F55: Revenge of the Film Emulation LUTs on the Sony F55

[starcentral]

I have to say, these damn things are addictive, especially once you have the right gamma in place to get them to work out of the gate. It will probably change the way I work from here on in and in my opinion has only improved the speed at which I can work on-set and in post. It's all about saving time right?

As of late I've been playing a lot more with 3D LUTs ranging from post grading to in-camera use for monitoring and even sometimes daringly baking it in permanently to the footage being recorded on the SXS cards. As of firmware v4.1 (June 2014) Sony made it possible to turn the LUT on and off on the internal recording adding a whole new dimension of freedom and capabilities. Somewhat similar to the thread I started on the Sony F3 Resurrection and use of film emulation LUTs with it, really this is not much different, except the one big difference is the fact that 3D LUTs can be loaded directly into the F5/F55 cameras since they both support 3D LUTs in 17x17x17 and 33x33x33 matrices. (Sony F3 only supported 1D LUTs)

Why I like this is I can preview the "creative look" on-set along with the makeup artist, director, and anyone else who wants to get a sense of what things might look like - including me. It sure helps take the mystery and suspense out of wondering what you're going to end up with in post. Just look at that original slog image - that's what you'd be working with on monitor otherwise. I will never go back to that, no thanks.


Here are some frame grabs with a few different LUTs. No grading was done. No grain added. This is straight out of camera into Davinci Resolve with only a first node for adjusting blacks and gamma slightly, and a second node for the film emulation LUT.

Bam done.



slog3.cine.gamut + Fuji 5310 Film Emulation LUT

slog3.cine.gamut + Kodak 2383 Film Emulation LUT

slog3.cine.gamut + Sony LC709-A (Alexa REC709 clone) LUT

slog3.cine.gamut original ungraded

 

[Nate Weaver]

Just before somebody says it...almost all the film LUTs need saturation added back in the grade.

It's not a failing, it's just the way they are. The good, proper ones are created from film scans and are a legit representation of what that particular stock does.

You grade from there.

 

[starcentral]

This was in the F35 section, but hopefully Nate doesn't mind I post it here:

Here is a short vid with some of the Impulze applied.

The node tree in Resolve went like this:

1-Balance/Exposure (zereod in this video)

2-Impulze (Slog3 to Vision3 250D-->Cineon) LUT

3-Grade/Look (added saturation and contrast)

4-Impulze (Cineon to 2383 Print) LUT

The footage was shot 4K raw, and decoded via camera raw panel to Slog3/SGamut.cine before the above node tree.

This chain is one of the ways Denver Riddle recommends things if you want to combo a negative emulation coupled with a film print emulation. It procedurally emulates the entire film process.

The end result picked up too much contrast in the Vimeo encode, but still looks good.

 

[Nate Weaver]

[big fat edit]

Sony posted a SLog2 to "Bleach Bypass" 3D LUT on their forum, and Starcentral linked to it.

I made an argument that it's not "real" film emulation, plus I vented my frustration about Sony giving us novelty looks but not giving us more generally useful post color-science tools. If they are going to put the effort in, give us something we can USE...

 

[Nate Weaver]

Just give it it's own thread. I think it's newsworthy. It's just more of a novelty/nice thing Sony posted rather than legit film emulation.

Or a useful tool, for that matter, but I'll just shut up and be happy they even thought to do it for the time being.

 

[txdp]

Yes once people understand LUTs and correct log exposure it opens these cameras up.