FS7: FS7 matching AMIRA

Sorry to be a bit of a Buzz Killington but not sure how much of a conversation and community it is if everyone is suddenly selling luts as opposed to sharing them in the spirit of people working and learning together.

This stuff isn't rocket science and it's all built off the back of work other people have done as a community. I'd rather leave the snake oil selling to all those 'super accurate 1-button instant film emulation lut mega pack' companies.

Moan over. Ignore me and go back to enjoying yourselves :)
 
Ben Scott said:
This stuff isn't rocket science and it's all built off the back of work other people have done as a community. I'd rather leave the snake oil selling to all those 'super accurate 1-button instant film emulation lut mega pack' companies.
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Well, to Bert's credit, I paid 20 Euro and I've been using them a lot. I spent $200 on FilmConvert and aside from adding grain, the only real use for it is when you want your footage to look like it's from the 1970's. I spent $100 on Impulz mega pack LUTs and only use 1 of those and sparingly at best. And those LUTs are very inconsistent across the board. Some times they look great, but the light changes and they look terrible.

So $300 total on LUTs that I never / very rarely use vs. Euro 20 for a well thought out, custom LUT geared specifically to the FS7 that works well across the board and I use all them time now.

Money well spent.

I still wish Sony would make some Official LUTs that are worthy. LC709a gets it close, but they can do much better if they tried a little bit.

Also, more power to Bert. I'm very knowledgeable about grading but I'm too lazy to make a LUT and sell it. No initiative on my end. I wish I did because I'm buying a new Camera next month and with the amount Bert probably made, that would have been a good chunk of change.
 
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Well yes, I've ranted a lot about those things too. Film emulation Luts, instead of making your footage look anything even vaguely filmlike basically make your footage look like they have a film emulation lut on them and every one of them represents the same film stock completely differently.

If it works for you that's brilliant, and it is about the principle as opposed to the admittedly low price. We've all spent countless hours shooting, testing refining and sharing. Personally I don't think we should be trying to earn a dollar out of each other in such a way when we all know the simplicity of the processes involved. If i found or made a shortcut to a particular result I'd share it with my peers. We're either all in it together or we're not.

But really, I'm just being a Negative nancy. And will leave well alone now :)
 
Ben Scott said:
Film emulation Luts, instead of making your footage look anything even vaguely filmlike basically make your footage look like they have a film emulation lut on them and every one of them represents the same film stock completely differently.
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I think that's what makes BertLUT successful is that he's not trying to emulate a film stock per say. Yes, he attempts to mimic the Alexa, but his LUT is very subtle and natural looking. Most LUTs are very heavy handed, but BertLUTs just take what's in the FS7 and tweaks it a little bit and just makes things nicer in a not-over-the top kind of way like Film Convert or Impulz Luts which drastically changes your footage and screams " Look at me! I used a LUT."

The over the top LUTs are useful sometimes as well, especially for music videos, but for day to day things, the subtler the better, IMO.
 
I hear what you are saying, Ben, and part of me agrees with you (especially in the light of free online tools such as LutCalc or $2.99 downloadable version). To Bert's defense I'll say that I think it is a donation and Bert really has no way of controlling what we do with his LUT. After buying this LUT and, for example, when doing a multi cam shoot, how many of us will really NOT upload this LUT into other operator's cameras and instead tell them to buy the LUT from Bert?
 
Ben Scott said:
This stuff isn't rocket science and it's all built off the back of work other people have done as a community. I'd rather leave the snake oil selling to all those 'super accurate 1-button instant film emulation lut mega pack' companies.
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Remember that there is a huge difference between film photography aficionados on this forum, and the paying clients in the corporate world.

I have had great success with feedback from clients by using i.e. Film Convert. While most of you here on this forum would scoff at that "grade".

Its just different markets... And these luts are very time saving. Yes, most of the looks can be built within minutes. But with a huge pack of luts you can test 40 looks in the same minutes, and then decide what to use.

I dont mind giving you a donation of 20 bucks either, if you can help me save my time! :-) Im very open to sending digital beers to helpful forum goers.
 
Well that's a very different conversation from the one taking place here but in my opinion everyone using the same bunch of preset looks (which is all they are as opposed to 'emulations') leads to everyone's footage looking the same. Whether you have clients that pay for it or not is irrelevant. I have clients that have asked for and paid for all sorts of crap which eventually I have caved in on and given them but it doesn't make them right.

Again, that's nothing to do with the LUT being presented here and I don't have that issue with this at all.
 
Martin.G said:
I dont mind giving you a donation of 20 bucks either, if you can help me save my time! :-) Im very open to sending digital beers to helpful forum goers.
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Never unbutton your shirt. When it comes out of the wash your staff can iron both sides at once and you can slip it on without wasting time on fiddly buttons. Also, anyone wanting to get a more accurate Arri look; simply apply 709TypeA, take the highlights down a couple of clicks, lift the shadows couple of clicks, lower black level, take out a hint of magenta (add green), add a tad of saturation, a touch of clarity and Bob's your bleeding uncle.
 
Liam Hall said:
When it comes out of the wash your staff can iron both sides at once.
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Im obsessing about time because i dont have any staff. Theres not even PA`s in the little village where i live. But family takes just as much time as everywhere, so every little less-frustrating-detail-time-consuming thing helps toward that wich really matters: making money.

Then we can obsess about our art on our favorite projects, once the bills has been paid.

If you live in a big town and get paid to deliver grade A color work, thats really nice. I suspect none of my clients even know what rec709 is. A LUT and 50 takes my mind off colors and makes me able to sell, write, or direct better. Those three things are way more important than the grade, in the end.
 
Sorry but the idea that taking colour correction or grading, how the images you produce finally look, seriously is 'obsessing' is laughable. We all need to get paid but I don't have staff either and do just about everything myself on a lot of shoots. It still simply more important to me to do work as well as I can do it than it is to do the minimum I can get away with for a paycheck.

I've no idea of your experience/expertise levels, and I don't know the level of client you are working for, but even 10secs per shot in the Lumetri panel in Premiere can get you fantastic and unique results. It's not for the client to understand Rec709 or LUTs or even to know what looks good until you've guided them. Whatever the reasoning behind it, and striving for a better work/life balance is as good a reason as any I guess, if you are simply shooting and delivering footage with an Impulz LUT plastered over it and calling it a day that is most certainly not only not the norm, but also not how they were intended to be used.

As for that last bit I don't get how not spending any time on a colour grade makes you a better Director. It's like saying using packet gravy as a base for a soup makes me a better chef than making a proper stock from scratch.


EDIT: Again I apologise for taking this thread off track. I will 100% leave it alone now.
 
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I couldn't agree with Ben more. Even a simple corrections can go a long way and give you much better results that sometimes buying a new camera. Nicely corrected with simple grade footage from cheapo camera can look a lot more expensive than footage straight out of big, "pro" ones. I personally use all the approaches - I grade myself and I also use LUTs but never like "slap on and forget". I always add my corrections to it as well.
 
Ben Scott said:
As for that last bit I don't get how not spending any time on a colour grade makes you a better Director. It's like saying using packet gravy as a base for a soup makes me a better chef than making a proper stock from scratch.


EDIT: Again I apologise for taking this thread off track. I will 100% leave it alone now.
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Well, if you only get paid for 4 days of total work, and you choose to spend more time in the grading, that robs time from i.e. the directing position. The colors wont matter if the idea behind the story is bland. Those 10 seconds amount to much more after 2560 shots have been corrected that year. And then you also need to know exactly what bars to move to get the achieved look within 10 seconds. I spend a lot more than that when i start to experiment. Im working about 70% as a producer, and the rest as a filmmaker spread out over the different jobs. So im bringing a bit of math and accounting into the process.

Will your colors look better than mine? In many if not most cases, yes. No-one is arguing about that :-)
 
I agree with everyone ;-)
But I donated to Bert, as I´m working on a very quick turnaround comedy broadcast show (some days it airs the day after the shoot) and I have no control over the edit/grade. They prefer not having to grade at all.
If I used them and they were donations only, I still would donate as I appreciate the time and effort.
 
I don't see the problem with these or other LUTs. You got skills and bugdet for high end grading? Perfect. Mostly I don't have the budget and my Resolve skills are very basic. In times of tight budgets every tool that helps creates a good / great / awesome result. The faster the better.
 
We're not talking about a high end grading, of course that would be ideal. We're talking about primary corrections, using curves and basic adjustments, something that literally takes seconds.
 
alohype said:
We're not talking about a high end grading, of course that would be ideal. We're talking about primary corrections, using curves and basic adjustments, something that literally takes seconds.
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Agreed.

I use LUTs as a start point for a grade, to simply de-log the footage. 95% of the time, a further couple of clicks in the Lumetri panel and maybe adding a luma curve is all I do.

I don't think relying on LUTs for a finished look is a good thing. Indeed, no single LUT is going to work with every shot, so there's always tweaking to do even if you are just balancing the colours and exposure. Once you've established your look there's always copy and paste, so a lack of speed is simply not an excuse for not grading.
 
Liam Hall said:
so a lack of speed is simply not an excuse for not grading.
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We are not really disagreeing Liam. I see your points and i agree with most if not all. However, i tried to mention it my previous post but i see i could have elaborated more thoroughly.

When i start to experiment with a "quick grade", it does not take 10 seconds at all. I start to spend a lot of time moving stuff around to see what i like, how it looks, how it affects my footage. Before i know it, an hour has passed. Having a package of LUTs, not just one, makes me able to just scroll down, select what i think is closest to what i need, and go from there.

That includes a look package like something of the film looks VSCO sells. Its super fast to scroll through now, and im not an experienced colorist so i cannot even imagine all these variants and presets because i have never made them manually before.

So to conclude, we use easy LUTs because:

1. generally save time
2. get inspiration for diff. grades
3. handing off footage to others
4. quick`n dirty final delivery for super low budgets
5. something i missed?

I dont see the reason to critizise LUTers when presented with this list.
 
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