What is LOG? Things You Must Know!!
What’s going on everyone! Welcome back to yet another epic video where we will be discussing what is LOG! This was a requested video. Now let’s get into it.
Let’s first start by answering the question, what is log? It is short for logarithmic footage.
It’s when your camera shoots in the flat profile to preserve the most amount of detail and dynamic range. So now let’s look at the log image with scopes.
You can see that it’s sitting right in the middle of the spectrum, which is exactly what we need as a colorist because it gives us so much flexibility to work with. Whereas, when you look at this rec.709 image, it looks good, but the thing is that we can’t really do much with it in post.
Especially when you get something like this that was overexposed (this was exaggerated for demonstration purposes).
That information is gone.
This is something that wouldn’t happen in log. You still have to shoot properly, but it’s still a lot more forgiving than rec.709.
Now you might say, alright, it’s simple. I’ll just switch to log. Now unless you are shooting with Arri, it’s not that easy. Every camera out there has its own flavor of log. For Sony, it’s S-log (1, 2, or 3). Canon is C-log (1, 2, or 3). Blackmagic has too many.
So how do you know which log profile is correct? You’ve probably read the claims from Sony and Canon about their log profile and the dynamic range, but when you really dig in deep, it will tell you what log profile you need to shoot in, and which ISO you need to shoot with. Now a lot of things need to happen for you to get that maximum dynamic range. It’s not as easy as flipping a switch.
Now another question I get is should I shoot in rec.709 or standard profiles? Especially if you have a camera with an epic sensor, or one that shoots so beautifully. Don’t do that to yourself because you are slashing your dynamic range to half or less. Let’s check this out.
S-cinetone claims that the dynamic range is less than S-Log3. If they were to reveal that number, it would be shocking. So the moral of the story is that if your camera offers log, shoot in log and learn how to convert your image from log to rec.709 using tools like resolve.
Now I have to mention that log is not intended to be delivered. It’s intended to be graded or corrected in post. You have to do that part before it goes out in the world.
Let’s now check out a few ways to convert your log footage. Method #1 is to use a CST. You input your camera input color space and input gamma.
This is the shot we are working with. For our CST, we will set our information to DJI D Log.
Now moving onto method #2, is to use a camera conversion lut. The luts we will use are not the ones I pumped in. These come with Resolve. So for this shot, we will be using the DJI_X7_DLOG2Rec709 lut.
Now let’s compare the two methods so far. You can see that they are both different.
Now those are the two proper ways to convert your footage in log. Hopefully you are having so much fun learning these! I hope you are able to put this into your own workflow! With that work hard, get obsessed, and get possessed!
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