Tag Archives: slog3

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How to create a user LUT for the PMW-F5 or F55 in Resolve (or other grading software).

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It’s very easy to create your own 3D LUT for the Sony PMW-F5 or PMW-F55 using DaVinci Resolve or just about any grading software with LUT export capability. The LUT should be a 17x17x17 or 33x33x33 .cube LUT (this is what Resolve creates by default).

Simply shoot some test Slog2 or Slog3 clips at the native ISO. You must use the same Slog and color space as you will be using in the camera.

Import and grade the clips in Resolve as you wish the final image to look. Then once your happy with your look, right click on the clip in the timeline and “Export LUT”. Resolve will then create a .cube LUT.

Then place the .cube LUT file created by the grading software on an SD card in the PMWF55_F5 folder. You may need to create the following folder structure on the SD card, so first you have a PRIVATE folder, in that there is a SONY folder and so on.

PRIVATE   :   SONY   :    PRO   :   CAMERA   :    PMWF55_F5

Put the SD card in the camera, then go to the File menu and go to “Monitor 3D LUT” and select “Load SD Card”. The camera will offer you a 1 to 4 destination memory selection, choose 1,2,3 or 4, this is the location where the LUT will be saved. You should then be presented with a list of all the LUT’s on the SD card. Select your chosen LUT to save it from the SD card to the camera.

Once loaded in to the camera when you choose 3D User LUT’s you can select between user LUT memory 1,2,3 or 4. Your LUT will be in the memory you selected when you copied the LUT from the SD card to the camera.

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Exposing via LUT’s with the PMW-F5 and PMW-F55.

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There is an ongoing and much heated debate on another forum about the practicalities of using the LUT’s or Looks built in to the PMW-F5 and PMW-F55 for setting the correct exposure of your SLog or Raw footage. In response to this I put together a very rough video demonstrating how this actually works.

Before watching the video, do please understand the following notes:

Correct exposure is normally determined by the level at which middle grey is recorded. This is true of both video and film production. Light meters are calibrated using middle grey. Expose with a light meter and you will find middle grey at the levels indicated below.

Different gamma curves may use different middle grey levels depending on the contrast required and the dynamic range of the gamma curve. Generally speaking, the greater the dynamic range, the lower middle grey must be set in order to leave room above middle grey for the extra dynamic range. This means that the relationship between middle grey and white will be different from curve to curve. Don’t always expect white to be some fixed value above middle grey. Some of the Sony looks for example LC709TypeA are very low contrast and while middle grey still sits at around 42% (The ITU standard for Rec-709 is 41.7%), because it is a low contrast, high dynamic range curve white is at a lower level, around 70%. The Hypergamma LUT grey points are given by the “G40″ or G33” number – G40 meaning middle grey at 40%.

When you take Slog or raw in to post production it is expected that the middle grey of the recordings will be at the correct nominal level (see chart below). If it is not, when you apply a post production Slog or raw LUT then the footage may appear incorrectly exposed. If you try to bring Slog or raw into an ACES workflow then ACES expects middle grey to be at the correct values. So it is important that your Slog or raw is exposed correctly if you want it to work as expected in post.

Correct exposure levels for Sony's Slog.
Correct exposure levels for Sony’s Slog.

Having said all of the above… If you are using CineEI and lowering or raising the EI gain from the native ISO then your Slog or raw will be exposed brighter or darker than the levels above. But I must assume that this is what you want as you are probably looking to adjust the levels in post to reduce noise or cope with an over exposure issue. You may need to use a correction LUT to bring your Slog levels back to the nominal correct levels prior to adding a post production LUT.

Anyway, here’s the video.

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Understanding Sony’s SLog3. It isn’t really noisy.

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It’s been brought to my attention that there is a lot of concern about the apparent noise levels when using Sony’s new Slog3 gamma curve. The problem being that when you view the ungraded Slog3 it appears to have more noise in the shadows than Slog2. Many are concerned that this “extra” noise will end up making the final pictures nosier. The reality is that this is not the case, you won’t get any extra noise using Slog3 over Slog2 and Slog3 is generally easier to grade and work with in post production.

So what’s going on?

Slog3 mimics the Cineon Log curve. As a result the shadow and low key parts of the scene are shown and recorded at a brighter level than Slog2. Because the shadows are brighter, the noise in the shadows appears to be worse. It isn’t. The noise level might be a bit higher but the important thing, the ratio between wanted picture information and un wanted noise is exactly the same whether in Slog2 or Slog3 (or in fact any other of the cameras gamma curves at the native ISO).

Let me explain:

The signal to noise ratio of a camera is determined almost entirely by the sensor. This is NOT changing between gamma curves.

The other thing that effects the signal to noise ratio is the exposure level, or to be more precise the aperture and how much light falls on the sensor. This should be same for Slog2 and Slog3. So again no change there.

As these two key factors do not change when you switch between Slog2 and slog3, there is no change in the signal to noise ratio between Slog2 and Slog3. It is the ratio between wanted picture information and noise that is important. Not the noise level, but the ratio. What people see when they look at ungraded SLog3 is a higher noise level (because the signal levels are also higher), but the ratio between the wanted signal and the noise is actually no different for both Slog2 and Slog3 and it’s that ratio that will determine how noisy your pictures will be after grading.

Gamma is just gain, nothing more, nothing less, just applied by variable amounts at different levels. In the case of log, the amount of gain decreases as you go further up the curve.

Increasing or decreasing gain does NOT significantly change the signal to noise ratio of a digital camera (or any other digital system). It might make noise more visible if you are amplifying the noise more, for example in an under exposure situation where you add gain to make a very dark object brighter. But the ratio between the dark object and the noise does not change, it’s just that as you have made the dark object brighter by adding gain, you have also made the noise brighter by the same amount, so the noise also becomes brighter and thus more obvious. The ratio between the wanted signal and the unwanted noise remains constant, no matter what the gain, it is a ratio and gain does not change ratios. With Slog3 in post production you will need less gain in the shadows than you would with Slog2 and this negates the extra gain that the camera adds to the shadows when shooting SLog3.

Lets take a look at some Math. I’ll keep it very simple, I promise!

Just for a moment to keep things simple, lets say some camera has a signal to noise ratio of 3:1 (SNR is normally measured in db, but I’m going to keep things really simple here).

So, from the sensor if my picture signal is 3 then my noise will be 1, or if my picture signal is 6 then my noise will be 2.

If I apply Gamma Curve “A” which has 2x gain then my picture becomes (6×2) 12 and my noise (2×2) 4. The SNR is 12:4 = 3:1

If I apply Gamma Curve “B” which has 3x gain then my picture becomes (6×3) 18 and my noise becomes (3×2) 6. The SNR is 18:6 = 3:1 so no change to the ratio, but the noise is 6 compared to the 4 of Gamma “A”, as a result Gamma “B” will appear to be noisier when viewed on a monitor.

Now we take those imaginary clips in to post production:

In post we want to grade the shots so that we end up with the same brightness of image, so lets say our target level after grading is 15.

For the gamma “A” signal we need to add 1.25x gain to take 12 to 15. As a result the noise now becomes (1.25 x 4) 5.

For the gamma “B” signal (our noisy looking one) we need to use 0.8333x gain to take 18  to 15. As a result the noise now becomes (0.83333 x 6) 5.

Notice anything? In both cases the noise in the final image is exactly the same.

OK, so that’s the theory, what about in practice?

Take a look at the images below. These are 400% crops from larger frames. Identical exposure, workflow and processing for each. You will see the original Slog2 and SLog3 plus the Slog 2 and Slog 3 after applying the LC-709 LUT to each in Sony’s raw viewer. Nothing else has been done to the clips. You can “see” more noise in the raised shadows in the untouched SLog3, but after applying the LUTs the noise levels are the same. This is because the Signal to Noise ratio of both curves is the same and after adding the LUT’s the total gain applied (camera gain + LUT gain) to get the same output levels is the same.

Slog2-400
Slog3-400Slog2-to-709-400Slog3-to-709-400

It’s interesting to note in these frame grabs that you can actually see the improvement in shadow detail that SLog3 brings. The bobbles and the edge of the picture frame look better in the Slog3 in my opinion. A little bit more shadow data has given a more pleasing result with fewer artefacts.

The only way you can alter the SNR of the system (other than through electronic noise reduction) is by changing the exposure, which is why EI is so important and so effective.

Noise is always most problematic in shadows and low key. As we are putting more data into the shadows with SLog3 we are in effect recording the noise in the shadows more precisely, you won’t enhance it or increase it. All that will happen is that it is more accurately reproduced with fewer artefacts, which is a good thing.

In addition Slog3 has a near straight line curve. This means that in post production it’s easier to grade as adjustments to one part of the image will have a similar effect to other parts of the image. It’s also very, very close to Cineon and to Arri Log C and in many cases LUT and grades designed for these gammas will also work pretty well with SLog3.

The down side to Slog3?

Very few really. Fewer data points are recorded for each stop in the brighter parts of the picture and highlights compared to Slog2. As a result Slog3 is slightly less forgiving of overexposure than Slog2. You probably don’t want to push your EI gain quite as hard with Slog3. 1.5 stops over should be OK (so using an EI 1.5 stops down from native) but 2 or more will hurt your pictures.

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