S-CINETONE Booster LUTs for FX6, FX9, etc.

Doug Jensen

Doug Jensen

Veteran
As I've said before on other threads, I am not a fan of S-CINETONE, but on the FX6 there is really no other option except S-LOG3, which isn't appropriate for a lot of shoots. So, I've created two custom LUTs to to quickly help me get better-looking images from my Sony FX6 -- when I do NOT want to shoot with S-LOG3. I'm making them available free to anyone who wants to use them. I'm calling them "S-CINETONE BOOSTERS" because they make it faster and easier for anyone (especially clients) to quickly improve their S-CINETONE footage. I'm pretty sure they are compatible with S-CINETONE footage that has been shot with any Sony camera that has an S-CINETONE shooting mode, but I confess I have not actually tested them outside the FX6. Just to be clear, the LUTs are NOT monitor LUTs for the camera. These LUTs are designed to be applied to S-CINETONE footage in post with Resolve, Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and any other NLE that allows you to import custom LUTs.

I'm teaching a 5-day Interview Lighting workshop in Maine next month that will give me some sample footage of human faces indoors. I'll post an update video after I've had the chance to use the LUTs on more people. Maybe a third LUT will be forthcoming. We'll see.

 
Thanks for sharing these, Doug. I've played around with them a bit in Resolve and the results are quite nice (at least with my beagles as subjects). So far I've just added the LUTs with no corrections. On a few clips the effect is a bit stronger than would be ideal for my taste, but that's easily modulated by adjusting the strength of the LUT in Resolve.

What's really surprising is how dull the ungraded S-Cinetone footage looks by comparison. Again, I've only done minimal testing, but when I see the footage of my dogs with the LUT it absolutely looks more like what I would expect to see, whereas the non-LUT footage seems a bit grey by comparison.
 
drboffa said:
Thanks for sharing these, Doug. I've played around with them a bit in Resolve and the results are quite nice (at least with my beagles as subjects). So far I've just added the LUTs with no corrections. On a few clips the effect is a bit stronger than would be ideal for my taste, but that's easily modulated by adjusting the strength of the LUT in Resolve.

What's really surprising is how dull the ungraded S-Cinetone footage looks by comparison. Again, I've only done minimal testing, but when I see the footage of my dogs with the LUT it absolutely looks more like what I would expect to see, whereas the non-LUT footage seems a bit grey by comparison.
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Dave, thanks for trying them out and it is good to hear you like them. I designed them with beagles in mind, so I'm not surprised to hear they work for you.

I agree that the effect is a little too strong on some shots and I did that on purpose. I'd say the saturation is about right 80-90% of the time , and then it is easy to pull the levels down a little when necessary on those ocassional clips where it looks to be too much. Reds are particularly susceptible to oversaturation with theses LUTs, but pulling down the red channel just a tad is all it takes to fix it. I couldn't come up with any LUT that was going to look good across the board so I think it is an okay compromise. The only other option was to create a third LUT just for clips that already had strong reds, but I didn't want to do that.

I agree it is surprising to me how gray, washed out, and boring S-CINETONE looks right ouf of the camera. And even more surprising -- how many people find that look acceptable. And even more surprising -- how many people want to find a way to make other cameras emulate that look. I don't get it. On an FS7 or FX9 or other camera that has a full set of paint menus it is possible to blow S-CINETONE right out of the water. On the FX6 we are stuck wiht S-CINETONE, but these LUTs have speeded up my workflow considerably so far.
 
Thanks for these Doug, they are very helpful. I’ve been using s-cinetone on my FX6 and A7IV quite a lot recently as one of my clients “doesn’t care about dealing with LUTS”.

I’ve been playing with the boosters in Premiere Pro and I must say that I found them a little too saturated at first. Pulling back on the saturation to around 80 in Lumetri Color gave me more pleasing results. The funniest thing was (as previously mentioned) flicking off the tab to see the untouched footage surprised me how bland it looked.
 
I have found the default color settings on the A7Iv & A7sIII to be much better than the S-Cinetone. One can easily adjust the curve to improve the other menu settings to wind up with a pretty nice baked in video look. I never use S-Cinetone for this reason.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Dave, thanks for trying them out and it is good to hear you like them. I designed them with beagles in mind, so I'm not surprised to hear they work for you.
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Finally! Someone designing products for my particular niche...

I'm a bit swamped at the moment but I'll try to post some screenshots or footage when I get a chance.

As for the stock S-Cinetone look: it felt like an improvement over the Fs5 look straight out of camera, but that's a low bar. I also never bothered to really find a good SOOC look with that camera, since I almost always used slog2.
 
Doug Jensen said:
[COLOR=#FFFFFF I'm calling them "S-CINETONE BOOSTERS" because they make it faster and easier for anyone (especially clients) to quickly improve their S-CINETONE footage. I'm pretty sure they are compatible with S-CINETONE footage that has been shot with any Sony camera that has an S-CINETONE shooting mode.[/QUOTE]

Yes, Doug. Thanks for making these available. Already in the toolbox. I pretty sure I can see a use for them. Especially when clients want a more vibrant S-Cinetone look. Good one sir.:dankk2:

Chris Young
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Bassman2003 said:
I have found the default color settings on the A7Iv & A7sIII to be much better than the S-Cinetone. One can easily adjust the curve to improve the other menu settings to wind up with a pretty nice baked in video look. I never use S-Cinetone for this reason.
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I agree. And have experienced the same thing with my A1. I much prefer shooting without any picture profile selected and then finishing in Resolve. I'd never shoot with S-LOG or S-CINETONE on my A1.
 
cyvideo said:
Yes, Doug. Thanks for making these available. Already in the toolbox. I pretty sure I can see a use for them. Especially when clients want a more vibrant S-Cinetone look. Good one sir.:dankk2:

Chris Young
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Chris, it good to hear you you may have a use for them. If they pass your muster that is a feather in my cap.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I have found the default color settings on the A7Iv & A7sIII to be much better than the S-Cinetone. One can easily adjust the curve to improve the other menu settings to wind up with a pretty nice baked in video look. I never use S-Cinetone for this reason.
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Yeah that's my exact experience too thus I don't have any s-cinetone footage lying around to test. But I think these luts look nice and punchy and remind me of a lot of grading we've seen from Doug before. Perhaps a little too punchy for a lot of the stuff i do but they look easy to work with.

Out of curiosity, can these be burned in in-camera?

I like that you have 2 for different contrast levels although i feel like I regularly encounter three basic contrast levels: sunny, cloudy, and Interiors which are usually somewhere in-between
 
ahalpert said:
But I think these luts look nice and punchy and remind me of a lot of grading we've seen from Doug before. Perhaps a little too punchy for a lot of the stuff i do but they look easy to work with.
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Ha, ha, yeah I'll take that. I do like a more punchy look, which fits right in with my broadcast/corporate/sports/ background. I'm not shooting indy films or drama. Live sports, Survivor, and 60 Minutes are the looks I admire most.

ahalpert said:
Out of curiosity, can these be burned in in-camera?
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Nope. They are designed to be applied to the standard S-CINETONE look from the camera in post. There is no way to layer the LUT on top of S-CINETONE on-board the camera. I'm not sure I'd want to do that anyway because you'd lose some of the latitude you still have to make adjustments in post. I'm kind of treating S-CINETONE like a baby version of S-LOG. It is surprising how much you can pull out of the S-CINETONE original. Quite different than my experience with other REC709 scene files that always have more of a baked-in feel to them.

I honestly don't know if I'll ever be using S-LOG3 anymore.
 
I still use S-LOG 3 for the greater dynamic range in these cameras since everything needs post correction anyway. That extra stop can be worth it at times.
 
Doug Jensen said:
I agree. And have experienced the same thing with my A1. I much prefer shooting without any picture profile selected and then finishing in Resolve. I'd never shoot with S-LOG or S-CINETONE on my A1.
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Hmmm... making sure I understand you correctly, Doug, as this surprises me. On the A1, instead of shooting Slog3, you prefer to use camera default setting or no picture profile?
 
Bassman2003 said:
I still use S-LOG 3 for the greater dynamic range in these cameras since everything needs post correction anyway. That extra stop can be worth it at times.
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True, I guess if you stick with Sony's exposure guidelines of 61% for your peak levels. But if, like many, you overexpose S-LOG3 by 1 or 2 stops, that's an effective loss of 1 or 2 stops from your highlight dynamic range. 2 stops is a lot to lose. That now brings S-LOG3 much closer to HLG or even Cinetone in the number of stops available in the upper reaches.

Chris Young
 
This will be an unpopular opinion, but your Sony cameras don't have anywhere near as much usable dynamic range as Sony's marketing blurb suggests.

At best SLog3 has 2 extra stops of noisy junk over HLG3. The moment you over-expose SLog3 to reduce this noise HLG3 wins. The chart shows SLog3 2 stops over, note how flat it is and how much transforming into REC709 is required, also note how much more dynamic range HLG3 holds. This means before you've even started grading the compression posterization baked in the SLog3 profile has already undergone significant separation so compression induced noise such as mosquito noise becomes more obvious. HLG require much less transforming, it therefore remains more robust in grading.
Click image for larger version Name: SLog3VHLG.jpg Views: 0 Size: 70.9 KB ID: 5704648

In this chart below you see S709 which is pretty much the S-Cinetone gamma curve compared with HLG, look how similar they are in shape, HLG lack the roll-off at the top. Look at those majestic curves of the S709 gamma, there's no crushed blacks and a sympathetic knee roll-off, combine this with the ITU709-Matrix and you have the most bulletproof and aesthetically pleasing 11 stop REC709 images Sony has ever given us. Filling your waveform from 0-109 you can be confident you've used every last bit of the 10 bits available to you for grading.

Click image for larger version Name: SLog3VHLG.jpg Views: 0 Size: 70.9 KB ID: 5704648

Unless you are shooting for a client who has requested Slog3 then you might like to consider S-Cinetone + ITU709-Matrix for the majority of your shots then use HLG3 + ITU709 Matrix when you want the cleanest high dynamic range profile. Personally, I don't see any value in shooting SLog3 in 10 bits in Sony's current generation of cameras as it puts you at a disadvantage before you've even touched your grading panel.

You don't need LUTs to make S-Cinetone + ITU709 Matrix to look good. If you want to go down the faux film look then do that with Davinci's hue/hue curves etc. If anyone needs help I can show you how to properly create faux film looks that you can save as Power Grades which will be compatible for every camera format that you bring in to Resolve.
 
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This has long been a subject of thought to me.

Basically that Slog3 might be 'too flat' and need an amount of grading that degrades quality.
You are trading that off against..
-the exposure need to be less accurate
-the scene needs its DR cotrolled less
-10bit aquisition allows plenty of gradations vs an 8 bit delivery
-nicer cameras/codes (sony raw SR444) certainly has a big enough bucket to contain Slog3.

As an FS7 user I beleived Slog2 to be the better compromise.

There is certainly a legit thought that using S cinetone as an aquisition format has value.

Having a one stop LUT from S cinetone to 709 has value

One thing that I disagee with is folk not using Slog because they cannot be bothered/understand a LUT and then using a different format that needs a LUT anyway!
It is as easy to apply a 'big lut' as a 'little lut'
 
If Sony provided 12 bit SLog3 then much of what I said is moot, with 12 bits you can almost guarantee fine colour gradations even with super low dynamic range scenes. 10 bits is not enough for low dynamic range scenes. Arri provides 12 bit Log for in-cam quick turn around stuff it's about time Sony did, XAVC supports 12 bits. I suspect they'll skip this stage and go to compressed RAW instead but that's another thread.

I posted a chart of HLG vs SLog2 in another thread, they're very close cousins. Those who were locked into 8 bit acquisition often used SLog2 due to better sample distribution. Those same advantages are there for 10 bit acquisition.

I think a lot of people over estimate the amount of dynamic range a scene contains and for 'safety' choose SLog3. A specular highlight is going to break through way more stops of range than the camera can cope with anyway. Ignoring specular hits as outliers most scenes fall well within the 11 stops S-Cinetone is alleged to store. Even if you have a scene with 15 stops of range most people are still delivering to REC709/sRGB so all that wonderful range has to be rolled off anyway or people simply squeeze too much highlight detail in and they end up with stupidly flat images. There is literally no need to preserve what's going on outside that badly placed window (that someone for got to put nd filter film over) behind your talent at the expense of visible noise in the important areas of the image.

LUTs? You are much better off using DCTs or your grading environment's equivalent. Power grades and DCTs are 32 bit floating point, GPU accelerated, mathematically accurate transforms, LUTs are just a table of values which need a fixed input to get to the desired output. It's an important distinction when you start bending files around in the grade.

S-Cinetone is REC709 so no transforms necessary, you may like to add a bit of tonal contrast to taste but other than that it's ready to go if so desired.
 
AmbiSonde said:
LUTs? You are much better off using DCTs or your grading environment's equivalent. Power grades and DCTs are 32 bit floating point, GPU accelerated, mathematically accurate transforms, LUTs are just a table of values which need a fixed input to get to the desired output. It's an important distinction when you start bending files around in the grade..
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Maybe.. but your sentance I dont understand.. after starting at the time when I was scanning film.

Doing a shoot you can just write 'use slog 3 lut' on a board of the first shot of the day and an editor will 'gettit'

--

" so all that wonderful range has to be rolled off anyway or people simply squeeze too much highlight detail in and they end up with stupidly flat images"

Im (starting in the B+W) dark room) a fan of Ansel Adams, and with 'dodging and burning' one can easily present 15 stops in a high contrast manner through a low stop media.
 
morgan_moore said:
Maybe.. but your sentance I dont understand.. after starting at the time when I was scanning film.

Doing a shoot you can just write 'use slog 3 lut' on a board of the first shot of the day and an editor will 'gettit'

--

" so all that wonderful range has to be rolled off anyway or people simply squeeze too much highlight detail in and they end up with stupidly flat images"

Im (starting in the B+W) dark room) a fan of Ansel Adams, and with 'dodging and burning' one can easily present 15 stops in a high contrast manner through a low stop media.
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What did you not understand?

I understand how to tone map high dynamic range material down to display formats, many do not. A recurring mistake I see is people saving every last highlight to the detriment of the contrast of the midtones, they'd would've been better off rolling of the highlights and putting better contrast through the midtones. Far too much importance has been placed on highlight retention on forums and over the years and now on all of the social media sites and it leads to bad grading choices.

Those who receive dailies packages with the coaching 'use log 3 lut' are unlikely to have the necessary skills to grade like Ansel Adams in my experience.
 
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