STOP shooting LOG Footage

You don't always need to be shooting LOG footage. Here are a few reasons why you should and should not shoot LOG Footage.

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[Sacrengard]

Shooting in Log gives you more dynamic range, but keep in mind the color space (bits). Do not shoot Log in low light, it gives you too much noise and its hard to bring those dark colors up. I like to shoot log in daylight, specially if the sun is giving you harsh shadows, or there is a window or bright sky behind the subject. There are a lot of LUTs that can help you color correct and color grade quick and easy with a simple adjustment layer if you need to. If you can control your light, then you dont need to shoot in Log. Keep in mind its now 2022 and this video is from 2018, there may be better cameras today or by the time you watch this video or read my comment.

[mallucanuck]

8 bit or 10 bit is not bitrate. It is the color depth, or bit depth. Bitrate says how many Megabits per second of data is in the file.

[hindesite]

Great video but 8 bit vs 10 bit is bit depth, 100mbs vs 400mbs is bitrate.

[annekedebruyn]

This is why I warn my students about watching tutorials on YouTube.

[KevinBeckman]

Few suggestions for educating people in the future: Bit depth, not bitrate when talking 8/10 bit. Megabits not megabytes. Footage isn't noisier because of log profile, noise comes from higher iso. Lighting isn't a determination of when to use a log profile or not, log profiles simply have a wider dynamic range and tonal range.

[FilmmakerIQ]

You can also manage 8bit Log... You just need to be a lot closer to the final desired exposure

[agro]

Dude, if you want to teach stuff to other people, at least know what you're talking about. Bitrate and bitdepth are not the same thing...

[oorcinus]

Your explanation of what log does is wrong. It has nothing to do with the limits of the total brightness range, and everything to do with the brightness curve, which is logarithmic, as opposed to linear. It is, essentially, a very harsh gamma curve, with highly compressed highlights, and very drawn out shadows and midtones.

[SergeGolikov]

Controlling the lighting also includes balancing the temperature. This shot has blacks saturated with red.
I guess it boils down to personal likes, a Vectorscope can at least help to keep it legal
After spinning 1" broadcast videotape for years, your Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope were your standard tools.
Before starting any edit session, you lined up your Bars and Tone with the TBC (Time Base Corrector) and Scopes.
Cameras which allow you to record Bars and Tone are still a useful feature and a good procedure to practice in Post.

[jacobnathanielzpayag]

log does not simply affect contrast. It also affects saturation and how each color is processed after the raw sensor read-out. Log profiles are color spaces of their own. They live in a separate color environment as all other linear profiles you may have.

Noise is there if you don't switch color spaces properly. That's why there are technical LUTs and DaVinci YRGB Color Management tools for that.

Have you considered what software to use when handling log footage?

I agree, shooting log is not necessary if you don't need it. But not to say that you should never use it.

Also that bit depth at bit rate thing.

[heylou]

For me just denoise (my favorite neat video) then color correct/grade, and finally add a bit of grain back into the shot (called dithering). The more you do it the quicker you’ll get and eventually you won’t be sweating about scenes falling apart

[polymetric]

Log does not increase noise. Log does not change the noise level coming from the sensor. It uniformly scales the gamma and color space. The noise floor is determined far before the signal is even digitized. This video is based on a complete misunderstanding of basic digital image signal flow. Oh, and log is also not harder to monitor. If you have a monitor that supports LUTs, which is 100% necessary if you're shooting log, then this isn't a problem. If you have to watch this video, you are absolutely not ready to shoot log.

[joeltunnah]

I don’t think you’re correct about a flat profile increasing noise. Raising shadows in post increases noise, not lowering them, which is what you do when grading flat footage.

[sandippandya]

Now I understand why bands are generated in sky after editing... Thank you

[AllThingsFilm]

Great advice. I shoot a lot of log footage for feature films because I want the grades to match. Mixing profiles can be equally problematic in post. But, for the most part, if you can control the lighting and the look in camera, than yea, don't shoot in log.

[VMKAROUND]

Also during nights I don't really think you need log

[simonwyndham]

Whether shooting 8-bit log is a good idea or not depends a lot on the camera. Some are actually not bad, such as the A7 series from Sony. Good A/D conversion helps a lot. You mentioned that in your headshot you used the standard gamma settings because you lit the shot. This is fine, but you will always suffer that Rec.709 style highlight handling. If you are looking for 'film emulation' such as using FilmConvert you'd be better off using log so that the highlight roll-off style can be determined by the LUT (log does not roll off the highlights at all).

There needs to be a cull on saying that log makes your footage look flat. It doesn't. It's just a gamma mismatch between what's being captured and the gamma on the display you are using. If you used an HDR monitoring solution such as the Shogun Inferno you can show the log image close to how it should be without the need for a LUT.

Shadows can appear more noisy. But remember how log works. It rolls off the shadows, not the highlights. So you need to be careful not to clip the highlights, but if you over expose slightly with log you can protect the shadows a bit more.

[finewinedaily]

Why do people post videos like this? "Hey, I don't know anything about LOG footage. Let me post a tutorial video about it!"

I mean wow, there is so much wrong in this video. There is no reason to ever not shoot LOG if you are going to color grade the footage. Ever. Literally all of the drawbacks you listed to shooting LOG are flat wrong.

[MaxDiBella]

I know this video is 4 years old now, but there is a lot of incorrect or misleading information here. I know this is youtube and people can post whatever they want, but my opinion is that this video is far more detrimental to its audience than it is beneficial. Firstly, bitrate and color bit-depth are not interchangeable terms. Bitrate doesn't really have any relevance to the topic of using log or rec709 profiles when shooting.

You did mention 8-bit vs 10+ bit (to specify, this is bits per color channel, not per pixel), which to my knowledge is the only valid reason to not shoot log. There are a slim few cameras (most popular are the older Sony A7SII and A7III to my knowledge) that can only utilize log when shooting in 8-bit. The flatter image may use less of the bit depth range, meaning that adding contrast later will result in the effective distance between recorded bit values increasing beyond that of a typical 8-bit display. This can lead to banding artifacts, but the issue is completely eliminated when shooting at a bit depth greater than the bit depth intended for display (almost always 8-bit, although newer HDR standards call for 10-bit). Just don't shoot in log if you can't go higher than 8-bit, otherwise it is pretty much always beneficial to do so.

The point about extra time spent color grading comes from incorrect color management practices. You should never try to color grade while displaying a log image. The entire point of log profiles is that they contain more dynamic range and a wider color gamut than your display can show. It's literally using a different color space than your display, meaning you aren't seeing an accurate representation of what the camera captured. Log footage should undergo a color space transform to properly convert from the camera's color space to the necessary display color space, whether that be rec709 for SDR, DCI-P3, or rec2020 for HDR. This can be configured to happen in DaVinci Resolve automatically in the color management project settings and results in a normalized looking image which is a perfectly accurate representation of what the camera manufacturer intended, no extra time needed on a per-shot basis, all while getting the benefits of greater dynamic range and color gamut capture, with the ability to color grade prior to the tone-mapping happening in the display color space transform.

I would highly recommend researching these kinds of topics extensively and/or conducting your own proper tests with isolated variables before coming to conclusions about the kinds of claims you've made in this video (and I'm assuming others as well).

[johnslater]

Great explanation. Clear and concise. Especially good point about the contrast values in the scene. First time I shot log was a river scene in harsh midday sun. It looked so awesome when graded! I was blown away by the blue sky, the cloud detail, the texture in the shadows on the boats. So I thought, great! I’ll shoot everything in log from now on. Next scene was a carefully lit interior. Went to grade it and, oh the noise, the noise! The footage was unuseable. I learned the hard way to save log for high-key, high contrast scenes without controlled light.