Tag Archives: download

Set of 20 Cube LUT’s for the Sony A7S.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on shooting SLog-2 with the A7s. I realised almost straight away that a set of LUT’s for this camera would really help speed up my grading and testing. In addition as the camera is only 8 bit I have found that I am actually getting the best results from the Slog-2 if I over expose it just a little bit, depending of course on the scene. So I created a set of LUT’s that includes compensation for shooting at the nominal correct exposure as well as either 1 or 2 stops over exposed. In all there are 20 LUT’s in two sets. One is Rec-709 based LUT’s and the other Filmic LUT’s to act as starting points for further grading.

I am in the process of creating the complete workflow and SLog-2 guide for the A7s which I should be publishing later next week which will have much more information on how to use these LUT’s. But in the mean time here are the LUT’s if anyone want’s to play (and I would like feedback on what you think of them).

The LUT naming goes something like this:

AC A7S  709(800) ZERO

AC  (That’s me!).    A7S (The Camera).

709(800) = Output gamma or style.     ZERO = Exposure off set.

The exposure offset refers to the number of stops the footage is over exposed by relative to the normal SLog2 exposure level of Middle Grey at 32% and 90% white at 59%. ZERO menas no exposure offset. 1STOP would be used when the SLog2 was exposed 1STOP over and in this case the LUT then shifts the exposure back down 1 stop to compensate.

709 = Vanilla Rec-709, very contrasty, but limited highlight response and hard clip of over exposure.

709(800) = Rec-709 gamma with 800% (high) dynamic range. Will be slightly low contrast but deals much better with over exposure or bright highlights than vanilla 709.

Film-Like1 = An extended range gamma with highlight roll off (+400% range), slightly de-saturated, slightly more film like color (small red/yellow removed).

Filmic2 = Extended range low contrast gamma with very good over exposure handling. Slightly de-saturated. Good grading start point.

Filmic3 = Similar to Filmic2 but a little more contrast at the expense of a little less highlight roll off.

Click on the links below to download the LUT sets. PLEASE DO NOT HOST THESE ELSEWHERE OR DISTRIBUTE THESE ELSEWHERE OR VIA ANY MEANS OTHER THAN A LINK TO THIS PAGE.

Alisters A7S 709 LUTS v2

Alisters A7S Filmic LUTS set1
If you find the LUT’S useful, please consider buying me a beer or a coffee.


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Comparison clips to download.

Here is a set of 3 clips in the native formats taken with a Sony VG10, Canon t2i (550D) and sony F3.

CLICK HERE for the zip file containing the native fies (canon .mov, sony .mts and Sony BPAV folder) or click here to watch on vimeo. If you are going to watch on vimeo I would strongly urge you to take a look at the full size frame grabs below before coming to any conclusions.

I used the same Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens on all 3 cameras (MTF F3 adapter, cheap E-Mount adapter and cheap Nikon to Canon adapter). I had the lens at f8-f11 for all three cameras and used the shutter to control exposure or in the case of the F3 the ND filters. All were set to preset white, 5600k, the sky was visually white with flat hazy cloud. The VG10 was at factory default, the t2i was default except for Highlight Tone Priority which was ON and the F3 default with the exception of Cinegamma 1 being chosen.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Don’t link directly to the download file, instead link to this page. Feel free to host the clips, just remember they are my copyright so include a link back here or a note in any text of where they originated.

PLEASE make a donation of whatever amount you feel appropriate if you find these clips helpful, to help cover my hosting fees if you choose to take advantage of these otherwise free clips. It’s a 340Mb download. As of May 9th, 122 people have downloaded the clips, that’s 41Gb of web bandwidth, yet not one person has made a donation. Come on guys and gals, if you want me to  make clips available to download, help me out.

Below are some frame grabs from the 3 cameras. If you click on the pictures a couple of times they will open full size in a new window. All 3 cameras do a pretty decent job overall. However both the VG10 and t2i have issue with aliasing on the brickwork of the far building. I know the idea with these cameras is to use a shallow DoF so often the background will be soft, but not everything will be like that all the time. There are also more compression artefacts from both the t2i and in particular VG10 (the barbed wire at the beginning of the pan looks pretty nasty). At least with the VG10 you can take the HDMI output and record that externally. Clearly the best pictures are from the F3, but then it is considerably more expensive than the others. It is interesting to note the distinctly yellow colorimetry of the F3. I do have matrix settings to reduce this, but I did not use them during this assessment.
Also note how much wider the FoV is with both the Canon t2i and even more so the F3. Clearly these cameras have larger sensors than the VG10, the largest being the F3’s Super35 sized sensor. This was another surprise, I had assumed the Canon and F3 sensors to be much closer in size than this. Remember that all three used the same lens and the shots were done from exactly the same place.
You can also view the clips on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/23315260
NEX-VG10
t2i -550D
PMW-F3

 

Download and print your own test charts.

Clearly these will never be as good as, or as accurate as properly produced charts. Most home printers just don’t have the ability to produce true blacks with razor sharp edges and the paper you use is unlikely to be optimum. But, the link below takes you to a nice collection of zone plates and resolution charts that are useful for A/B comparisons. I split them up into quarters and then print each quarter on a sheet of A4 paper, joining them all back together to produce a nice large chart.
http://www.bealecorner.org/red/test-patterns/