in this video i'm going to share my workflow on how to color grade with phantom luts
to get even more dynamic range from cameras like the sony a7 s3 the fx3 and a7iv
what's up youtube jacques crafford here with another exciting tutorial what i mean by more
dynamic range is that a lot of users simply apply the light and then do a few tweaks to
white balance and contrast in some cases this is actually enough but more often than not you will
find that just applying the lut at 100% will give you blown out highlights you're unable to bring
back by simply dropping a slider to me this is such a waste because you can always squeeze
out more performance from your camera if you're willing to take that extra step what i'm going to
teach you is how to maximize on dynamic range with a simple tool included in all video editors from
davinci resolve to premiere pro and final cut if you're still wondering how to expose for phantom
lights with s-log 3 i made a dedicated video about it you can watch over here now let's jump in
alright so here we are in davinci resolve i'm going to show you a few before and afters and
if you are using premiere pro or final cut don't sweat because you still will be able to follow
along as it's pretty much the same principles and the first example i'm just going to focus on
a basic lut conversion and how easy it is when you actually nail your settings in camera okay so this
is actually a shot where i didn't overexpose like i said you have the option to overexpose to get
more dynamic range but in this case i actually just got the right exposure and this is what you
want to do if you want that fast workflow and you don't really want to do too much grading
but you still want that beautiful dynamic range so we're going to go into the color tab over here
and we'll create a new node just so that you can see that we're starting from scratch i'll open
my waveform and the first step is really simple i'm going to do a lut conversion a lot of people
prefer not to use luts at all but actually i use lights a lot especially like i mentioned those
faster turnarounds and generally just if it gives me a nice look so i really love these phantom
lights by joel familaro i'm going to use the ari neutral look that is the light at a hundred
percent and i'm already like wow is this image this image is ready to go it's really really good
i can tweak it a little bit more if i wish but if i had to export this image i would be happy with
it and that's just because i nailed the exposure in camera and the white balance is pretty much on
the money there's a slight cost i can see there's a little bit of lack of red in the blacks over
here if you look at the blacks so i can fix that by just pushing the red up a little bit and then
i could check myself on the skin tones i'll create a new node on that and just to make sure the white
balance is correct and the vector scope is telling me that it's on the money it's exactly on the line
so that tells me that i did the white balance correct in camera and then i'll just quickly do
some softening over here this is for me similar to like a mist filter it just adds a nice softer look
to it nice soft to soften the skin and i really like this look i mean you saw how quick that was
and this is what i love about exposing correctly and not having to fuss about it afterwards okay
next example is a little bit more advanced and that's because we actually overexposed the shot
so i'm just going to share my workflow in in how i do this when i do the overexposing
and just see how we actually get a little bit more dynamic range and get some of the highlights back
okay so we're going to start over here i'm actually not going to do the entire thing
from scratch what i will do is break it down step by step so i'm going to disable all the nodes in
davinci and i'm just going to leave this is my lot conversion i never do it in the beginning i have
to do some changes before that and i'll explain that now so as you can see the only thing i'm
doing here is the gel for meloru lut nothing else and it's at 100 so if you do before after
beautiful i love this look but it's not 100 there yet for me it's too punchy so what i want to do
here is just bring the extremes down in this case the extremes are these highlights at the back okay
and i'm gonna do that by actually qualifying it so i did it with a qualifier this is probably the
thing i use the most when doing stuff in slog3 and dynamic range i make sure that i select the
entire hue spectrum all the saturation and i just play with the luminance okay and if i select it
over here there we can see okay i'm basically selecting the extremes based on luminosity
if i drag it down you can see how i'm slowly starting to select more thing it's selecting
basically everything within the full color range at a certain luminosity okay i can undo that
and this is more or less where i want it i put a slight feather to it over there so it's nice and
smooth and basically i just dropped the highlights over there you can see how it's actually going up
and then if i go back like this and disable it there you can see it just really softens
out the background that's kind of distracting it just gives us that nice dynamic range look
and then the reason i did this before the actual light conversion is just because when you disable
the light you can see if i go before after it's making the change before any clipping can happen
if we were to do it afterwards if there was a lot of clipping happening over here and we do this
afterwards we're actually not working with the same information anymore so it's always better
to do your extremes in the beginning before you actually do the light conversion the cool thing
about davinci is that you can actually see how it looks even after the light is applied
next again we're doing white balance over here i like to do it before my light conversion and in
this case there's barely anything happening you might not even be able to see it with your eyes
but if i do a before and after before after before after there's a slight change happening here
it's just some minor tweaks that i did mainly focusing on skin tones using the vector scope
next i'll focus on the overall exposure of the image in this case because i overexposed i have
to bring down the highlights and the midtones that's the before that's the after you can see
i brought down the highlights over there and in this case the shadows are barely changing
and that's because i'm not touching the shadows and that's how we get a little bit more dynamic
range in the lows then one more final touch over here is i'm just going to qualify the skin tone
you can see the selection i'm going to explain that now but just look at the before and after
before after i really really like that before after again it's just softening the skin and
just making the exposure a little bit more even and more in line of where i want it if we look
on the waveform there's a very subtle drop over there and the way i did that was by qualifying
the skin tone that's the first thing using the qualification tool i use this all the time
i'm not going to do the entire selection but as you can see i can play around with the skin tone
until i find the perfect selection and then what i can also do is i actually am using a slide mask
over here and that's just to make sure that i'm not including anything else in the shot like that
i just wanted to focus on the face and that's also something you can do in all your other editors and
then a slight drop in the highlights there we can see a slight drop in the highlights and a little
bit in the midtones again nothing in the shadows and before after i just really like that look
and the rest i'm just leaving open i don't have to do anything else but i like to leave my notes open
if i needed to do some kind of a noise reduction i can do that in the end some people prefer to
do it in the beginning that's open for debate this is a really clean image and yeah i really
like what i'm able to accomplish with just a few tweaks next this is probably one of my favorite
examples main reason is just because of that exceptional dynamic range we're getting here
it really blows my mind that sony cameras are able to do this and this is the reason i'm shooting in
slog3 so i'm gonna break it down again not gonna do it from scratch it's gonna take too long but we
will disable all the nodes and start just with the light now if i disable the light enable the light
you'll see something interesting happening over here look at the sky over there okay this is the
after before after before after the sky is barely changing okay and this is where the big change
comes in compared to the previous example so i'm going to disable this [ __ ] and just use a random
node because a lot of people will just do this i'm actually going to use another one i'm going
to use the utopia lut from from joel formularo and now as you can see look how blown out the skies
over there okay this is way too much and this is an example of extremes even based on a previous
example of extremes this is way more extreme okay and this is where i'm doing something different
okay if we go back to our light selection over here we're gonna use the qualifier tool
okay again like the previous example doing the full u range the full saturation range and then
only working with the luminosity value if i select it you can see this entire part is not being used
and i'm actually applying the lut that means the lights only being applied to this part of
the image okay only based on luminosity values if i drag it around you should be able to see
there we go and this is where you have to be really careful you have to be careful to do this
right because it will not work in every scenario because you might end up with a halo effect okay
now after doing this i have to do something to the sky okay because this is super planned so
in this case i did the same effect but instead of applying the lut i just did some adjustments
so here we can see i'm just selecting the sky everything all the u all the saturation but just
some of the luminosity again now i'm focusing on the highlights if i drag into the lows you can see
how i'm starting to select more of the image but i'm not going to do that and in this case
i am just adding saturation i didn't even even bring the highlights down because this is really
actually clipping it's already too much to bring down but by just adding a little bit of saturation
it just makes it look a lot more natural and then i want to fix the white balance now i'm not going
to do it a hundred percent because i still like the look but basically this lut ari utopia if we
go to the gel familaro there we go it definitely has a green tint to it but also there's a lot of
green in the mountains it's bouncing everywhere and then last but not least i did use an nd filter
and the one i used in this example does have a slight green tint to it so i just i have to
fix that okay i'm not going to do the full breakdown here we can see that's the after
before after i love this this is a really good image and makes a big difference again i'm not
saying the green is wrong if you want to go for that that's fine as long as your skin tone is is
more natural in this case it's too green so there we go that's a bit more of a natural skin tone
okay the way i did that was actually utilizing the vectorscope this is a really nice method
to quickly do white balance in this case if i do the before and after you can see i'm just
bringing that into the center and that's again that's already that's making a big difference
because it's where the midtones lie so by just bringing this thing into the center you just play
around with the wheel over here there's the after just like that until you find it in the center
and that's pretty simple and if we enable again you can see there we go and then the next step
is just the exposure value just basically bringing down a little bit more just adding some punch to
it because i don't want it to look too dynamic i still do want to drop the the shadows a little bit
if i look at the waveform over here you can see i did a drop over here and it's
everything's happening over there i didn't touch the highlights and i didn't touch the midtones i
basically just dropped the shadows and looking at this it just looks a little bit more natural
you don't want to have your image looking too hdr in this case just dropping the shadows a
little bit down gives it a little bit more natural look using the hsl qualifier on separate nodes or
layers can really help you isolate key areas to bring down and preserve highlights or even shadows
for that matter you can take it a step further with masking but i'll leave that for another
tutorial if you have any more questions drop it in the comments below and i'll do my best to answer
thanks so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one