Log profile

A log profile, or logarithmic profile, is a shooting profile, or gamma curve, found on some digital video cameras that gives a wide dynamic and tonal range, allowing more latitude to apply colour and style choices. The resulting image appears washed out, requiring color grading in post-production, but retains shadow and highlight detail that would otherwise be lost if a regular linear profile had been used that clipped shadow and highlight detail. The feature is mostly used in filmmaking and videography.

History

Main article: Cineon

Log profile initially derived from Cineon film scanner, developed by Kodak in early 1990s, which uses logarithmic gamma encoding to utilize higher color bit depth (i.e. 16-bit) linear image sensor, to reproduce characteristics of negative film image. In early times of digital cinematography, professional video cameras were only capable to capture linear sensor image up to 10-bit color depth even in HDCAM-SR format, but resulted in "video-look" compared with film stock cinematography even in the same 24 frames per second and shutter speeds.

The log gamma profile began gaining industrial popularity since 2005, when Arri released Arriflex D-20 which provided original Log-C gamma through HD-SDI video output, and in 2008, Sony released CineAlta F35 camera (and its 2005 Panavision Genesis sibling) with S-Log video recording on HDCAM-SR tape. Those camera releases boosted digital cinematography deployment.

For consumer and prosumer cameras, Canon released Cinema EOS C300, which provided Canon Log video recording function, and Sony released S-Log2 profile on its Alpha 7II digital still camera, allowing low budget filmmakers to produce film-like motion pictures.

Proprietary log profiles on various cameras

  • Log-C on Arri digital cameras, based on Cineon log gamma (including Log-C3 and Log-C4, not to be confused with Canon Log)
  • C-Log or Canon Log on Canon cameras[1] (including C-Log2 and C-Log3)
  • D-Log on DJI UAV cameras[2]
  • F-Log on Fujifilm cameras[3]
  • N-Log on Nikon cameras[4]
  • REDlogFilm on RED cameras[5]
  • S-Log on Sony cameras[6] (including S-Log2 and S-Log3)[7]
  • V-Log on Panasonic cameras (including Panasonic, Panavision and Lumix cameras).

See also

References

  1. ^ UK,www.canon.co.uk, Canon. "Canon Log Gamma". www.canon.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  2. ^ "How to shoot Log video using DJI's D-Log color profile". DPReview. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  3. ^ "LUT for F-Log (Look Up Table)". www.fujifilm.com. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  4. ^ "Nikon introduces the new Nikon Z mount system, and releases two full-frame mirrorless cameras: the Nikon Z 7 and Nikon Z 6". www.nikon.com. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  5. ^ "Understanding REDLOGFILM and REDGAMMA". www.red.com. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
  6. ^ "S-Log". pro.sony. Retrieved 2018-10-07.
  7. ^ "What is S-Log?". www.sony.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-10-07.

External links