FS7: new to FS7, comparing custom mode vs sLOG3 LC709A

Clermond

Clermond

Veteran
sorry if the question might be sheepish or have been answered before. I was going through Doug Jensen's vimeo tutorial where he stated that you can get the same and even better results in custom mode compared to burn-in LC709A LUT. I must say I am very impressed of the result of burn-in LC709A LUT and I find it hard (from my level of experience quite impossible) to get even results in custom mode.
What might be settings in custom mode to get this pleasant look? Having the same look plus individual WB settings would be great.
Where can I download a corresponding LUT to the embedded LC709A for postproduction? Thanks for your time!
 
You can download LUTCalc by cameramanben which has the LC709A gamma and gamut which you can burn your own LUT. He has also included a plethora of other gammas and gamuts for you to mix n match to your heart's content.

It's an excellent utility that is free but priceless. Google LUTCalc it's easily found.
 
You'll have to ask Doug about this. Its a highly controversial opinion and many people disagree. Assuming you are talking about a WYSIWYG 709 look that only needs minimal grading, I don't know how to achieve that in Custom.
 
Some people may find this testing helpful: http://www.vortexmedia.com/LUTS_VS_SCENE_FILES.html

I hope to do some additional tests with people and faces later this month when I'm teaching at Maine Media Workshops. Once again, if anyone has a WYSIWYG LUT that you feel provides a nice finished look right on-board the camera (not in post), please send it to me ASAP so that I can include it in the next round of testing. If a MLUT exists that can beat a good Scene File -- I would very much like to see it.
 
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Hi Clermond,

You can definitely get great looks in custom mode by creating your own custom profile and adjusting matrix settings to come up with specific looks but it can take time to create them and is faster once you have experience doing it. Doug is pretty good at these and has proof of making nice images in custom mode on the F cameras (new and older).

Sony has provided 4 3D LUTs (including LC709A, LC709, Cine+709, slog2-709) for each mode in the camera (custom and CineEI) mode which can be downloaded from Sony officially here:
http://community.sony.com/t5/F5-F55...ed-About-MLUTs-and-S-Gamut3/m-p/516194#M29296

The PDF on their 3D LUTs can be found here: http://community.sony.com/sony/atta...F5-F55/2872/1/SonyLookProfilesSummaryV1_1.pdf

NOTE however that their 3D LUTs are only available for slog2 in custom mode, and slog3 in CineEI mode. So Ben's LUTCalc program might allow you to build a proper 3D LUT to access slog3 in custom mode but he or someone else will have to pipe in on that.

Myself and many others have used LC709A to burn into the footage or in post as a base to get a nice look from the camera but the stock LC709A LUT has raised blacks so usually the image is a bit washed out and lacks contrast. You can try other people's modified LC709A LUTs with lowered black, or you can just modify it yourself using Davinci Resolve if you wanted to until you are satisfied with the "fixes" needed to it. It is not perfect out of the box but is a great improvement over the typical look from Sony.

One discovery I did make is that even if you apply the LC709A LUT made for custom mode to your footage it will not be EXACTLY the same look as LC709A LUT made for CineEI mode. This is due to the color science difference between modes on the camera, ie. each mode uses a specific color science.


If you're interested to read more about Sony's newer color science these are some great articles on the F5/F55/FS7 written by Art Adams and one written be me:

Art Adams
http://www.dvinfo.net/article/acquisition/sonyxdcam/sony_sgamut_vs_sgamut3.html
Dennis Hingsberg
http://www.dvinfo.net/article/acqui...ng-cineei-mode-in-custom-mode-on-the-f55.html
 
Thanks to all for your hints and advice. I will be busy quite a while with reading and testing.

PS
As I wrote to Doug in a personal note the tutorial is very helpful and made the access to the camera easy. I wish I would have had a similar tutorial when switching from DSLR to the FS700
 
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I just reread my post above and it is a little unclear. I agree with Doug that you can get very good WYSIWYG 709 looks that don't need much grading in Custom. However in some situations I think Custom is not capable of quite as good a look as a good burned-in LUT based on CINE EI SLog3 . Those usually involve scenes with a wide dynamic range and a lot of highlights. That's IMHO only.

The FS7 is a great looking camera and fairly easy to get a good video look out of. Taking it one step up to get that extra "oomph" of beauty though really requires a lot of homework.
 
Custom mode is potentially even better than LC709A baked in because only custom lets you set the white balance, color matrix and all the other paint menu items, and both will end up residing in the rec. 709 space anyway. But neither can match post where you have the opportunity to grade SLog2/3 Sgamut/(3) for WCG and if using ACES, also HDR. It's here.
 
[edit] oops - rather slow in posting. I had this thread up in my browser and left it a while. Just posted and then see that it has had a bunch of responses already covering what I mention. Sorry to be repetative! [/edit]

Sony's LC709 and LC709A LUTs for S-Log3/S-Gamut3.cine are available on the Sony Community Forum thread here:
http://community.sony.com/t5/F5-F55...s-for-S-Gamut3-Cine-S-Log3/m-p/287847#U287847

Those ones operate exactly the same way as the built-in look profiles, which means that clips should be treated as data levels / extended range, and the LUTs output legal range values. This fits with the way that DaVinci Resolve works, but if you are using Premiere Pro / Lumetri / Speedgrade the output should also be data range / extended range to match.

For that your either need to add a range adjusting LUT after the Sony look, or you could use a piece of software I have been developing called LUTCalc. You can either use it just as an online webpage, or there is a standalone version for OSX on the linked page. You can use it to set input and output gammas and gamuts, and then choose what application the LUT is for and the ranges should be set correctly.

Set to 'Sony User 3D MLUT' with S-Log3/S-Gamut3.cine in and LC709A gamma / LC709A gamut out it will generate a LUT numerically identical to the original Sony looks.

You can also make adjustments like colour temperature, plus / minus green and various other things, plus do stuff like create an extended range version of LC709A (the base look squeezes six stops of headroom within legal range which tends to lead to dingy skintones). You can generate MLUTs or LUTs for use in post on log material.

The other big thing is that you can make exposure adjusted versions of these LUTs, so that if your post software doesn't read the CineEI metadata and adjust automatically, you can have the LUT do it correctly for your recorded log curve,

Ben
 
Oh my God, just let me shoot myself in the head right now! Geez, why jump through all those hoops when it is so easy to just use Custom when a WYSIWYG look is needed? Really, people want to overcomplicate things to the point where I wouldn't even enjoy shooting anymore.
 
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Lenilenapi said:
However in some situations I think Custom is not capable of quite as good a look as a good burned-in LUT based on CINE EI SLog3 . Those usually involve scenes with a wide dynamic range and a lot of highlights. That's IMHO only.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying you are right or wrong, but please SEND ME THAT MLUT. I would love to see it in action. You can even describe the specific type of shot where you think it would be beat a custom Scene File. Go ahead and stack the deck in your favor so the test favors the conditions you want, and we'll see how the MLUT does. Would love to give it a test drive and, of course, the settings will be kept private.
 
Many thanks as ever Doug for the witty, considered response, but what I expressed in far to many words before is summed up in LUTCalc as:
DaVinci Resolve - click 'Da Vinci Resolve'
Premiere (Lumetri) - click 'Lumetri / Speedgrade'
Camera monitor LUT - click 'Camera LUT (MLUT)'

Now click: Generate LUT

The rest of the post was just to say that you can adjust exposure - to whatever ISO you want, just type in the number (the row of buttons towards the top centre of your keyboard) and that you can tweak a bunch of other stuff in a fairly straightforward way or go with base settings from a couple of drop down menus.

Phenominally complex I know, but any hints as to how to simplify that would be gratefully received,

Ben
 
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Well, I think this thread is mostly about Custom vs. MLUTs for a burnt-in WYSIWYG look right out of the camera, right? So how many different MLUTs am I going to need in my bag of tricks to cover different exposure and white balances that I am likely to encounter out in the field? How am I going to keep track of them all? Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying in your post above (quite possible!) but it all makes my head spin with the complexity of it all. It just doesn't need to be than hard. Custom is best for WYSIWYG and Cine EI best is for a grading workflow. Simple as that.

I'm sure it is easy to build a LUT with your software or some other program, that is not the question. I want to know how many MLUTs I will need to create in advance of a shoot to cover all the bases that are really easy to cover with a scene file and white balance button? Please accept that as the hint that you requested. :-)
 
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I use one MLUT, with a couple of CTO adjusted versions in the spare banks if needed. I find that a lot of directors like the white balance pushed a little warm - plus the UK has more than it's share of cloudy days ;-). Here in Europe the vast majority of practical lights have moved over to fluoris and compact fluoris, so I keep a couple with a bit of minus green on the SD card - no colour temperature adjustment there, in fluori or mixed lighting 3200, 4300 and 5500 generally covers me fine. I do a lot of shooting in offices, I don't generally change settings beyond basic white balance (in CineEI or Custom mode - yes, I use both, though custom much less these days) until I move environments.

My base setup seems pretty forgiving, I do some quite nice stuff, always handing the rushes over (mostly baked in) for someone else in post and touch wood to date I haven't had any complaints.

Believe me, when I'm filming I keep the technical side as simple as possible - I'm much more interested in utilising what I have set up and gained experience of to get pictures that make me happy and will cut together to tell the story being asked for in the way the director wants it.

I've done far too much studying of minutae because frankly I do love maths and as a cameraman I haven't needed it for years so log has been a convenient outlet. Also because I love to learn; from others, from books, from watching films, from working.

The log workflow as it stands - certainly in the Sony cameras but not just them - is ridiculously complex. Different bits of software follow their own paths and manufacturers differentiate themselves with proprietry metadata (enabled by the MXF wrapper) which means that the point where stuff just happens without having to think about it is too far off. I've been writing LUTCalc as a stopgap until everyone - Sony, Canon, Blackmagic, Adobe, Avid et al - get themselves in order with each other and you don't see a log recording or a baked in one, but a basically finished image which is extremely manipulable, as raw is in both stills and video. Hopefully that isn't too far off, but then the users have to keep themselves up to date.

I've also tried to make something which makes sense to me and allows me to be playful. I can dial saturation up or down with a slider. I can slide colour temperature either by CTO and CTB or by kelvin difference. Hell, for fun I played around with a system I've called PSST-CDL that lets me remove everything but skin tones and reds, or mess around with all the shades of green for a kind of 'O Brother Where Art Thou' effect. I get a kick out of being able to do that in camera after half a dozen clicks of a mouse. Not that I've actually used those on a job! It's fun. It's a work in progress. I enjoy filming,

Ben
 
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Doug Jensen said:
So how many different MLUTs am I going to need in my bag of tricks to cover different exposure and white balances that I am likely to encounter out in the field? How am I going to keep track of them all? Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying in your post above (quite possible!) but it all makes my head spin with the complexity of it all.
Click to expand...

Doug - You are absolutely right about this. It is a giant giant PITA . Is it worth it? I've done a few tests and sometimes I see a noticeable difference that seems quite worth it to me and sometimes I don't . Sometimes I even prefer good old Std 5.
Honestly I haven't had the time to test it well enough to put out a side by side here. Everytime I've done a quick side by side for a client they pick the LUT even when I've preferred custom BTW!

If I get a chance I will post some comparisons. Its a legitimate request on your part.

For many people your simple rule of thumb will suffice and make life clearer. Others will want the option to use a burned in LUT. I only object to your categorically stating that Custom can do anything a burned in LUT can do.
 
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Lenilenapi said:
I only object to your categorically stating that Custom can do anything a burned in LUT can do.
Click to expand...

Usually I qualify that with "better than any of the built-in MLUTs". I can really only speak about LUTs that I have seen and tested myself. I'm sure that there are things that can be done with a custom LUT that could not be done with the paint menus, but in my book, the paint menus still win because of their ease of use in a wide variety of situations day in and day out. But can a one-off LUT do something a scene file can't? I'm sure that is true.

Ben, I have to disagree with you that the post workflow for Cine EI is "ridiculously complex". That has certainly not been my experience or the feedback I've gotten from clients. Both of the S-LOGs and RAW is extremely easy to work with in Resolve now that I've got a system down. Catalyst is a joke and I won't go near it, nor do I need to. Hell, by the time someone masters Catalyst Sony will replace it with something new anyway. I think it is waste of my time to put any effort whatsover into learning that mess. But mastering Resolve is a universal skill that will serve anyone well.

I msut say that I really enjoy the RAW/LOG post workflow with Resolve much more than I ever would have guessed I would, and I really look forward to grading footage when the shooting is done. I like to grade before the editing so I can see what I've got. Reminds my of the old days in my B&W darkroom. Crank the Floyd up to eleven on the amp, and go to work!
 
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Doug, how about creating a scene file for CUSTOM mode which simulates the LC709A look? I know it would be using a narrower gamut in CUSTOM as a starting point but how close can you get ?
 
To the op - I agree with Tom's post in this thread (#10). The best to be had from the FS7 is grading in post from shooting in the CineEi mode of camera... DR, colors for me look the best this way and certainly allows for certain decisions to be made after longer consideration in post. And, also agree with Doug above - that I really look forward to grading after the shooting is done. (wish I had that Spinal Tap amp).
Now, if you must have no grading... custom or baking both yield perfectly acceptable results.... but I have to say that I always wished afterward that I didn't have to make that WYSWYG decision while shooting... it is limiting.
 
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