment. Very simple, but the full dynamic range is only captured at native ISO.

Sony takes the 'purist' approach. The full dynamic range is captured, with identical basic data stored regardless of the ISO. Then an item of metadata tells post software what the CineiEI ISO rating was and is expected to perform the correction on the fly. Great if it works, bouncing exposures with CineEI shifts if the metadata is ignored.

Arri take a bit of a middle route, adjusting the parameters of the log curve depending on the ISO recorded.

Both Sony and Arri capture the full dynamic range regardless of the shot ISO. With around 14 stops range that only becomes worthwhile with a 10-bit or deeper codec. For the greatest flexibility, particularly for pushing to high ISO, the spread of data should be as even as possible. Log is not intended to be viewed untouched, indeed once you have your workflow set up there is no real necessity to ever view it unLUTTed/ungraded in some way (nobody I know feels the need to look directly at 16-bit linear ;-) ). If you do look at it untouched, a very even spread across the range means that the noisy shadows are also important and actually pushed upward into the intensities that out eyes are used to seeing. It also means that when those noisy shadows are later intentionally pushed up (as a CineEI shift to high ISO) there is still plenty of actual exposure data in what is now the midtones. If you shoot everything at native ISO or lower, this ceases to be an advantage to S-Log3.

This is a long answer, so sorry, but is one of the reasons why S-Log3 has developed to supercede S-Log2. It's also not in isolation. V-Log on Panasonics is very, very similar, the big difference that I am aware of being that black level is even higher, at around 7% IRE and of course there is LogC on Arris, spreading data in an extremely similar way to S-Log3, though with 18% around two or three percent lower. The original Cineon curve which kicked off log recording in film scanners is also a close relative.

S-Log3 holds everything within legal range (it actually clips a fair bit lower than 100% IRE). This may sound inefficient with extended range going to 109%, but considering it is intended for 10-bit and up, is well established as plenty (every stop is far better represented than a C300 in CP lock). It also keeps the workflow consistent and simple. As a bonus, if Sony bring out a camera with 16 stops latitude, then they need only allow S-Log3 to go into extended range - nobody's workflows would need changing.

The two closest counterparts to S-Log2 are S-Log, which is almost precisely S-Log2 overexposed half a stop (strictly S-Log2 is S-Log underexposed half a stop for an extra half-stop of usable range, a trick that Sony rightly figured could be got away with acceptably at 10-bit) and Canon's C-Log, which as already mentioned is designed to work around 8-bit's natural unsuitability to log.

The new Canon C300mkii, just announced supposedly captures 15 stops range (great brochure stat but consider all these conversations about making the most of 14 stops! ;-) ). C-Log has room for 12 stops, clipping (in extended range) about 5 1/3 stops above mid gray. The announced camera apparently includes 'Canon Log2', no technical details yet, but to hold those 15 stops I'll be amazed if it doesn't look more like S-Log3 / LogC / V-Log / Cineon than S-Log / S-Log2 / C-Log.

Rolling your own exposure adjustment and lineaisation by hand S-Log3 is a pain, but that's rather going out of your way to make life difficult. Automated linearisation (such as happens a bit more consistently with Arris and is inherent to raw workflows), suitable LUTs or ACES make it a doddle and log-curve agnostic.

Finally (at last!) I think it's important to add that I'm not saying S-Log2 bad, S-Log3 good; in fact I think (opinion here ;-) ) that saying one is 'better' than the other is fairly unhelpful. As given above there are very good reasons for the development and use of S-Log3, but properly handled the results should be indistiguishable the vast majority of the time, so whichever works for you is the 'best'.

Sorry for the long answer, but facts were asked for and that is tricky without context,

Ben
 
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FWIW, I personally prefer S-Log3 mainly because the camera is a bit better set up MLUTs-wise to make it easy, because I need to shoot higher than native ISO quite a lot of the time, because I do a fair bit of baked-in and because where I am in London, UK, there are a fair few post houses and on the log side (from direct experience and from talking to other camera people) I haven't yet heard of anyone complaining about having to work with S-Log3 (or S-Log2 for that matter).

As with Osslund, that is all definitely just my opinion and I don't think anyone is wrong in preferring to work in S-Log2 or S-Log3. Period. ;-)
 
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