S log in sxs cards

cckid

cckid

Well-known member
Hi,

I have a chance an s-log firmware update for a reasonable proce...however I am not yet ready of investing money into a gemin or cinedeck - which are currently the only 2 external recorders that do what I want...so I was wandering are there meaningful benefits of recordeing s-log onto interneal sxs cards...does it improve the picture in any meaningful way? thanks for the input
 
SLOG gives you latitude of between 1-1.5 stops, possibly more with the next firmware upgrade. Otherwise its 8 bit to the sxs cards instead of 10-bit to off board. Some people swear you can't grade 8 bit but not sure I agree. It depends the level of grading you are talking about. I just finished shooting at a beach this weekend with some serious high contrast conditions and you tell me with you think - all images have been "graded". Details are in this thread.




S-LOG has been sworn by many to give better skin tones and color renditions that can't be described, but since I don't have S-LOG I can't attest to that, and I have seen some bad examples of S-LOG too. Its all very subjective. For me since I don't have it, I can only go off the specs and say to myself, "wow do I really need 14.5 - 15 stops of range" and spend $3k + $6k to get it (444)? No not right now, I'm doing fine with what I got.

In the end I think with proper lighting you can really squeeze a lot out of the F3 and no one should disagree with that since people have shot beautiful images using cameras with less dynamic range capability.
 
Well... with 14.5 stops you don't need as much fill light as you would with a 10stop camera. That's the point.
 
So any benefits with a standalone s-log...or not? grading 8-bit footage is completely a viable solution and definetely doable...and can look great as the example above shows...I am not ready to pump another 10k into the sony f3 right now...but since I am having a very good offer for the s-log...I am thinking of buying s-log only and then rent the recorder when necessary...so I was wandering if there are any benefits of owning an s-log and just shooting with it to interna sony sxs cards
 
Right now, I have only S-Log and no external recorder. Highlight rendition, along with overall color rendering are MUCH improved, in my opinion. Enough to make it look like a completely different camera.

I'd say go ahead and get it. Grading 8-bit S-Log, while not ideal, is not the disaster it seems to be theoretically. In practice, it's viable, and I can see why Canon decided to go with it, it's still an improvement.
 
If you want to control the contrast curve to control detail as you wish, then get S-Log.

If you want to set your own color matrix and stop your highlights from shifting into odd colors, go S-Log.

If you want to get much of the advantage of S-Log but can't afford to buy a 444 recorder, get a 422 ProRes one and you'll still greatly increase your image quality.

If you want S-Log and a recorder but don't think you can afford it, talk to us as we have rebate money on such kit for a limited time.
 
Yes of course there are benefits to S-LOG but as said before here in these forums, if you don't know what it is or how to use it then you don't need it. That's kind of true. It is also true that you don't need S-LOG to make good images as many examples online will show.

The difference is without S-LOG you can not push an image around in post as much as you can with S-LOG before it falls apart ie. introducing noise or a posterization look. The 10-bit holds up way better than 8-bit because it has so much more information to it. The extra stops will give you more range so you can isolate areas of exposure you might want to change later in post. That is something you can't do as easily or at all shooting 8-bits to SxS, but then again you might not need to if you exposed meticulously on the day of shooting and managed to fit the contrast range of the scene into what can be recorded.

To Timur's point your fill could be off a little, or maybe not what you were going for during the shoot but later adjusted in post way more easily because of the extra lattitude and bit-depth to adjust it without ruining the image. It's like your last chance to fix or adjust what was captured that day of the shoot. It could be hard to manipluate 8-bit images as much as needed, that's the difference.

I would definitely be interested to try S-LOG to SxS, but so far am not losing any sleep over not having it.
 
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The biggest downside to heavy grading in 8bit is color banding and noise. Supposedly (I haven't tried it) if you render inside 32bits (its a setting in many editors) color banding is pretty much eliminated. If you can get a deal on s-log, get it. If a project calls for more you can rent or borrow a 10bit recorder. 4.4.4 isn't necessary. 4.2.2 and a high bit rate will show the improvements you need for those projects. Bill the client.
 
S-Log is the single best thing I've done for "rigging" my camera. It's not for EVERY shoot, but when you flip the switch it's like, "Release the Kraken!"
 
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