C300: What are your favorite LUTS with C-Log 2 and 3?

puredrifting

puredrifting

Major Contributor
I just upgraded to the latest FCP X and am looking at LUT Utility from Color Grading Central. So many to choose from, LUT Gallery, Ascend, Impulz, Osiris. For those of you who regularly shoot C-Log 2 and 3, which LUTs are working best for you? What has been your favorite look that you constanrly go back to? I shoot a lot exteriors these days with extreme dynamic range needed to handle borderline blown out skies on the ocean and elsewhere so I will probably be shooting a lot of C-Log 2 with the C200 to get 15 stops but C-Log 3 from the .MP4s doesn't look bad either if you are not shooting Cinema RAW Light. Are you doing your own custom LUTs or mainly off the shelf LUTs? I've only used the basic C-Log to REC709 LUT but a lot of these others look as if they could nicely suplement or replace Magic Bullet or Film Convert?
 
I tend to use Clog 3 the most if I am doing the post or if the end user/production company knows what they are doing.

In Clog 3 I have shot in the Rec 709 space and in the Cinema Gamut space. For the former I don't use a LUT. Just adjust as needed in FCPX. For Cinema Gamut I used LUT Utility and I have used Canon's LUTs and Matt Porwoll's LUT. I like Matt's the best. It corrects for Canon's C300 Mark II tendency to make saturated blues purple.

http://mattporwoll.com/canon-c300-mkii-first-look-at-the-new-canon-log-3-gamma/

For work that is fast turn around or needs to be closer to finished I just shoot in Rec 709 which is also Wide DR on the C300 Mark II.
 
puredrifting said:
Will definitely try that. Has anyone used the film LUTs from Impulz or Osiris?
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Both are very popular and offer a variety of looks based on the pack. Some are better than others.

But it's really an exposure game...just the slightest difference in exposure can throw everything off when moving from LUT to LUT.

The beauty of RAW shooting is that you can lower exposure in post like with Blackmagic or RED cameras, but not sure that's happening with the C200. It looks like Canon has a 'brightness' setting, but no direct way to control the exposure (unless I missed it).
 
Does C-Log 2 offer 15 stops versus 13 stops on the C300 MKII as well? If you are going to bother with RAW on the C200, I don't know why you wouldn't just convert to C-Log 2 to gain the 15 stops? Does C-Log 3 look that much better?
 
puredrifting said:
Does C-Log 2 offer 15 stops versus 13 stops on the C300 MKII as well? If you are going to bother with RAW on the C200, I don't know why you wouldn't just convert to C-Log 2 to gain the 15 stops? Does C-Log 3 look that much better?
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I haven't run extensive test but yes, on C300MKII Clog 2 is 15 stops and Clog 3 is 12-13 stops. Clog 3 is more flexible. Clog 2 tends be fine at ISOs right around the base ISO but is more prone to noise in the shadows as the ISO goes up. Clog 3, so far, pretty much looks great all the time.

Look at Matt Porwoll's blog via the link I posted above. Lots of info and testing. Clog 2 vs 3.
 
Jon Roemer said:
I haven't run extensive test but yes, on C300MKII Clog 2 is 15 stops and Clog 3 is 12-13 stops. Clog 3 is more flexible. Clog 2 tends be fine at ISOs right around the base ISO but is more prone to noise in the shadows as the ISO goes up. Clog 3, so far, pretty much looks great all the time.

Look at Matt Porwoll's blog via the link I posted above. Lots of info and testing. Clog 2 vs 3.
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Great info Jon, I'll check out Matt's blog. I have only shot baked in looks on the C300 MKII so far, it seems difficult to entice my clients into investing the extra time and effort to deal with Log and LUTs, in my PR, publicity, marketing world, often the footage we shoot is rushed onto the web or even broadcast. For most of my clients, Log seems like a filmmaking thing, not a video thing. Even the documentary film I shot in Brazil this Spring, the producers wanted a baked in look, even though this film may even get a theatrical release. In their defense, we did shoot a massive amount of footage and the distributor did want to see dailies asap while we were shooting in Brazil so I guess that was the right decision for them. The two docs I am producing currently will be shot in either RAW or in Prores HQ with Log 2 or 3 or maybe even a mixture, hence I am heavily researching this. Thanks for the tips.
 
I've been having some nice results lately with the Lutify package dialed in 30-50% after levels adjustment and gamma curve tweaks. Clog3/709 is very easy to delog without transform luts as it's quite saturated to start with. Alexa specific luts work pretty well with Clog2/cinema gamut, especially using production camera matrix if you stray from the basic presets.

The Impulz package could work ok, only downside is theres no Clog2/3 packages, so you would have to transform to either C-Log/WDR or 709 before application. Then the problem is, those presets were based on the last gen Cinema EOS colour science, which is very different to the current gen. So I'm not sure how useful it would be.

Film Convert, which I'm not usually a fan of, works pretty well with Clog2/3 footage depending on the look you're going for. The presets are too crunchy off the bat for me, but works well once you tweak a bit.
 
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