Slog must not be as good as they claim

Douglas Villalba

Douglas Villalba

Well-known member
I hope I got your attention with my tittle.
I am hoping that it as good as they claim it is, but so far I haven't seen it. What I have seen is low contrast milky samples that only someone on the cold weather in Europe and North America may like.
I am down in Miami where the sun burns hot, the color are bright and contrasty. We do need an efficient Slog more that in places where it is mostly cloudy and flat.
I understand that if you get use to living under those condition you will become accustom to it, but as for me and my clients, we need color and contrast.
Someone please post something Slog capture with color grading to see the 12-14 f/stops it claims to do.
 
I have seen it, but it is hard to compare with fast cuts. Beside there are some inconsistencies. Some XDCAM look brighter than Slog, and we know that Slog is at least one f stop brighter than XDCAM. That video looks good but the skin tone on the first girl is also a little milky.
There is no question on the low light capabilities of the F3. I am questioning a $10,000 upgrade for supposedly 20% latitude gain.
Maybe on charts you can see it.
 
You have completely misunderstood S-Log. It is never meant to be used straight out of the camera. It will always, and is intended to be, milky when viewed that way.

By not having the contrast built in it allows more levels of brightness to be recovered. With slight variation this is one of the ways that all high end cameras operate (Red, Epic, F23, SRWF9000, Alexa, etc.)

It is meant to be color corrected before use, or to use a LUT (look up table). Either of those two procedures will restore the contrast and colors to normal levels or to your choice of artistic level.

The brightness and contrast are set in post. You have much more capability to make it what you want with S-Log.
 
It's $3680.00 not 10,000 dollars. SLog is meant for color correction, yes the image will look flat, that's the point. You might want to do a little more reading on the subject.
 
Douglas Villalba said:
I have seen it, but it is hard to compare with fast cuts. Beside there are some inconsistencies. Some XDCAM look brighter than Slog, and we know that Slog is at least one f stop brighter than XDCAM. That video looks good but the skin tone on the first girl is also a little milky.
There is no question on the low light capabilities of the F3. I am questioning a $10,000 upgrade for supposedly 20% latitude gain.
Maybe on charts you can see it.
Click to expand...

you really need to do more research on the purpose of log curves are, and how they are dealt with before making such statements. F35, Genesis, F23, Alexa. these are all cameras used in hollywood day in and day out with similar log curves as you see on the F3 producing superb results surpassing anything a baked in 709 gamma can do, and rightfully so. and it takes a certain amount of know how to get the image you want out of it. there are a lot of resources online, including the sony video page where a sony engineer explains in depth what a log curve is.
 
How are we supposed to judge with vimeo footage? I dont see that much of an advantage or difference. They shot all this stylish stuff but the s-log advantages are not that obvious. Is it really that expensive to upgrade the firmware? Seems outrageous to me...oops I see the price now.
OK now it makes a bit more sense. I guess its worth it then.
 
That's simple. S-Log will allow you to shoot in certain lighting conditions that you would not ordinarily be able to shoot, and still have it look normal/good. People have been doing work-arounds with cameras that don't have that much dynamic range and still produce good images.

a) if you don't see the advantages of S-Log

or

b) you're work flow doesn't allow for it for time or other constraints, then...

Don't buy it. That's one of the advantages, other cameras require you to spend the money on on log capabiity even if you're not at that level yet.
 
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Duke M. said:
You have completely misunderstood S-Log. It is never meant to be used straight out of the camera. It will always, and is intended to be, milky when viewed that way.

By not having the contrast built in it allows more levels of brightness to be recovered. With slight variation this is one of the ways that all high end cameras operate (Red, Epic, F23, SRWF9000, Alexa, etc.)

It is meant to be color corrected before use, or to use a LUT (look up table). Either of those two procedures will restore the contrast and colors to normal levels or to your choice of artistic level.

The brightness and contrast are set in post. You have much more capability to make it what you want with S-Log.
Click to expand...
Read my original post. I said color enhanced,
 
tom.wong said:
you really need to do more research on the purpose of log curves are, and how they are dealt with before making such statements. F35, Genesis, F23, Alexa. these are all cameras used in hollywood day in and day out with similar log curves as you see on the F3 producing superb results surpassing anything a baked in 709 gamma can do, and rightfully so. and it takes a certain amount of know how to get the image you want out of it. there are a lot of resources online, including the sony video page where a sony engineer explains in depth what a log curve is.
Click to expand...
I would love for the upgrade to do what it says it does. The $10k upgrade will be worth at least $20k and make it closer to a RED.
Unfortunately for me seeing is believing and I haven't seeing it.
If you shot and edit something post it so we can see it.
 
Really it sounds more like you are trolling. Follow everyone's advice and do some more research first. At this point you don't see it because you don't understand it.

I'm done.
 
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This is very very very close to trolling.

I've never seen anyone complain about how "bad" an option that you don't have to buy is.

Clearly the thousands of top tier professionals that have been using a log workflow for close to a decade are all wrong, and their work is flat.

As far as the examples posted consider looking at ed david's work or macgregors.

They have the latest version of F3 slog, and have been putting it to spectacular use.
 
TimurCivan said:
This is very very very close to trolling.

I've never seen anyone complain about how "bad" an option that you don't have to buy is.

Clearly the thousands of top tier professionals that have been using a log workflow for close to a decade are all wrong, and their work is flat.

As far as the examples posted consider looking at ed david's work or macgregors.

They have the latest version of F3 slog, and have been putting it to spectacular use.
Click to expand...
Timur I am not complaining. If I had purchase it and was getting the milky results I see posted, then I would be complaining.
Look, I love the F3 as is. I have seen some amazing stuff out of it with XDCAM and 422 without Slog. Slog has to look better.
You provably saw the finished Vegas test off the edit suite, I haven't. I have only seeing it on Vimeo, but then again all I have seen without Slog was on Vimeo.
Just look at the colors on this video that someone just posted. I would expect the same colors with a bit more detail on the shadows.
 
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What you are getting is a picture with much more information that you can work with. You can make the image look the same as those contrasty, punchy pictures you are looking for, you just need to push it up in color correction. What this milky picture allows you to do, for example, is to have control of the whole picture- you can control to protect the highlights an selectively apply the "punch" to certain areas, for example. To explore the full potential of SLog you need reall, proper multiple masks color correction and grading. I suggest you get Magic Bullet Looks 2 and colorista 2. Or Da Vinci Resolve, but this one while more powerful has a much bigger learning curve. Suggestion: download a Slog sample from the net and try to grade it. Compare it with using regular rec 709. You'll see the possibilities!
 
SPZ said:
What you are getting is a picture with much more information that you can work with. You can make the image look the same as those contrasty, punchy pictures you are looking for, you just need to push it up in color correction. What this milky picture allows you to do, for example, is to have control of the whole picture- you can control to protect the highlights an selectively apply the "punch" to certain areas, for example. To explore the full potential of SLog you need reall, proper multiple masks color correction and grading. I suggest you get Magic Bullet Looks 2 and colorista 2. Or Da Vinci Resolve, but this one while more powerful has a much bigger learning curve. Suggestion: download a Slog sample from the net and try to grade it. Compare it with using regular rec 709. You'll see the possibilities!
Click to expand...
I want to drool over an image like that. I would assume this is Slog but I can't find details on how they accomplished the color and latitude. http://vimeo.com/groups/pmwf3/videos/27224653
 
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