Been playing a lot with HFR recently on my F5. One of the niggles with HFR on the PMW-F55 and F5 is that you don’t have LUT’s when shooting HFR. But, in firmware V4 Sony added a new high contrast mode for the viewfinder. I now have this allocated to one of my assignable buttons and it makes a pretty good LUT alternative for shooting in HFR.

I find that when shooting with S-Log3 HFR I can get a pretty good approximation of correct exposure using the VF High Contrast mode and as the image has decent contrast, focus is much easier than when trying to work without any kind of LUT. Sadly this is only available in the viewfinder, but I find that it is much more obvious if your exposure is off when you use the VF High Contrast mode.

The camera automatically turns this mode OFF when you power the camera down, so you must re-enable it when you power cycle the camera. This is probably a good thing as it means you shouldn’taccidentally.

Sadly zebras etc either measure the LUT output or the Slog, they are NOT effected by the viewfinder HC mode, so in HFR they will be measuring the SLog.

It’s very easy to check out this function for yourself. In regular, non HFR Cine EI,at the native ISO,  turn ON the 709(800) LUT and view the image in the viewfinder making a mental not of what it looks like. Now turn the VF LUT’s OFF and turn on the VF High Contrast mode. You will see that the VF image is as far as I can tell identical in both modes.

So at the native ISO: Cine EI + 709(800) LUT gives the same image in the VF as CineEI NO LUT + VF High Contrast mode.

I recommend that if you haven’t played with this in HFR you give it a try. It’s not a true LUT, but it looks just the same as the 709(800) LUT.