What is LOG? DaVinci Resolve 17

What is LOG?

It is short for logarithmic footage. It is when your camera shoots in the flattest setting possible to preserve the most amount of detail and dynamic range.

So now let's look at the LOG image with Scope and you see how it's sitting right in the middle?

It's so flat. Well, this is exactly what we need as colorists because this gives us a lot of room to play with, on the top end, bottom end, whatever we want to do.

Whereas, when you look at this rec709 image, at first, it looks good, but the thing is, we can,t really do much with it in post.

And especially when you see bad examples of rec 709, like this shot, that was overexposed, that information is gone.

It's clipped. when cannot bring it back?

This is something that wouldn't happen in LOG.

You still have to shoot properly, but LOG is still a lot more forgiving than rec 709.

Now you would say, all right, simple. I'll just my camera to LOG and done and done.

The problem is unless you're shooting with Alexa,

things aren't that easy, okay?

And what I'm talking about is most of the camera manufacturers out there have their own flavors of LOG, okay?

So you've probably heard of S-LOG, S-LOG2,

S-LOG3 from sony or canon has C LOG, C LOG2, C LOG 3

and then Blackmagic is the ultimate worst nightmare.

They have 100,000 LOG profiles out there.

They really need to stop.

They just really need to simplify that process.

And it's truly a shame because they make this software. They are the ones that develop Resolve.

So I don't know what is going on on the back end with the color science but is an absolute nightmare

working with Blackmagic cameras because you just have unlimited options and it's just,

It will confuse the heck out of professionals, let alone somebody that's getting into color grading.

So that's the end of my rant for Blackmagic.

Let's get back to our video.

So how do you know which LOG profile to work with?

You've probably read the white paper from Sony where it claims that A7S lll can achieve 14 stops of dynamic range or Canon will say, C500 Make ll

will give you 15 plus stops of dynamic range.

So, that is true. but when you really did in deep, it will tell you exactly which LOG profile you need to shoot in.

I will tell you which ISO you need to be in and the lighting condition.

So a lot of things need to happen for you to get that maximum amount of dynamic range that they're claiming.

It's not as easy as just flipping the switch. Now you've your C500 Mark ll.

You can just turn it on, shoot something, and now you get 15 stops of dynamic range.

So, if you are interested and want to see a video on what is dynamic range, drop a comment below.

I think that would be a very interesting topic too. And I have a lot of things that I can share with you

because I know the majority of my audience is not colorists, you guys are filmmakers,

and it could really help you take your game to the next level, even before you get into the finishing room.

Now here's another thing that I see floating around on the internet, where people just say,

you know, I  invested in this 6,$7000 camera. it shoots so well and the sensor is so epic,

so I'm just gonna shoot everything in rec 709 or in video mode or in standard picture profile mode.

Don't do that to yourself, okay?

you are literally slashing your dynamic range to half or even less because let's just even look at this.

S-Cinetone is supposed to be the best thing that ever happened

when it comes to rec 709 world.

And even then can see it in the white paper from sony. it claims that, hey dynamic range is less than S-LOG  3.

If they were to reveal the number, it would be shocking.

So moral of the story is if your camera offers LIG, with your easy closed, shoot in LOG,

learn how to convert your image from LOGrec 709 using a tool like Resolve, and you will get much better results.

Now, remember, LOG is not intended for delivering, okay?

It is intended to be graded or corrected in post.

So you have to do that part before it goes out into the world.

All right?

And now we're gonna look at a few different ways to convert your image from LOG.

  would be using color space transform.it basically converts your image from LOG to anything.

You can convert it to different cameras. You can convert it to rec 709, rec 2020, DCI-P3,

whatever have you.

So it's a very powerful tool. Drop it on, nothing happens, okay?

So what you need to do is you need to manually put in the information.

So in here, I'm gonna tell it, hey, this was shot on DJI.

So I'm gonna choose that my color space. and then under gamma, I'm gonna choose DJI D-LOG.

This doesn't look proper right now, because if I go under my settings,

I have my color management timeline color space set to dimension-wide gamut

but if I were to go back in there and change that to rec 709 gamut2.4 and just look what happens, okay.

When I hit save, just look what happens here. Done. So that is our proper rec 709 conversion by using CST.

And now I'm gonna save a version and show you a different way to do this, okay?

So the second way would be more of a traditional way by applying a LUT.

So these are not LUTs that I pumped in These came with the Resolve, okay?

So there will be a folder called DJI. you go under there and this is the one that we're gonna be using, okay?

What I like to do is to go in here and change that to thumbnail, because otherwise, it's really distracting.

So this is the one that we're gonna drop on, okay?

As soon as you drop it on, I'm gonna buy some estate, look at it, right?

So everything looks clean and everything is ready to go for color, but they both look very different.

So if I click right here and check our versions, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna get rid of the outline.

Move this over. I'm gonna make this bigger. so you guys can like really see the difference.

They are, I think, a better way to really see the difference would be by creating a still from here.

So I'm gonna drop that still in there. Go to our other version.

And now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put that on top and you can even see the scopes, how it's changing.

So let's see this.

This right here is our LUT and you can see the scopes and then this is our CST.

So these would be two different ways for you to convert your LOG footage in Resolve.