Yosemite Lenscape, a travel montage: Resolve + Magic Lantern RAW = Color Magic

[nybblr]

Hi folks! After fiddling with Resolve, MLVFS and friends, I finally used Magic Lantern RAW on a travel project.

Last May I took a week long trip to Yosemite National Park. I shot this on a Canon 5D Mark III with the 24-105mm lens. Thanks to the compact Glidecam, I was able to carryon everything — no checked bags! I highly recommend the combo.

Footage captured with Magic Lantern's RAW module. It took a half terabyte, but the color and detail were worth it!

Graded in DaVinci Resolve, MLVs decoded in realtime with MLVFS. I used a four-node setup in Resolve to make basic RAW corrections, convert colorspaces, and apply some LUTs. Edited and rendered in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Make sure to watch in 1080p (HD)!

[VO IMAGES]

Coooooollllll 

[baldavenger]

That was stunning mate.  Really beautiful.  Looking at the greens and yellows I'd be hard pressed to distinguish the images from those of an Alexa, and I'm not exaggerating.

Bravo 

[Pedro_MOD]

Love the filmic blur.  did you shoot at 24FPS?
Nice colour.. RAW Rules... and you are right the massive space and workflow is worth it

[beauchampy]

Really lovely work. Got me thinking about Polarizers now.. How much of a difference do you think it makes?

[DeafEyeJedi]

One of the best first post magic I've seen... congrats @nybblr and welcome aboard!

Thanks for sharing as well as for making 24-105L still yet a very useful zoom despite being a tad slow and a bit too soft for h264 but MLV Raw just somehow makes it disappear!

It's truly magic... Btw which log/LUTS did you use in Resolve (if any) and gotta love MLVFS's workflow!

[nybblr]

Thanks for the wonderful response!

@baldavenger I am amazed how much color data is captured! Alexa's sharpness is the last big visual advantage to tackle (comes out really soft on the 5D Mark III) so no 4K for me yet.

@Pedro_MOD yep, right at 23.976. I did slow-mo the second-to-last clip to 65% as a few boundary frames were corrupted, but everything else is at native speed (everything was shot at 24fps)

@beauchampy polarizer filter makes night + day difference — I wouldn't travel without it! It cuts out so much haze, unwanted reflections, etc. For video, it has the added advantage of cutting out light so I can shoot at the slowest shutter speed.

@DeafEyeJedi the 24-105 is unfortunately soft (I've been spoiled by the 70-200) but its logistical usefulness is hard to beat! I used a 4-node setup to convert colorspaces, make RAW adjustments, then applied one of the built in 3D LUTs in Resolve (I can't remember off the top of my head, I'll post back). The 3D LUT really helps with color contrast, as the footage comes out with a really flat color spectrum.

MLVFS made doing an initial grade on-the-go much easier. Still a kink to work out with load time (I have to wait 5 minutes for Resolve to generate thumbnails on load) but much better than running mlv_extract for hours just to see footage!

[nybblr]

@DeafEyeJedi checked my node setup: first 2 nodes go from Rec 709 => Linear Space => Gamma 2.4, last node applies a 3D LUT — I just used the "Film Looks" presets that come bundled with Resolve.

[swinxx]

@nybblr: great shots and great cc,
but dont get me wrong, i do not understand your cc workflow.. when u use your dngs in davinci, which color space do you select for the raw material? rec709 or bmdfilm or bmdfilm4k?

thx sw

[nybblr]

@swinxx I'm set up as Rec709 output by default.

[swinxx]

hello
can you send me screenshots from your node tree and lut configuration.. cause i can neither find rec709->linear lut nor linear to gamma 2.4

thx.

[nybblr]

They show up for me under 3D LUTS => VFX IO (see attached).

[baldavenger]

You'll get identical results to the Linear to Gamma 2.4 LUT by simply turning Lum Mix to 0 in the Color Wheels Panel, and raising Gamma from 0.00 to 0.35 with the onscreen dial.

Just as a side note, the optimum condition for footage before adding one of the Film Look LUTs is Cineon Alexa Wide Gamut with Film Matrix applied.  There is a very well know package of LUTs that do a great job of achieving this for your footage (you have them already Swinxx).  However, with results this good then it doesn't really matter how you get there I suppose.

Good work all round folks.

[nybblr]

@baldavenger Good to know — curious what "well known package of LUTs" you're thinking of?

[nybblr]

Tutorial uploaded!