Hello,
I recently shot RAW on Canon 5d Mark iii for the first time and I don't have a ton of experience color correcting/grading. I'm using DaVinci to edit my project, and right now the settings are: Decode using project, Color space rec.709, and Gamma sRGB, which is pretty accurate to how it looked when we shot. Can I keep it this way or is it best to set the color space and gamma at BMD and color correct/grade from there? I wonder if I'm losing information/giving myself less of a dynamic range to work with by setting it at rec.709 from the start.
Another question: I did try setting it at BMD and applying Hunter's LUT, which was recommended for the Alexa rec.709 look, but it looks absolutely terrible when applied to my footage. I white balanced before applying and the shot is well-exposed, so I'm not sure what happened there.
Thanks!
Forget about every possible LUT. Avoid them, seriously they only screw up your pictures, learn to color correct by hand.
log color space (BMD) or rec is a matter of test, it's not much about the information but about your preference in first steps to normalize the image. Personally I prefer to start from BMD.