Color Grading in Davinci - BMD vs rec.709

[apes1117]

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!

[togg]

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.