Sony have just released version 2024.1 of the Catalyst software suite, including Catalyst Browse.
This is a big update with many important improvements. If you are using a Mac computer with Apple silicon Catalyst now runs natively rather than via Rosetta. There are improvements to the render quality when using the stabilisation function plus support of the latest codecs.
Click on the link below to go to the download page.
https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/articles/CCCT03000?
This is the 3rd and final LUT in the free three LUT set I promised by the end of 2022. Incandescent goes with my Elixir and Solitude LUT’s to complete the set of 3 film style LUTs. Elixir is the base LUT with a neutral film style look, the second LUT is called Solitude which provides a cooler, stark look. Incandescent provides a pleasing warm look, perhaps for feel good or romantic scenes. It might even be a good choice for a happy Christmas look or feel. To download this new LUT go to my LUT page where you will find a wide selection of free LUT’s.
This LUT set can be used with any Sony camera that shoots S-Log3 with SGamut3.cine. So they are perfect for the FX30, FX3, FX6, FX9, Venice as well as the A7S3 etc.
If you find my LUT’s useful please spread the word and link to my Free LUT page so that others can also benefit. More LUT’s will be coming next year.
Have a great Christmas everyone.
It’s Black Friday, so here is my Black Friday offer – a new free LUT.
Solitude is a new free LUT for any Sony camera that shoots using S-Log3 and SGamut3.cine. This is the second in a series of 3 free LUTs that I am releasing between now and Christmas. The first was Elixir which gives a rich film like look. Solitude is closely related to Elixir but gives a cooler more metalic look. I believe it is suitable for gritty drama or anything needing a cooler less warm look. To see my free LUT collection and to download any of my free LUTs including both Elixir and Solitude follow this link – https://www.xdcam-user.com/picture-settings-and-luts/alisters-free-luts/
I’ve added a new LUT for S-Log3 and SGamut3.cine to my free LUT collection. The new LUT is called Elixir and is the first LUT from a collection of 3 new LUTs with similar contrast and brightness but quite different colours that I will be releasing between now and the end of the year. Elixir is designed for short film projects and drama to provide rich colours with pleasing skin tones. Blues are shifted slightly teal, but there is no distracting colour cast, just pleasing colours with mid to high contrast. The LUT can be used with any Sony camera that has S-Log3 and SGamut3.cine, so that includes the whole of the Cinema Line including the FX6, FX3 and FX30 as well as cameras like the FS5 and FS7. For more information and to download this or any of my free LUTs please go to the LUT page: https://www.xdcam-user.com/picture-settings-and-luts/alisters-free-luts/
When testing and evaluating a camera, whether that’s a digital photo camera, video camera or digital cinema camera it is always useful to have a test chart or 2 (or more). While printing a chart at home isn’t always the best way to go, comercial charts can be very expensive to buy. So below is a link to an ISO 12233 chart, a Zone Plate chart and a Siemens Star chart that you can download for free and print at home. You will need a good printer and good quality photo paper for the best results.
For the ISO 12233 chart I divide this into quarters, print each 1/4 and then join them back together to make a larger chart.
The zone plate and siemens charts should be printed as large as possible, but in use they would not fill the frame, perhaps only a small part of the frame depending on the resolution of the camera you are evaluating.
I have not included any color charts or grey scale charts as it will be extremely difficult to know whether the colors or shades of grey your printer produces are actually correct, making the chart invalid.
Click on the green link or the images below:
Click here for ISO 12233 Test Chart as at the top of this page.
Some of you may have been having issues downloading my LUT’s and some other content. This was occuring due to Chrome blocking the download of any files it deems unsafe. I have installed some upgraded tools on my server and you should find that downloads will work again now. Do let me know if you ever encounter issues with the site. The sooner you let me know the sooner I can look into them. Thanks.
Hello all. So after numerous problems for some people trying to download the official Sony s709 LUT for Venice, I decided to create my own Venice Look LUT’s. These LUT’s have been created using image matching techniques plus some small tweaks and adjustments to make the LUT’s work well with the 14 stop cameras.
Venice is a 15 stop camera with a new sensor and as a result the official s709 LUT’s are not quite right for the current 14 stop cameras like the FS5, PMW-F55, FS7 and even the A7 series. So the LUT that I have created is slightly different to allow for this.
The end result is a LUT that gets you really close to the way Venice looks. It won’t magically turn your FS5 into a Venice, there is something very, very nice about the way Venice handles the extremes of it’s dynamic range, plus Venice has Sony’s best colour filters (similar to the F55 and F65). So Venice will always be that one very nice step up. But these LUT’s should get you close to the default Venice 709 look. This LUT should NOT be used with Venice as it this LUT is restricted to 14 stops.
Of course do remember that the default look and indeed the official s709 LUT was designed as a first pass look. An instant viewing output for a DIT or for on set viewing. It is not really meant to be the final finished look. It would be normal to grade the Venice material, perhaps from scratch rather than using the s709 LUT for the final output. But, s709 is what comes out of the cameras SDI connectors if you use the default LUT/Look. This is what this LUT set mimics, with some tweaks for the lower cost cameras.
This is one of the largest and most comprehensive LUT sets I have ever created. There are versions designed specifically for grading in Resolve or other grading suites. The bulk of the LUT’s are designed to be used with S-Log3 and SGamut3.cine. There are monitoring versions with offsets for use in monitors such as the Atomos range. I have created a set with offsets for both the Zacuto and Small HD viewfinders and monitors and finally I have also created sets of LUT’s for use with S-Log2 so users of the original A7s or those that wish to shoot with S-Log2 on an 8 bit camera are not left out.
The LUT’s work best with the PMW-F55 as this has the closest native color to the Venice camera, but I think they work really well on the rest of the Sony range.
If you find the LUT’S useful, please consider buying me a beer or a coffee using the “Buy Now” button below. There are different drink options depending on what you feel is fair, it takes time to prepare these and there are costs associated with hosting the files. I’m not paid to run this website and every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated.
If you don’t wish to buy me a coffee, that’s cool. But please don’t host the files elsewhere. Feel free to link back here and share the link, but please don’t distribute these anywhere else.
Here’s the link to the zip file containing the my Venice Look LUT set:
Click Here to download Alister’s Venice Look LUTs V2
If you are new to XDCAM-USER.COM please take a look around at the various tutorials, guides, tips and tricks that are hosted here. Click on the green search button at the top right to open a search window or follow the links in the drop down menus at the top of the page. Thanks for visiting!
With Sony Venice X-OCN files to download!
I have been working with Sony’s colour science guru Pablo at the Digital Motion Picture Center at Pinewood, looking at the outer limits of what Sony’s Venice camera can do. A large part of the reason for this is that Pablo is developing some really nice LUT’s for use on dailies or even as a grade starting point (Pablo tells me the LUT’s are finished but he is waiting for approvals and feedback from Japan).
As part of this process we have shot test footage with the Venice camera for ourselves and also looked long and hard at test shots done by other cinematographers. Last week we were able to preview a beta version of the cameras dual ISO modes. This beta firmware allowed us to shoot tests at both 500 ISO and 2500 ISO and the results of both are equally impressive.
I can’t share any of the test footage shot at 2500 ISO at this stage. The firmware is still in it’s early stages and the final version may well perform a little differently (probably better). But I can share some of the footage shot at 500 ISO.
Please remember what we were exploring was the extreme ends of the exposure range. So our little test set was set up with some challenges for the camera rather than trying to make a pretty picture.
We have deep, deep shadows on the right behind the couch and we also have strong highlights coming off the guitar, the film can on the shelves and from the practical lamp in the background. The reds of the cushion on the couch look very different with most Rec-709 cameras as the colors are outside the Rec-709 gamut.
Another aspect of the test was to check the exposure rating. For this I used my Sekonic lightmeter to measure both the incident light and the light reflected by the Kodak grey card. My light meter gave me T4 at 1/48th for 500 ISO and this turned out to be pretty much spot on with what the scopes told us. So straight away we were able to establish that the 500 ISO exposure rating appears to be correct. We also found that when we stopped down by 2.3 stops we got the correct exposure at 2500 ISO, so that too appears to be correctly rated.
Once the base exposure was established we shot at 2 stops over and 2 stops under, so from T2 down to T8 using a Sony 35mm PL prime. We used the XOCN-ST codec as we felt this will be the most widely used codec. When looking at the files do remember that the 16 bit XOCN-ST files are smaller than 10 bit ProResHQ. So these are files that are very easy to manage. There is the option to go up in quality to Sony’s linear raw codec or down to X-OCN LT. XOCN-ST sits in the middle and offers a nice balance between file size and image quality, it being very hard to find any visual difference between this and the larger raw files.
The files I’m providing here are single X-OCN frames. They have not been adjusted in any way, they are just as shot (including being perhaps a touch out of focus). You can view them using the latest version of Sony’s raw viewer software or the latest version of DaVinci Resolve. For the best quality preview, at this time I recommend using Sony’s Raw Viewer to view the clips.
Click here to download these Venice Samples
If you find these files useful please consider buying me a coffee or beer.
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 Filmic LUTS set1
If you find the LUT’S useful, please consider buying me a beer or a coffee.
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.