FS7: Slog2 or 3

Interesting observations but Not sure what you man by this.
Ok, I will try to explain.

Asking if you should shoot in S-Log2 or S-Log3 is like asking if you should record measurements in inches or feet. I say it doesn't matter: just convert everything to meters before you start calculating.

A color space is a way of representing colors using numbers. Different color spaces use different numbers to represent the same colors. Aside from that, color spaces are equivalent.* They can represent the same images and you can translate between them, just like you can convert between inches, feet, and meters.

Your display uses one color space, something similar to BT.709 or sRGB. (I won't go into the differences now) That color space is optimize for just one thing: delivering a video signal to your display efficiently.

Your camera records in a few different color spaces like S-Log2 and S-Log3 that are optimized primarily to record the range of colors that your camera is capable of capturing. These color spaces are also designed to varying degrees to facilitate manual grading for certain target color spaces, which I'll talk more about later.

S-Log3/S-Gamut.Cine and sRGB are different enough from each other that you can't make an accurate translation from one to the other using standard color correction tools like color wheels and curves. But the good news is you don't need to make that translation by hand. Sony has told us exactly how we are supposed to interpret images in the S-Log3/S-Gamut.Cine color space. So it's possible to build a transformation that accurately translates from S-Log3/S-Gamut.Cine to sRGB. That could be a LUT, for example. (Please note that Sony's LC-709 and LC-709A LUTs are not accurate translations. They serve a different purpose.)

But translating from the camera color space to the display color space in a single step has one big problem: neither of those color spaces make it very easy to perform color correction. You almost always need some basic color correction, exposure compensation at least. There are ways of doing it by hand, but they're not so easy, depending on how much correction is required. Say you need to pull the exposure down by one stop. A curve can do that, but the correct curve has a very specific shape, and it's not similar to the curve you'd need to darken the image by two stops, or to brighten the image by a stop.

That's why some new color spaces were created, optimized for color correction. ACEScc is one, and my Logarist color space is another.

Here's the basic workflow: you start with an image in a camera color space like S-Log3/S-Gamut3.Cine. That gets translated to a working color space like ACEScc. You do your color correction in the working color space, and then that gets translated to the output color space. The end result is that you get the colors you want with less effort. It's a lot like using Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom to process an image before bringing it into Photoshop. Basic color correction operations become trivially easy. An offset slider, for example, does exactly the same thing as the exposure slider in Lightroom.

When you work without color management, you are just pushing and pulling randomly on the numbers until you like what you see on the screen. In a color managed / colorimetric workflow, the numbers stand for colors in a well-defined way at every step of the process, and the ways you manipulate those values correspond to physical and psychological processes.

If you are absolutely determined to work without color management, at least choose a camera color space that is meant to be graded for the type of display you're targeting. Most importantly, if you are targeting standard HD video (web, TV, Blu-ray) that means you shouldn't use S-Gamut3 or S-Gamut3.Cine. S-Gamut3 is for people who are targeting BT.2020 or for people who are using a color managed workflow. S-Gamut3.Cine is for people who are targeting DCI-P3. Neither of these can be accurately translated to sRGB by hand. So Cine EI mode should be turned off, and you should set the color matrix to Standard, Cinema, or F55 709 Like. As for the gamma setting, you have some choices. S-Log3 is an option, but the HyperGammas are going to be much easier to work with. HyperGammas are actually meant to be graded by hand with minimal effort.

* I said that color spaces are equivalent and can represent the same images. It's not quite true, because different color spaces sometimes have different ranges of colors that they can represent. And when the color values are digital, different color spaces have different levels of precision at different points in their ranges. But if we're talking about S-Log2 and S-Log3 on the same camera, these differences are too small to matter.
 
Actually that's a great explanation especially of the value of Aces, but while your conclusion may make logical sense don't people find it more difficult to get good color with Slog3 in a "Custom" color space.
 
In practice I get equally good color from S-Log3, S-Log2, and HyperGammas in Logarist.

The framework provided by ACES & ACEScc would be just as good in theory, but every ACES implementation I know of incorporates the ACES RRT in all of the output transforms, and I really don't like the look of the ACES RRT.

Resolve's built-in color management can be good depending on what exactly you're trying to accomplish. Selecting "linear" as the timeline color space would enable accurate correction using gain for exposure and white balance and gamma for contrast, but a linear space is lousy for pretty much any other type of color correction (curves especially, which you need for highlight handling). And Resolve's color management doesn't let you select any true log space as the timeline color space.

So they all have their limitations and quirks, and I don't think too many people around here have a lot of experience with and understanding of them.

The less correction you need, the less color correction matters. If you have a lot of experience with your camera and you shoot under controlled situations with exposure aids to help you set the exposure consistently, I'm sure you can get away without any kind of advanced color correction. A lot of guys do that. My shooting style doesn't support that, so I need all the help I can get in post. I would shoot raw, but it's expensive in terms of the cameras and the storage.
 
The inches or feet doesn't work. Choosing your profile is as important as choosing your iris or Nd level - any one who shot a sony on custom-standard knows this - because custom standard clips with a very small dr and when it's gone it's gone and no post process can pull it back.

Clearly slog 2 and 3 are not so wildly different however or someone could clearly demonstrate this differences.

And yep you split some hairs :)
 
Actually that's a great explanation especially of the value of Aces, but while your conclusion may make logical sense don't people find it more difficult to get good color with Slog3 in a "Custom" color space.

Len you would probably do yourself a favour by demything some stuff for yourself.

Construct a table scene that includes a table lamp or other hotspot and some thing really dark and shoot it at a few profiles and f-stops
(many table test scenes like those used by Doug and GBoyle don't seem to have much scene dr)

Throw them into the grade and see where you get?
 
What you've exposed is differences between the LUTs you tried, not differences between S-Log2 and S-Log3. The only difference in the highlights between S-Log2 and S-Log3 is how they're represented in each of those color spaces. The underlying image is the same. If you want to prove that to yourself, go to LUTCalc and make LUTs that convert between S-Log2 and S-Log3. Shoot S-Log3, convert it to S-Log2, and process it like you would any other S-Log2 footage. You'll see that it behaves like any other S-Log2 footage. (or do the reverse, shooting S-Log2 and convert to S-Log3)

S-Log3 is easier to grade by hand than S-Log2. S-Gamut3.Cine is easier to grade by hand than S-Gamut3. But none of these are meant to be graded by hand if you are delivering standard video for the web, TV, or Blu-ray. S-Gamut3.Cine is close to DCI-P3, and S-Log3 is close to Log C or Cineon. They are meant for people who are familiar with film log DI grading.

If you're not grading for theatrical projection, save yourself the trouble and use a color managed workflow with support for your camera's color space. When you do that, the differences between S-Log2 and S-Log3 practically disappear.

Thats exactly what I did. Tried LUTcalc and resolves internal colourspace conversion and tried to get them to the exact same spot but turns out it did not look the same. Colours from sgamit always showed a more varied and all over the place saturation, skin was a bit less saturated etc etc. And as I said the the internal codec from Fs7 does not handlemultiple LUT conversions well. So in practice your approach did not work for me, while maybe being theoretically sound.
 
Ok, I will try to explain.

Asking if you should shoot in S-Log2 or S-Log3 is like asking if you should record measurements in inches or feet. I say it doesn't matter: just convert everything to meters before you start calculating.

A color space is a way of representing colors using numbers. Different color spaces use different numbers to represent the same colors. Aside from that, color spaces are equivalent.* They can represent the same images and you can translate between them, just like you can convert between inches, feet, and meters.

Your display uses one color space, something similar to BT.709 or sRGB. (I won't go into the differences now) That color space is optimize for just one thing: delivering a video signal to your display efficiently.

Your camera records in a few different color spaces like S-Log2 and S-Log3 that are optimized primarily to record the range of colors that your camera is capable of capturing. These color spaces are also designed to varying degrees to facilitate manual grading for certain target color spaces, which I'll talk more about later.

S-Log3/S-Gamut.Cine and sRGB are different enough from each other that you can't make an accurate translation from one to the other using standard color correction tools like color wheels and curves. But the good news is you don't need to make that translation by hand. Sony has told us exactly how we are supposed to interpret images in the S-Log3/S-Gamut.Cine color space. So it's possible to build a transformation that accurately translates from S-Log3/S-Gamut.Cine to sRGB. That could be a LUT, for example. (Please note that Sony's LC-709 and LC-709A LUTs are not accurate translations. They serve a different purpose.)

But translating from the camera color space to the display color space in a single step has one big problem: neither of those color spaces make it very easy to perform color correction. You almost always need some basic color correction, exposure compensation at least. There are ways of doing it by hand, but they're not so easy, depending on how much correction is required. Say you need to pull the exposure down by one stop. A curve can do that, but the correct curve has a very specific shape, and it's not similar to the curve you'd need to darken the image by two stops, or to brighten the image by a stop.

That's why some new color spaces were created, optimized for color correction. ACEScc is one, and my Logarist color space is another.

Here's the basic workflow: you start with an image in a camera color space like S-Log3/S-Gamut3.Cine. That gets translated to a working color space like ACEScc. You do your color correction in the working color space, and then that gets translated to the output color space. The end result is that you get the colors you want with less effort. It's a lot like using Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom to process an image before bringing it into Photoshop. Basic color correction operations become trivially easy. An offset slider, for example, does exactly the same thing as the exposure slider in Lightroom.

When you work without color management, you are just pushing and pulling randomly on the numbers until you like what you see on the screen. In a color managed / colorimetric workflow, the numbers stand for colors in a well-defined way at every step of the process, and the ways you manipulate those values correspond to physical and psychological processes.

If you are absolutely determined to work without color management, at least choose a camera color space that is meant to be graded for the type of display you're targeting. Most importantly, if you are targeting standard HD video (web, TV, Blu-ray) that means you shouldn't use S-Gamut3 or S-Gamut3.Cine. S-Gamut3 is for people who are targeting BT.2020 or for people who are using a color managed workflow. S-Gamut3.Cine is for people who are targeting DCI-P3. Neither of these can be accurately translated to sRGB by hand. So Cine EI mode should be turned off, and you should set the color matrix to Standard, Cinema, or F55 709 Like. As for the gamma setting, you have some choices. S-Log3 is an option, but the HyperGammas are going to be much easier to work with. HyperGammas are actually meant to be graded by hand with minimal effort.

* I said that color spaces are equivalent and can represent the same images. It's not quite true, because different color spaces sometimes have different ranges of colors that they can represent. And when the color values are digital, different color spaces have different levels of precision at different points in their ranges. But if we're talking about S-Log2 and S-Log3 on the same camera, these differences are too small to matter.
This has been the best posting in this unlucky thread, asking the wrong questions and ignoring the requirements for a sound color management completely.

I do not care if I shoot slog2 or slog3 with my FS7 in the Cine-EI mode really. Both curves deliver the best DR available with the FS7 sensor. But I care how to ensure that I can deliver that for both re709 and rec2020/HDR in the future. And we will see the emergency of more and more apps that support that with a sound color management (and not only Resolve). That is what is of interest, not that funny discussion here.
 
I have been debating over shooting SLOG2 or SLOG3 for an upcoming project that will include B-Cam footage from my A7rII (which only shoots SLOG2) along with some exteriors with my FS7 in addition to interiors so I wondered if I should just shoot both A camera (FS7) and B camera (A7rII) in SLOG2 for ease in post - plus the possibility that SLOG2 will give me additional highlight headroom for those exterior shots. What are the thoughts in this scenario? And if one is shooting a wide DR scene are you better off to shoot SLOG3 because it allocates more evenly that SLOG2 which seems to prioritize highlights but shadow areas could get noisy.

Maybe I'm not following some of the more technical debate(s) in this thread but it seems like some of the statements may be misleading; especially those that state that it doesn't matter if one chooses to record in SLOG2 or SLOG3 because the same data is captured from the sensor and can be shifted to the other profile i...wouldn't this be inaccurate? I mean, if one was shooting raw (as Doug has done in his other thread) then you could choose which SLOG profile in post but if you're recording to XAVC in say SLOG3 and your whites go beyond that 94% (I may be mistaken on the exact number) then the information is lost/clipped and there is no getting that back. Again, I may have misunderstood what the intended message of the posts that mentioned that but just wanted to clarify in case someone else read it as I did.

I also agree with one of the posts that mentioned that SLOG2 seems to have an "easier to grade" gamma curve (not referring to color space). Anytime I look at the log footage straight out of the A7rII it looks closer to the "final" post curve than SLOG3 BUT that could mean we're losing more of the "in between" in the process.

Hopefully, there will be clear(er) conclusions to be drawn between the two SLOG options but I am enjoying these couple of threads on the issue.
 
Balazer
When you work without color management, you are just pushing and pulling randomly on the numbers until you like what you see on the screen. In a color managed / colorimetric workflow, the numbers stand for colors in a well-defined way at every step of the process, and the ways you manipulate those values correspond to physical and psychological processes.

If you are absolutely determined to work without color management...

I hope this is not too dumb a question here, but what do you mean "color management?"

Lenny
 
Both - slog2 and slog3 - will capture the full dynamic range of the FS7. S-log3 would have addinional room for more stops, but that is not used by the sensor of the FS7. That is why one looses some luminance range from your 10bit in the highlights with slog3 - and it clips a little bit earlier. For 10bit this will be less important, but for an 8bit camera it is not really great (and I would not like to shoot slog3 or even not slog2 with 8bit at all). Even with 10bit I prefere that slog3 allocates the luminance more evenly, what means that for 8bit the danger of banding should be higher with slog2 in the lower stops compared to slog3.

In terms of color management there is no difference today, as long as one sticks to a clear color management workflow, either the flow that was published by Balazar or an ACES 1.0 color management as found in tools like Resolve. Both slog2 and slog3 will be treated in an appropriate way.
 
Any thoughts about when noise will begin to be a problem on either Slog3 or Slog2 for exteriors where there are not a lot of real black areas? I will probably go with Slog3 for simplicity, and am aware that the higher my Cine EI the greater my highlight attitude but the trade off of course is noise. There are no low key" scenes in the whole project - all happy feel good stuff. I'm testing, but don't have a large monitor so its hard to judge. This may end up at film festivals so I don't want to get too dirty. Been thinking about 1250EI.
Thanks again for all the help.
 
Wrapped the shoot that started this thread on Friday and the scene that worried me most under trees ended up being a cloudy day ! However there was one similar scene though not as bad and all the advice here helped. The most valuable was Cuervo's tip to try a Polarizer and I was surprized at how effective it was for just ordinary backlit foliage and ground. I decided to stick with Slog 3 for grading consistency because the colorist is the editor and not that used to Slog, but I set EI to 1250 for that material ( otherwise was at 800.) We generally used a combination of battery lights - 2 older astra's and 3 Yongnuo lights (2 YN600's and a YN900) on a single stand going through a 1/4 silk. That provided quite bit of fill in the shade and it looks great - don't notice that its lit at all, but it removes the curse of extreme contrast. ( The YN900 and 600 btw are tremendous values if you want very cheap powerful LED's with decent color rendition. )

In general this was the first shoot in which I've used Slog extensively both indoors and out and I loved it. Plan to use much more in the future. I'm sure Doug will hate my exposure method but it was very consistent based on using a LUT based on varicam gamma and putting caucasian faces at approximately 60% zebras ( always being aware of whose faces are brighter and and darker though. ) Not very scientific but I'm used to working that way so it was convenient. On another shoot it might not work at all. I added a chip for 1 stop over key to my "DSC one shot", so I could keep my zebras at 60 for the shooting and use it for a chart as well.

Question now is whether it is a big liability to color correct in PP Lumetri which the editor/colorist is used to. I can give her EI adjusted LUTs and the color is very close to correct on everything. I also intend to test Slog2 more as it would ultimately have probably been a better choice for the backlit material but i didn't want any surprises for now. Also unless I'm missing something I can't shoot with a LUT on Slog 2 and I like to see what I'm doing in the VF.
 
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Question now is whether it is a big liability to color correct in PP Lumetri which the editor/colorist is used to. I can give her EI adjusted LUTs and the color is very close to correct on everything.

In my experience, with the majority of footage (excepting things that require tracked masks, complex curves like sat vs. sat or luma vs. sat, or big 100+ shot grades), PP & Lumetri can give you beautifully graded Slog footage. As long as your editor/colorist is actually that, and not just an editor who likes tweaking colours, you'll be fine.

Will you be able to share the results when they're finished? I'm curious!

Cheers,

jason
 
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