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

Hey Chris (and anyone else who is following this thread) here are a few interviews my students shot last week in our workshop. Please take a look and let me know what you think about my two new S-CINETONE LUTs. These are specicially designed for faces -- i.e., interviews and headshots. What do you think?

DVXuser seems to hate Vimeo links lately. I assure you the video is there. You may need to copy and paste the URL in your browser.

Edit: I've deleted the video -- new one coming soon. Stand by.
 
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Doug Jensen said:
... Please take a look and let me know what you think about my two new S-CINETONE LUTs. These are specicially designed for faces -- i.e., interviews and headshots. What do you think?
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Yes, I took a look. I would be more than happy to use those LUTs of yours. Face #1 is my favorite if I wasn't looking for a punchier look. Overall though, your final grade with the slightly punchier chroma look is the way I would go. Vibrant shots with good dynamics always look good. Your final grade look is basically the sort of look I'm after. Why? Because most of my clients, in the areas I work in, seem to like that sort of look. Many of the popular supposed cinematic, whatever that means "film" looks, really don't work for me. I've tried with Phantom LUTs and numerous others and shown clients and generally been met with a negative shake of the head.

I PM'd you with a link to my updated 75 and 100% LUTs.

Chris Young
 
cyvideo said:
Yes, I took a look. I would be more than happy to use those LUTs of yours. Face #1 is my favorite if I wasn't looking for a punchier look. Overall though, your final grade with the slightly punchier chroma look is the way I would go. Vibrant shots with good dynamics always look good. Your final grade look is basically the sort of look I'm after. Why? Because most of my clients, in the areas I work in, seem to like that sort of look. Many of the popular supposed cinematic, whatever that means "film" looks, really don't work for me. I've tried with Phantom LUTs and numerous others and shown clients and generally been met with a negative shake of the head.

I PM'd you with a link to my updated 75 and 100% LUTs.

Chris Young
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I think Face #1 is my favorite look for the subject, but I prefer the work on the background in the final grade. I also think my response will depend on the screen I'm looking at -- on a dim or low-contrast screen, I think the final grade would be preferable to me overall, so probably a safer bet. But it feels like the highlights in the faces on the final grade can get a bit compressed (if that's the word I'm looking for). I feel like I'm losing a bit of gradient in the skin. Also, it really looks to me like s-cinetone is intended to be graded...regardless of what Sony says... Although I think it actually comes off as a nice, moody look or starting point. Not horrible.

By the way, Chris - would you permit me to play with your SLOG3 luts as well? If so, please drop me a PM!
 
ahalpert said:
I think Face #1 is my favorite look for the subject, but I prefer the work on the background in the final grade.
By the way, Chris - would you permit me to play with your SLOG3 luts as well? If so, please drop me a PM!
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Agreed on Face #1. And yes, the backgrounds come through much more noticeably on the final grade.

Just PM'd you with a link.

Chris Young
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm going to fire up Resolve and see if I can fine-tune the LUTs a little bit before I call them done. I generally like Face2 more often than I like Face1, but 'm going to see if I can make some further adjustments to add a little contrast back in. BTW, the shots labeled "final Grade" are almost always Face2 with a some vignetting or other adjustments -- away from the face.
 
cyvideo said:
I PM'd you with a link to my updated 75 and 100% LUTs.
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Yes, I got those updated LUTs and played with them last night. Thanks for sending them.

Just like the first LUT you sent, they all look very good and the differences between them are so subtle that only a pixel peeper would immediately notice any difference. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the 100% saturation version. Which is so close to the Sony V200 LUT that I can't see any meaningful differences between them. Both make a good starting point for further grading. But with that said, neither your LUTs nor Sony's knocks my socks off when I first apply them to a clip And every clip requires too much secondary grading to get an interesting look. But I don't blame the LUTs. I've become disillusioned with S-LOG3 and really don't care to work with it very much any more. Maybe I'll change my opinion at a later time, but for right now, I'll be shooting S-CINETONE for the foreseeable future. It is easier and almost always looks better.

At my workshop last week the students shot a couple of interviews with S-LOG3 and they don't look anywhere near as good (even after extensive grading) as the S-CINETONE interviews look with one of my LUTs dropped on it.

I'm tempted to do some S-LOG3 (graded) vs. S-CINETONE (graded) side-by-side shots to see which looks better no matter how much effort you put into them in post. I think I already know which one would win most of the time. I sure wish there had been time last week to shoot S-LOG3 and S-CINETONE on the exact same interview setups when I had "willing" faces to shoot!
 
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Doug Jensen said:
Both make a good starting point for further grading. But with that said, neither your LUTs nor Sony's knocks my socks off when I first apply them to a clip
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Understood Doug. These LUTs of mine are basically my "technical" starting point LUTs. The main aim was to create a technical LUT with a 95% peak value for use on MY exposed S-LOG3 footage. With a 95% peak value, it gives a little headroom for values that go above 95% with a much lower chance of clipping your highlights. As I said, I see too many modern flat panels not handle highlights very well, especially 8-bit panels, which is a lot of them. As far s saturation goes, a technical LUT should stick fairly close tho the SMPTE specs. Any variation from those SMPTE levels now moves into the domain of a style LUT. Where anything goes to achieve the "look" you want. As with any LUT, anyone of us can manipulate to our own desires. As you said, "A good starting point for further grading." These LUTs are counterpoint to your S-Cinetone Booster LUTs which as you stated when you issued them was that they were designed to deliver a "boosted" image. Which is a big help when you want to quickly deliver punchier, more dynamic images than those offered by the rather flatter not so attractive camera spec S-Cinetone images.

If broadcast is not in the future for any clip or production, there is, I guess, no need to be mindful of what level of manipulations you apply to your video material. Though if you are going outside the SMPTE specs on either luma or chroma levels, or many of the other parameters that are covered by broadcast delivery I find it is almost imperative, well this is my practice, is to check your final images on a conventional middle of the road TV set as that is what most people will watch the production on. To check that there is no over the top saturation of colors, clipping of highlights or crushing of blacks. These artifacts are something I see on many productions. The same goes when viewing images on 99% of desktop PC monitors, as 99% of them are expecting to see 709 levels. Most software players are also expecting 709 limited levels. Some players do give you the option of choice between full and limited input levels, but this is not generally known by the average viewer. Most TVs have a choice of Auto, Full or Limited input levels. But the majority of users never go through these menus.

Sadly, all this "709 confinement" is an anachronistic legacy forced on us from the earlier days of TV. But that's what we are stuck with. Many of our phones, pads etc. have way better HDR dynamic range capability but IMHO you still have to generate media for the basic de facto TV/PC/DVD/BD standard that is still used by most display devices for everything from live free to air TV and the bulk of modern display streaming. Just refer to Netflix's delivery standards for a modern-day example of 709 requirements. Unless of course, you are delivering HDR material. Which is an animal of a different color.

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios....st-Production-Branded-Delivery-Specifications

A few DVXers have requested them and as I said to them. If they help you, that's great. They definitely help me if I'm using LUTs, but that's not often. What I'm mostly doing with them is supplying them to others who are editing S-LOG3 images I've shot. As I know, my LUTs will give them a decent starting point for the way I expose my S-LOG3 footage. Where they go to artistically after that with the images is entirely up to their imagination and as they say in the navy "Not my part of the ship!". :)

Chris Young
 
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Chris, thanks again for the LUT. I went back and re-graded all my Durango white water footage with your LUT and the results are a lot better than what I had done originally. I wish YouTube would let me replace the original video with a new one (like I can do at Vimeo), so the new grade may never see the light of day, but at least I feel better knowing the footage on my drives looks a lot better than it did before.

I still have doubts in my mind about whether S-:LOG3 or S-CINETONE provides the best base to work from. Now that I have your LUT and my booster LUTs, one of these days I'm going to have to do some serious side-by-side testing.
 
Here's a cycling even shot a couple of weeks ago just for the fun of. I wanted to test S-CINETONE in probably the brightest, most contrasty, most difficult shooting situation I'll ever likely to encounter -- without having to worry about screwing up a shoot for a client. Getting the exposure right was a ***** and I think I pushed it too far in a lot of the shots. S-CINETONE just can't handle the bright highlights like LOG or Hypergammas. I was aiming for an 85% exposure when I could, but in retrospect I think I should have dialed it down to 75% to protect the highlights and then pushed it back up in post. In the final grade I added some vignetting and a warmer LUT I found in Lumetri. Kind of gives it a "look" that hides some of the exposure issues. When all else fails -- call it a creative decision. :)

I do not claim this video is good. But it was fun to shoot and the sponsors love it, so what the hell? At one point I heard the PA announcer say "I think we need a faster camerman". And he was right! Too fat and too old to shoot like I used to.

 
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