FS5: Noise level. What is your opinion and experience?

So in answer to my own question (3). Shooting at base iso of 2000 makes no difference as to how one exposes log as the iso is just an indicative rating for the camera. Shooting at base iso 2000 in S-log will change how the image will look once captured Compared to S-log at 3200 iso, and it will have lees noise in the shadows, but as far as effecting whether or not to i should still expose brighter, it has no effect. One should still expose brighter in log on the FS5 so that the gamma curve is capturing more detail in the shadows and therefore less noise. Essentially by rating the ISO of the camera in S-log at 2000 as opposed to 3200 you are forcing it to require more light to achieve the same exposure. This will effect how the image is captured in the camera and helps protect the operator form underexposing s-log.


Doe that sound about right?
 
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My understanding is that the ISO varies with light level, due to the S-Log curve. The sensor has a 'native' ISO of 2000, but how it's processed in the front end electronics is logrithmic, not linear.
With S-Log, you control the ISO on the back end--ie., in the editor through the use of LUTs. A LUT with a -1 stop offset effectively changes the ISO to 1000.
If you're shooting with the stock lens of f/4 indoors, you need a lot of light to expose correctly, otherwise noise will be visible in footage.
 
Three suggestions:

1) Forget about ISO and all those meaningless numbers. Unless you are using a light meter it is all bogus anyway. Set the Gain for 0dB or the lowest possible ISO and leave it there.
2) Figure out a consistent way of exposing that works for you. You mention you have taken some of my advice for how to expose, but it is clear from the rest of your first posting that you haven't followed everything I recommend, so of course you're getting poor results. You can't follow some advice and skip other stuff. BTW, why you would be exposing ANYTHING around 107 IRE or even 94 IRE totally escapes me.
3) You can't grade S-LOG correctly in FCPX or Premiere. You're never going to get consistently good results unless you use Resolve. If you don't want to learn Resolve, then don't mess with S-LOG.

This is all you need to know for exposing for S-LOG . . .
-- Set Zebra2 for 75% and allow just a little zebra to show on bright reflected whites.
-- Grade with the correct workflow in Resolve.

That's all there is to it. it is not rocket science and people mainly get themselves into trouble when they overthink it.

That is my advice.
Doug
 
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Doug Jensen said:
Three suggestions:

1) Forget about ISO and all those meaningless numbers. Unless you are using a light meter it is all bogus anyway. Set the Gain for 0dB and leave it there.

Thats what I've been doing for 2 years but I just discovered that the FS5 can now be rated at 2000 ISO when shooting log. I can't figure out how to make the camera do this when gain is selected. It seems that to use the new (to me) lower iso then one has to be in ISO mode which I dislike. Perhaps someone can help me on this point.

2) Figure out a consistent way of exposing that works for you. You mention you have taken some of my advice for how to expose, but it is clear from the rest of your first posting that you haven't followed everything I recommend, so of course you're getting poor results. You can't follow some advice and skip other stuff.

Well I try but when I'm shooting a fast moving scene sometimes there isn't time to get a bit of white card out much as I'd like

BTW, why you would be exposing ANYTHING around 107 IRE or even 94 IRE totally escapes me.

I was actually trying to work out if some footage I had shot a while back was S-log 2 or S-log 3 so I did some tests with new footage to see if I could work it out based in where a shot clipped on the waveform. It appears that in FCPX (which I take is not the best for colour correction). The clips I tested that were purposely over exposed both show up in the waveform as being clipped at 109. Thats why. Then I discovered that the zebras on the FS5 don't even work past 105 which was news to me

3) You can't grade S-LOG correctly in FCPX or Premiere. You're never going to get consistently good results unless you use Resolve. If you don't want to learn Resolve, then don't mess with S-LOG.


This is all you need to know for exposing for S-LOG . . .
-- Set Zebra2 for 75% and allow just a little zebra to show on bright reflected whites.
-- Grade with the correct workflow in Resolve.

That's all there is to it. it is not rocket science and people mainly get themselves into trouble when they overthink it.

That is my advice.
Doug
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1) Forget about ISO and all those meaningless numbers. Unless you are using a light meter it is all bogus anyway. Set the Gain for 0dB or the lowest possible ISO and leave it there.

So are you saying that if I continue to use 0db gain as I have been it will be equivalent to 2000 ISO in log? I agree I hate ISO its meaningless to me. Did son change the base iso in firmware 4 or just give you the option to go to 2000 in iso mode?
 
I sold my FS5 a couple of years ago so it's way of working is getting foggy in my mind. But if you can choose to show Gain (I think you can) when shooting with S-LOG, then set the Gain at 0dB and leave it there. Nothing else needs to be known about the ISO numbers or what firmware the camera is on or anything else. Just set for 0dB and get to work.
 
Couple of pointe
- The new version of premiere(2019) is the first one where i feel confident i can do a good job grading slog footage. Won't be as good as resolve, but it will be ok.

- slog3 in any 8bit form will very often have poor results. The a7s and a6500 are the same. Slog2 is ok for 8bit, although i wouldnt say it delivers a fantastic image. Use it only when the scene has a huge dynamic range(windows, car interior, etc)
- slog, whether 2 or 3, is noisy, whether your inside or outside. Doesn't really matter how you expose. If you have blacks(i mean blacks as in the 5 tier system of exposure[blacks,shadows,midtone,highlights,white]), they will be noisy. Thats the nature of 8bit and even 10 bit compression. Its a compromise.
 
There's noise from a FS5 but actually less than from the much newer C200. As said by others S-log3 is pushing it on the FS5.
 
BeeHop said:
I pray for some features:
- be to have Variable ND filter enabled but being able to dial to Zero.
- lower ISO in SLOG
- Battery display in minutes
- noise reduction at users setting
- HD 100Mbps
:thumbup:
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Hi, I'm Saddler, and I approve of this message.
 
I'll tell you one thing, guys - I've been fighting with noise inherent in my FS7 footage (just as I had before, with my EX1) from day one, but stopped worrying about it so much after I started encoding my first HEVC (10 bit, 4:2:0) HDR10 finished products (with all editing and grading done in Resolve, but using ffmpeg to actually encode HDR-flagged files with Resolve exported clips as the input). I saw (and hated) the noise throughout the Resolve phase of the process, where it's so obvious with full resolution and bitrate of my FS7 original clips - but once a finished product, ready for watching on an UltraHD TV in PQ mode, is rendered with ffmpeg with the bitrate of some 100 Mbps (this is the practical, real-life limitation of displaying movies on those TVs - either from disk drive, or by casting with Chrome-cast) - the severe compression acting as a filter on those minute noise pixels tends to smooth 90% of the noise out so it is not a problem any more!

This reminded me the long discussion several years ago on why the EX1-inherent noise was becoming even more visible when recording externally on the nanoFlash, with 180 Mbps Long GoP instead the internal 35 Mbps data rate the camera was able to record to the SxS cards. Of course, the more compressed internal recording showed less nosie than visible in less compressed nanoFlash recordings...

So - as long as one is working with the full resolution and bitrate of the original FS7 file (which is now even higher the 180 Mbps possible with the nanoFlash at the time) - the noise will be visible. But if your intended final product is going to be 100, or even 150 Mbps HEVC file - why worry? When I realized that I even stopped using Noise Reduction filter in Resolve... Of course, YMMV :)

Piotr
 
Does anyone have any opinion on Sony's Catalyst Production Suite for working with S-Log? You'd think there'd be some compatibility there. But maybe not. I had a version of it, but it was pretty buggy and then they went to a subscription model. Just curious.
 
If you're going to work with S-LOG you must use Resolve. End of story. It's the most powerful and easy to use color grading software ever, and it gives you common ground with other professionals no matter what brand of camera you use today or in the future. And it is free.
 
True, but some ways are better than others. Why use a dull butter knife when someone is handing you a razor sharp butcher knife . . . for free?
 
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I do have Resolve Studio and took your Resolve course on Vimeo, which I quite enjoyed.

If you don't mind me asking, do you still follow the same workflow using LUTS or have you modified that approach in any way? I guess even within Resolve itself, there are different approaches to handling S-Log.
 
You should hit Jayaretv on YT as well... he's pretty entertaining and straight forward. Avery Peck is also cool but he doesnt put out that much unfortunately...
 
karma17 said:
I do have Resolve Studio and took your Resolve course on Vimeo, which I quite enjoyed. If you don't mind me asking, do you still follow the same workflow using LUTS or have you modified that approach in any way? I guess even within Resolve itself, there are different approaches to handling S-Log.
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Thank you for taking the course and I'm glad you liked it. I hope you embrace Resolve and really make it part of your workflow, because it you do, you certainly won't need to spin your wheels with something like Catalyst Suite. Even if by some miracle you could color grade in Catalyst as well as you could in Resolve (but you can't) it would still be a dead end program to learn. I still prefer S-LOG2 over S-LOG-3, I still use the same LUTs, and I still use the same basic grading techniques that I share in my video. I've learned a few new tricks, particularly for RAW, but nothing that changes the basic workflow.
 
Fully agree with Doug that Resolve is the tool for SLOG. I also took Doug's course on Resolve, which was my kick start a few years ago. The perfect way to start with Resolve. Then I wanted to get deeper into it with my engineering mind. So I have put in a lot of time learning with Ripple Training. They have detailed courses and every penny is worth it. Also I think it is very important to have a quality 10-bit grading monitor to complete the hardware. I use a Flanders Scientific and have been very happy with this solution.

SLOG is a great part of the Sony workflow. I cringe when I have to shoot WYSIWYG, but it still has it place.
 
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