What is LOG video? | s-log2, s-log3, v-log, c-log, z-log, f-log

hello Hoffy do all this stuff welcome back today for you I'm gonna answer the question what is log I've made lots of videos about log specifically about Sony's version called s lock 2 and s log 3 so it's no surprise I get the question what is log a lot in this video I'll break it down in layman's terms so I'm not going to get super technical or anything I'll also link to all the other relevant videos I've done on the subject so you can really get your teeth [Music] so what is log well put simply it's an extremely low contrast setting for video that's built into some cameras that tries to retain more detail in the bright Sun the bright highlight areas and dark shadow areas in your footage by reducing the contrast in a really pleasing interesting way but how does it work well log is short for logarithmic gamma curve and put simply that means the darker the area in your footage the more the log setting will stop it from getting too dark and the same goes for the highlights the brighter the area in your video the more the log curve will react and try to stop the highlights from getting so bright and blown out that they become pure white no matter what you do with them well you end up with is a pretty uninspiring looking very low contrast image that needs color grading to get it looking good but have seriously why would you use log if it adds more times your workflow well for many reasons you might not want to but log can give you lots more detail in the shadow and highlights that you otherwise might not be able to capture it's a look that's often associated with that filmic feel let me demonstrate ok I'm here in my office and it's a sunny day I'm using a linear profile and as you can see outside is completely blown out it's quite sunny so what if I try and recover some of the detail yet doesn't work so in that case I have to use a lower exposure and try and bring up the shadows on my face that's the other way I could do this let's do it now and so here we go I'm again using a linear profile and I've exposed so you can see the background outside is kind of exposed almost perfectly and the result is my skin science might all of me and the interior of this room are too dark so if it brings the shadows up it doesn't look good does it so let's switch now to a log profile so here we are using Sony's s log two and I've exposed somewhere in the middle of what my skin tones should be at and how the exterior should be exposed I'm trying to meet somewhere in the middle so that I can do something with the highlight areas and something with the shadows and kind of equal it allow and make it look a bit more pleasing and this is what it looks like I've done a simple grade I've added a lookup table and yeah taking a look at these side-by-side it's quite obvious that none of these clips are perfect and really what it means is internal lighting the first clip which is using a standard profile has massively overexposed highlight areas the second clip which is the underexposed standard profile has really noisy looking shadows and the third clip which is the s log version is a bit more balanced but still far far from perfect nice bit of diffused light in this room would make this shot look really good earlier in this video I made reference to log footage and that kind of filmic cinematic aesthetic so at this point I imagine some of you are thinking have are you saying that you can't get cinematic looking footage without log well of course I'm not saying that take this shot for example which is shot in the very very flat s log three Sony profile and in this case the profile is so flat and colorless that I can really go wherever I want with the coloring I really wanted the color in this video to be steered in the direction of being punchy but interesting because we've got graffiti behind our subjects and I really wanted it just to pop of course the other things I did to make it look a little bit more cinematic was to add widescreen bars and I added a little bit of a vignette so does log make your footage look more cinematic well no not really but it does help with things like the colouring and it gives you more dynamic range for sure after all the majority of films are shot in some form of log profile so when should you use log well for me I like to use it in almost any situation apart from low-light it's a personal preference but I do prefer the way that it grades I prefer the way I can manipulate the colors of it more easily but the answer put simply is in high dynamic range situations take the scene for example this was shot in cine one which is a standard profile and you can see it's an extremely bright day now I'm gonna give this a little bit of a tweak just as best so I'm going to add some contrast and a tiny bit of saturation and then we'll see how it compares to a log example and here's the same clip but in log as always log lots of rubbish when it's straight out of the camera but when I add a grade and a lookup table it really starts to pop personally I quite like both examples they both look pretty good to me once tweaked but let's look at them side by side looking at them side by side the first thing I notice is that I prefer the color from the log example but that's entirely unfair because I have used a lookup table in this case I'm using the phantom look-up tables which I'm in to emulate an airy styled color palette if you're interested I did review these lots which I'll link below as well and I did manage to get a code for you if you're interested in snapping them up zooming in to 300% and actually I was very surprised by what's going on in the standard profiles shadow areas the standard example on the Left shows aliasing in the shadows which was really surprising considering I've actually lowered the exposure of the shadow areas which in theory should make them even cleaner looking now at the sky we can see that the standard example on the left actually I prefer the natural color that we've got and leaves compared to the log version the other noticeable thing we can see on our log example on the right is that our lookup table it's actually keeping the highlight areas much darker than on the standard version this is a known characteristic of the lookup tables they're known for having lovely roll-off of the highlight areas but in terms of detail I mean they're fairly similar but I think I can see a little bit more detail in the trees on the log example you've heard me mention look-up tables a lot in this video so far they are an essential component to working with log message log footage needs look-up tables to tell it what the contrast curve should be doing and what the color should look like luckily there's a lot of good ones out there and you can find them for either not very much money or free I'll link the video about some of my favorite look-up tables below if you're interested in the meantime I'll show you three of my absolute favorites from different packs this is the one I'm using on this video it's the Phantom Lots utopia lookup say you'll love it it's quite nicely accurate but slightly filmic at the same time this is the velak or Aspen luck which you all know I really love it gives you a lovely pastel kind of peachy kind of color and yeah it's beautiful I love it and finally this is train films drive lookup table and it's super punchy super saturated and really nice-looking I've done tutorials about how to grade log footage if you're interested I'll link some below for you so there you go putting the answer into words is surprisingly tricky but if you can do it then I encourage you to let me know your thoughts in the comment section below and that's it for now thank you so much for hanging out with me today I've got a large back catalog of videos about video on this channel of which YouTube recommends this one for you and my latest upload will be just below if you're not already subscribed then definitely do it hit the blob that's just over my shoulder and until next time let's help each other out shoot better video [Music]

Channel: Harv Video/Audio Stuff

Views: 173,275

Keywords: harv, video audio stuff, james harvey, sony, a7s ii, canon, nikon, harv video audio stuff, videography, photography, log, s-log, slog2, slog3, how to grade, v-log, red raw, arri raw, gmma, curve, grade lut, grading lut, luts, free luts, arri luts, shadow highlight, linear, how to color grade, color grade slog3, color grade, color grade luts, free color grade, wgat is log, what is slog2, what is s-log2

Id: GZkrZm8yJ38

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2019