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.

300x250_xdcam_150dpi Set of 20 Cube LUT's for the Sony A7S.

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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pixel Set of 20 Cube LUT's for the Sony A7S.

46 thoughts on “Set of 20 Cube LUT’s for the Sony A7S.”

  1. hi! I just bought sony a7s camera and last night I went to the beach to tested it. When I arrived at home and passed the files to the computer when I saw them I noticed they have much noise in my videos…I had put ISO at 3200, using picture profile pp7 (SLog2). I think I haven’t got a good profile put into the camera but I don’t know. Can someone help me please? Thanks!?

    1. Without knowing more about how you set your exposure and how you handled the footage in post production it’s impossible to diagnose why your picture are noisy. The default PP7 gives excellent results when used correctly. Did you read the guide to S-Log2 exposure?

  2. First impressions: it’s very close to what I get when I use the BMD to rec709 LUT but a little bit with a purple tint (specifically using the 800% 1 over version)

    Filmic 3 strikes me a bit like a bleach bypass filter.

    (I would post screens, but seems I can’t here)

  3. Your LUTs look great when I load into speedgrade but when I round trip back into Premiere they just show an error screen. Is there a step I’m missing for speedgrade use?

    1. Sorry, I don’t use speedgrade so don’t know why you are getting an error. You can just use the lumetri plug-in in Premiere to apply the LUT’s.

  4. Alister,
    Great job building these LUTs, I think they’re spot on. I’m particularly fond of “Film-Like” and the exposure offset variations make it brilliantly easy to grade. I’m usually pushing +2 EV on my exposure and the results turn out nice and clean.

    I had good results applying the LUTs in Final Cut Pro X with LUT Utility for my recently produced short. Check out my site link if you care to check it out.

  5. Hi Alister, today is December 12, 2014 and im in Johannesburg heading to Zimbabwe for a shoot. I used the A7s on a shoot last week and was quite impressed. Decided to use it here. Was wondering if you had published the complete workflow and SLog-2 guide for the A7s yet? Also you said in one of your posts when shooting in dark environments you shouldn’t be using pp7 anyway. My question is when would you use pp1-pp6 and what do each of these profiles do? I can’t seem to find any info on these profiles anywhere. Thanks for all your amazing posts

  6. Hi Alister,

    Is there a way to enter these LUTs into the A7s as a custom picture profile so that the look can be achieved in camera with less grading needing to be done in post?

    Thanks

  7. Hi Alister,

    Thanks for your Lut.
    I offered a beer just because your idea is amazing, but I didn’t try to use yet.
    I have to copy that software on my effects folder on fcpx or there is another path that I have to follow.

    Thanks,
    Roberto

  8. Thanks very much for this. These 3d LUTS works well in the Atomos Shogun on V6.2.

    This sounds weird but i refuse to pay with Paypal, is there another way to pay?

    Cheers,

    Martin

  9. Hi Alister, I have a question for you regarding your LUT’s as used Premiere Pro CC 2015. You are probably well aware of the new color grading panel in Premiere Pro 2015. There are 2 options for LUT’s now, one is the “Input LUT” in the Basic Corrections panel, and the other is the “Look” in the Creative panel.

    The problem I am having is this: when I use one of your LUT’s in the “Look” Creative panel, it works perfectly and I can adjust the intensity/gain to my liking, but when I make almost any other minor adjustment, such as a very minor luminance or hue adjustment, it suddenly blows everything out. Looking at my waveform monitor, it jumps everything up like 20 or 30 values on the IRE scale.

    However, if I use your LUT as an Input LUT in the basic corrections panel, this is not a problem. The only problem with doing that is there is no way to control the gain of the LUT, it seems stuck at 100% unless there is a way to work around this.

    I really like the A7S_709800_1over and 2over LUT because they give me a super accurate color space to begin grading from. Excellent work man. However, if I can’t control luminance and hue etc, it is going to be useless for me.

    Any tips for using your LUT with Premiere Pro 2015 would be awesome. If we can figure out how to use this LUT effectively in our studio’s workflow we would be more than happy to send a few Singapore beers your way. Thank you.

    1. My LUT’s are in essence input LUT’s. I don’t know what is going on under the hood of CC 2015, so I’m not sure why the LUT behaviour is different when they are used as input LUT’s or Looks. In theory the behaviour should be the same in both cases. The only thing I can think of is that when used as an input LUT the further adjustments happen after the LUT so are less critical, while if the LUT is used as a look, the corrections are before the LUT where they may be more critical as you are in effect altering the S-log to something other than S-log before it hits the LUT.

  10. Sorry Alister, I am not having this problem now….it seems to be working fine. I can make all my adjustments without any problem. No idea what was going on. If I find an issue again I will let you know.

    Once I can confirm this workflow with my current project we will hit you with a donation. Thanks again for making these awesome tutorials and LUTs!

  11. Hi Alister, I am having a problem here with the basic understanding of how the Lumetri adjustments in Premiere CC work: If I set an input LUT in the basic adjustments and then continue to make further adjustments in contrast for example – will this affect the settings that are defined in the LUT or will they be added “on top/additionally” to the LUT values? I find this very confusing – can you help me to understand this better?

  12. Yes there is. If you are using Atomos Shogun you can import to shogun any LUT you like and apply during recording. Works with 4K with 1080p.

  13. Hi Alister,
    Could you advise what LUT I should use if I am shooting in complete darkness with flashes of blue light? Almost like fireflies.
    I like to achieve crisp black in a A7S using 50 mm 1.4 lens 1/80 shutter speed on 80000 ISO.
    Thank you.
    Khoo

    1. 80,000 ISO is not going to give you crisp clean blacks with any LUT and if you use 80,000 ISO you won’t be getting anywhere near the full S-log2 dynamic range, so really you would be better off with a different gamma curve.

  14. Hi Alistar,
    downloaded the LUTS and doing a lot of research especially using the newly available x-rite color checker Video and the color grading central / color finale plugin (see here:

    – time spent on learning grading and setting my alpha a7ii just right is going straight up).
    Q1: i presume when you discuss s-log2 you mean s-log2 in combination with colormode: s-gamut ! And you designed the LUTS for that combination. correct?
    Q2: what would be the benefit of using S-log2 on an A7ii (not A7Sii) when it is only 8bit recorded. (Somewhere you point out it is designed for 10 or 12 bit 4.2.2. or 4.4.4 recording)
    Q3: what would be an alternative color mode combination for s-log2 on the A7ii: using the cinegamma, pro or rec709 color mode? Or would that be using the Cine1 or 4 gamma icm with the color mode: cinegamma (also flat).

    What I am running into is getting the full picture of gamut and color mode combinations in relation to post-production: benefits, time… I presume the color mode is a kind of build in LUT in camera to write the color values with the Luminance s-log curve…

    Cheers,
    Stefan

    1. Yes S-Log2+SGamut2 are what my current LUT sets are made for.

      S-log2 uses a much larger data range than S-Log3 so with 8 bit you gain a lot of extra data that is wasted with S-Log3.

      You would have to build specific LUT’s for each color combination and may get odd results if you use linear color with log gamma.

  15. Dear Alister

    Just want to tell you that I have started using your LUTs when shooting Slog2 with my Sony A6300. I can’t thank you enough..I have been struggling with the grading and LUTting for weeks..and was just about to give up when I found your LUT on the net. Works beautiful and now Slog2 is the standard setting in my camera. Cheers & Tnx //Ron

  16. Hope you enjoyed the beer. As much as your LUTs were great I want to experiment with ACES using DaVinci Resolve and it seems I have no choice but to use the single IDT in Resolve. Is that so? And is that good to use? I notice ACES deals with a wide exposure latitude with similar results so does this mean this one IDT is good for all exposure levels?
    Thanks

    1. Because ACES converts the footage to 16 bit linear data with in excess of 18 stops of DR the single IDT will work for any exposure level. then a simple gain adjustment acts as an exposure adjustment.

  17. Can someone please explain to me how to apply these LUTS once I have downloaded them. I am having trouble opening them 🙁

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