Full Review of SLOG2 vs CINE4 for Sony A6300 with Side by Side Comparisons

Like most sony alpha video shooters (particularly pre A7siii/A6500), I'm sure many of you have wondered which picture profile to use and which is better. After looking through Youtube to find comparison footage for specifically my camera (Sony A6300), I struggled to find many videos with comparisons and those that did have existing videos did not have many explanations on how they corrected/graded their footage or their approach.

This video explains my approach to colour correcting both sets of picture profiles using the exact same scenes and camera settings, with a bunch of side by side comparisons to evaluate.

Side note: The way I exposed was having +0 on the reading for CINE4 and +2 for SLOG2. Switching from SLOG2 to CINE4 automatically changed the reading from +2 and + 0 in all cases. I understand that 'exposing correctly' is somewhat subjective (i.e. in some cases you may have to blow out the highlights) however this is just my specific approach.

Timestamps:
00:00 Overview of Video
00:40 Method of Comparison
2:37 SLOG2 Vs CINE4 Comparison
8:29 My Recommendation
9:19 Should I use LUTs?
9:50 Does any of this matter?
11:04 Final thoughts

Links:

[martyxke]

Thanks for taking the time to put this comparison together, it's much appreciated. For my requirements, I will try the Cine4 option for now, and see if I notice a difference from SLOG2, without having the benefit of a side by side comparison.

[fotosvond_]

There is no difference that I would consider to be anything like night and day. The only one is that Cine4 requires a lot less work in post. However, what I didn't get is why you did not put Cine2 against Slog2 because Cine2 is flatter than Cine 4 and has more dynamic range (which is the goal of Slog, too). Editing Slog2 heavily in terms of colour saturation while doing nearly nothing to Cine 4 is obviously going to give quite a big difference.

What people are talking about in terms of skin colours is, in my opinion, not really so much about skin colours but about your colour profile and how you adjust the colour depth values. Talking about an A7R III on my side, the color profiles tend to be mostly on the red side or green side, you just have to work out their tendency and get them more neutral, then you can forget about this topic completely.

[SocietateaAscendenta]

I do not need, nor want, to shoot S-Log, just because everyone does it.
I want to EXTRACT what is the BEST from my camera and footage and
not complicate myself needlessly.



If you would shoot on PRO-RES, that is a totally 'nother subject, of course.

And of course, some will say: "Don't you see the LEFT color-graded video?
It has so much more dynamic range.".

YES. It does. But, also more noise...
(which is not obvious on YouTube, but it there:)



Thanks!

[kirilborisov]

"lovers of a saturated picture" choose slog, but in Cine4 the color is much deeper, when saturation is peak in Slog2, although it is obvious that the object does not have such saturation in reality, then cine takes this into account and gives a little more potential in terms of saturation strength, Cine4 will definitely be more believable in the future and close to ideal, while in Slog2 the colors are already quite compressed

[photoangelov]

SLOG2 definitely looks better and is more colour-accurate, in my experience. SLOG2 footage from the a6300 could be mistaken for footage from a cinema camera, whereas CINE4 footage just looks more like video.

[thmallik]

Hi, thanks for your infos, really helpful, how do you deal with low light situations.

[giovcarrillo]

I usually raise the saturation by +10 when using slog 2. For me, this is much easier to grade and usually resolves the banding and color artifacts when dealing with 8-bit footage from the a6300.

[Mikamiel.k]

Your test footage is quite pleasing to the eye)) And yes, slog2 is definetly better especially on skintones.