S-LOG with RAW only?

[dilby]

Sorry for the silly question, but am I right in saying that the only way to shoot in S LOG/C LOG etc with ML is to be shooting in RAW? I'm wondering if there's a way I can shoot in a flat profile that doesn't require a conversion from raw in my workflow.

Thanks!

[Danne]

That isn,t possible. Dng files are raw file information with gamma curve baked in from raw camera output.   

[Lars Steenhoff]

for h264 cinestyle picture style has been out for a while

[dfort]

Sorry for the silly question, but am I right in saying that the only way to shoot in S LOG/C LOG etc with ML is to be shooting in RAW? I'm wondering if there's a way I can shoot in a flat profile that doesn't require a conversion from raw in my workflow.

There are several flat profiles but from what I've heard only Technicolor CineStyle is the only 'correctly' coded log Picture Style profile for Canon DSLRs. Being that CineStyle is several years old and no longer maintained I reached out to developers to see if there is an interest in creating an open source log Picture Style in this topic.

In the meantime if what you want to do is to mix your footage with S-Log material and want to keep everything in the same color space I think you might be able to do this by shooting in CineStyle and transcoding to S-Log. One way to do this is using Cinelog 2016 with the OpenColorIO plugin.

Here's a CineStyle clip in After Effects and the OpenColorIO plugin:



And here is CineStyle converted to S-log S-Gamut3:



I'm not sure this is what you want or even if this would work properly. Try contacting Andy600, he's the expert on this subject.

[Danne]

What about an 8-bit aces colorspace picture profile. A challenge 

[Andy600]

You will not gain anything from converting Cinestyle to Slog. The preset is there primarily for conforming Cinestyle shots with footage in other colorspaces on the same timeline. Transcoding Cinestyle H.264 to ProRes will help playback speed in a lot of NLEs but transforming to another colorspace will not provide any more color information than is already there - it will likely do the opposite and lose information and there really isn't much to begin with.

IMHO Cinestyle is still the best option for latitude. You just need to know how to handle it i.e. light well, white balance and expose using the Standard PS, record in Cinestyle using Technicolor's recommended settings. Set sharpening to 0 or at the most 1 then add some fine grain in post to reduce any banding (it acts like dither). Enabling HTP in daylight helps protect highlights.

re: an 8bit ACES PS - the best you could hope to achieve is to simulate the RRT/ODT but it would be far easier to leave that till color grading.

[dfort]

...The preset is there primarily for conforming Cinestyle shots with footage in other colorspaces on the same timeline...

Exactly. I'm not insinuating that this is ideal, only that it is possible.

@dilby hasn't told us why he wants a log profile other than CineStyle but it could be in order to conform the footage to S-log (or other log format) shots on the same timeline. Maybe to use look luts that were made for a different colorspace?

[so-rose]

What about baking in an SLog curve manually into the DNG - wouldn't this "trick" RAW developers to output an SLog2 image? Would that preserve sensor detail?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[visiono]

Yes you can bake the log profile into your dngs they are just not called s-logs.  If you are shooting raw with canon you have recorded the max sensor data. What you can do  is to convert the raw files using your cameras log data. I got mine from visionlog for the 50d. When you convert your raw or mlvraw, it will make your dng`s with the log profile built in. You can also use Adobe Camera Raw to select your camera profile when you load the dng sequence in After effects which is how i do it. Basically it makes your image super super flat so you can now grade it in adobe camera raw. I only use ACR for grading and i find it amazing.  Not sure how it works in davinci.  Magic Lantern Raw Video Converter 1.91 for instance lets you select ACR profile as you make your dng files. That`s where you select ACR profile ---- Visionlog_50d.dcp  or whatever your camera is for your log profile.