Grading R3d material – Redlog vs. Redlog Film

[Dmitry Kitsov]

Wouldn’t you want to use whatever makes your grade looks good and the way you want it to look?
Your question is a little bit like the questions I would get from the photography and film students: what is a good exposure when I shoot outside? What is a good contrast filter for this negative? Answer of course is – the correct exposure is the one you want to use, so is the filter. You want to use the one that gives you the best contrast for the negative at hand and for the image you want to produce. There are no magic secret settings. There is no secret sauce.

[Craig Harris]

I agree with Dmitry.
If you are doing projects for the web or TV, probably good to start with one of the RedColor / RedGamma combos. RedLog and RedLog Film are for deliverables that can project wider ranges of colour and gamma. Using the log gamma as your starting point and creating a different curve for each clip is a recipe for inconsistency and choppy grading.

Stick with what works. If you need to use a Log space, then create an output LUT to get you where you need to go.

C

[Javier Sanchez]

As some times the told me on forums: “RDFM”

but as i don’t like when they do that i re write the manual for you:

REDlog: A logarithmic gamma setting that maps the original 12-bit R3D image data to
a 10-bit curve. The blacks and midtones occupying the lowest 8 bits of the video signal
maintain the same precision as in the original 12-bit data, while the highlights that
occupy the highest 4 bits are compressed. While reducing the precision of highlight
detail, the tradeoff is that there’s an abundance of precision throughout the rest of the
signal. This is a good setting for maintaining maximum latitude.

REDlog Film: An improved logarithmic gamma setting that’s designed to remap the
original 12-bit R3D data to the standard Cineon gamma curve. This setting produces
flat-contrast image data that preserves image detail with a wide latitude for adjustment,
and is compatible with log workflows intended for film output.

Hope it help 🙂

Javier Sanchez
Head Of Technology
Gama Digital

[Andrew Smith]

Thank you for the responses.

I just have been doing this method since reading about people grading with this as the starting point and also i realize I saw the Baselight colorists using Redlog as a starting point on the color grading course they offered last term “GRD201 The Craft of Color Grading”.

I am curious to get some consensus on what people grading across the map – TV, Web and Film – a best practices if you will. I understand its subjective and on a shot per shot basis but its something I have been curious about to get other persepctives.

Thank you for your feedback.
Andrew

[Joakim Ziegler]

We’ve been using mostly RedLogFilm for grading stuff that’s going out to film (and being graded through a film positive emulation LUT). When it comes to stuff that’s going mainly to DCP, ACES seems to be very promising, although it’s a bit beta still.

—
Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor