- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson with whoismatt.com.
And today I want to share with you how to quickly
and easily film with the SLOG3 picture profile
in your Sony camera.
So if you're a run-and-gun filmmaker like me,
that films weddings or documentaries
where you don't have full control over your lighting
and you don't have time to use something like a gray card,
this video will show you how to get great exposure
very fast.
To save you time though
and to make this picture profile super easy to film with,
I've actually created a set of video presets
called WhoisMatt LUTs,
that I've created
and tested specifically to work with SLOG3.
I will link to those LUTs down in the video description.
I also want you to know
that I'm working on an easy color grading tutorial
specifically for SLOG3,
so please subscribe if you wanna see that soon.
Getting started now,
first off we need to answer the question,
can your camera handle filming in SLOG3?
Because this is important.
Even if your camera shows SLOG3 as an option in the menus,
that doesn't necessarily mean
that it's capable of properly recording
with the picture profile.
In short, if you're using one of Sony's newer cameras,
like the a7S III, FX3, FX6, a1, et cetera.
Basically any Sony camera that's capable
of recording video in 10-bit,
your camera can handle SLOG3.
But if you're filming with an older Sony camera,
like the a7 III, a6600, a6500, a6400, et cetera,
I would not recommend SLOG3.
And I actually have a different picture profile
that I would recommend for you.
I will link to my video about that picture profile
in the corner and down in the video description.
Now that you know your camera
is capable of recording in SLOG3 properly,
let's dive into the nitty gritty of this picture profile.
Grab your Sony camera,
in my case, I'm using the a7S III,
navigate to the picture profile menu,
and the first thing you should do is make sure
that your camera is set to PP8,
and that for gamma it says SLOG3,
and the color mode says S-Gamut3.Cine.
If it doesn't say that, scroll down to the bottom
to the option that says reset,
and reset PP8 to its default settings.
I would highly recommend filming with PP8.
But if you've scrolled around in the picture profile menu
you'll notice that PP9 also says SLOG3,
with the only difference being the color mode says S-Gamut3
instead of S-Gamut3.Cine.
Well, there's not a huge difference
between these two picture profiles.
It's going to be easier for you
to color grade footage filled with S-Gamut3.Cine.
So that's why I would recommend PP8 instead of PP9.
Moving on, let's talk exposure.
One of the biggest complaints
that I've heard from filmmakers over the years
is that SLOG3 is a noisy picture profile.
Filmmakers will record footage in SLOG3,
but when they color grade it, the image looks really noisy.
Almost like the camera is at a high ISO,
even if the ISO is set quite low.
If this has happened to you,
the reason you're seeing this noise even at low ISOs
is because you have not exposed SLOG3 properly.
Unlike a standard picture profile
that already has saturation and contrast baked in,
SLOG3 is a log picture profile, meaning that it's flat,
and you're going to need to add that contrast
and saturation later, whenever you color grade.
So how do you expose SLOG3 so you don't get a noisy image?
Well, this may seem a bit counterintuitive,
but you actually want to overexpose your footage
when filming.
Then when you color grade,
you bring the footage exposure back down
when you add contrast and saturation.
The reason many filmmakers are seeing noise
with their SLOG3 footage
is that they're doing the opposite of this.
They're filming their footage too dark,
and then bring up the exposure
which is going to introduce noise to the image.
Going back to your camera now,
looking at the bottom of the screen
you're going to see your shutter speed, lens aperture,
and the letters mm, and a number.
In my case, it says 0.0.
This mm, stands for multi metering,
and it tells you how bright the image is
that your camera is recording.
If your camera doesn't say mm here,
open the menu and go to exposure/color,
metering, and set your metering mode to multi.
With a traditional camera picture profile,
you would want your camera's metering number next to mm
to read 0.0, which means the image it is recording
isn't over or underexposed.
If your camera says -1.0,
it means that it is one stop underexposed.
If it reads +1.0, it means it's one stop overexposed.
But remember, we're shooting in SLOG3,
and you need to overexpose it
to make sure it's properly recording.
So you're actually going to want your camera's metering
to read between 1.7 and 2.0 stops over.
This is going to look bright, but I promise you
this is how your SLOG3 footage will look it's best.
Also be careful because when I say 1.7 to two stops over,
you're going to wanna make sure
that that two isn't blinking.
If it's blinking, that means that it's over two stops,
and that's a bad thing because it's too bright.
Now to help you out with exposure
and make sure you aren't overexposing your footage,
I would highly recommend using zebras,
and not the African animal,
I'm referring to the zebras setting of your camera.
Zebras will tell you if your footage is overexposed
by putting these nice black and white lines
that kind of look like zebra stripes
on the overexposed parts of your image.
You will need to calibrate these zebra stripes
to work properly with your SLOG3 footage though.
Incidentally, if you've watched my Sony camera menu
and custom buttons set up videos,
and downloaded my Sony presets
you already have your zebra set up for SLOG3.
If you haven't watched those yet,
I will link to them up in the corner
and down in the video description.
In case you haven't downloaded those settings though,
here's how to set up your zebras properly.
Go into your camera's menu,
go to exposure/color, zebra display,
and for zebra level,
you're going to want to go down to C2,
so you can set a custom zebra level.
Press right and select lower limit,
then press right again and change the number to 94+.
Next make sure zebra display in the is turned on.
And as you start to bring up the exposure of your camera,
either by changing your aperture or ISO,
you're going to notice zebra lines
appearing on the overexposed parts of your footage,
because you set your zebra level to 94+,
that number matches up with the maximum brightness
the SLOG3 footage can handle before it clips the highlights,
overexposes them, and they cannot be recovered.
So as you're filming with your camera,
I would first look at your metering
and make sure it's between 1.7 and two stops over.
And then I would look for any zebras
to appear on the screen.
If they show up, that could be an issue,
but it really comes down to what you're filming.
If you're filming a person standing in front of the sunset,
and you have the super bright sun and clouds behind them,
you will probably see some zebras in the background,
and that's okay.
But if you're seeing zebras on the person's skin,
that means that your footage is definitely too bright
and your exposure needs to be darker.
I would highly recommend filming some test shots
with people lit by different light sources,
as you gain experience with watching your metering
and zebras, you should get a good idea
of how the camera is exposing and what looks good.
All right, you've got your metering set up,
and your zebras,
the second to last thing we need to talk about is ISO.
If you turn your ISO up, your footage gets brighter.
If you turn it down, it gets darker.
But there are two very important things to keep in mind
when it comes to your ISO and SLOG3.
Looking at the ISO menu of my a7S III,
you'll see that I can actually set my ISO
all the way down to 160,
but all of these ISOs from 160 to 500
have lines on the top and bottom of the numbers.
But when we get to ISO 640, those lines go away.
This is because for the a7S III,
and its cinema camera variant, the FX3,
whenever you're recording in SLOG3,
the recommended base ISO is 640.
This ISO 640 is the ISO that Sony recommends
if you want to maximize the dynamic range
and footage quality that you're getting from the camera.
As I just showed, though, you can go lower if you want to
down to 160,
but you're going to have two issues once you go below 640.
The first issue is going to be very obvious.
Here's my camera, I'm filming at ISO 640,
with the zebras showing where the image is overexposed.
Drop the ISO to 500 now, and you see the issue?
The zebras are gone.
Yes, if you set your camera below the minimum base ISO,
zebras will no longer work,
and the camera will not be able to tell you
which parts of the image are overexposed.
This is a huge bummer, but not the only one.
The second issue, which is harder to see when filming,
but arguably worse, is that if you drop your ISO
below the base ISO of 640,
the camera's going to start to electronically clip
the highlights of your footage at a lower level.
Here's a clip filmed in SLOG3 at 640 ISO,
where I lowered the exposure from F4 to F8,
and then brought the exposure back up to the proper level
by lowering my shutter speed.
Notice the histogram on the lower right,
indicating that the camera is only starting to overexpose
once the zebras start to appear at 94 IRE,
and the camera's metering says it is overexposed
by more than two stops.
Now, when I do the same thing,
but I instead drop the ISO from 640 to 160,
and then bring down the shutter speed again,
the histogram on the bottom right
now starts to clip the highlights at a much lower level,
leading to the footage losing a ton of dynamic range
and completely destroying the image.
Strangely though, the camera's metering
still only reads 1.7 to 2.0 stops over,
even though the highlights are completely clipped.
So in short, if you drop your ISO below the base ISO of 640,
you will not have zebras,
and the camera's metering will no longer be accurate.
Meaning I would never recommend filming
with your camera below the base ISO.
Adjust your aperture, your shutter speed,
and consider investing in an indie filter
before dropping your ISO.
Got it?
Okay, we've covered minimum ISO
but we aren't quite done talking about ISOs yet.
If you have an a7S III, FX3, or FX6,
this is going to be important for you,
because we need to talk about higher ISOs
with these cameras.
See, these cameras all share roughly the same sensor.
And when you're recording in SLOG3,
there are some ISOs that I would recommend avoiding
if you want your footage to look its best.
Remember how I said earlier that one of the main complaints
filmmakers have about SLOG3 is that it can be noisy,
I said that usually isn't due to ISO,
but I do want you to be aware
that ISO can sometimes be the culprit.
See, this camera sensor shared by these three cameras
has what is known as a dual native ISO.
This means there are two ISOs
where the camera will look its best
and give you the best quality footage.
This dual native ISO will change
depending on the picture profile you're filming with,
but in the case of SLOG3,
these ISOs are ISO 640 and ISO 12800.
We've already discussed ISO 640,
but ISO 12800 is super important too,
because while it is a relatively high ISO,
it is also incredibly clean with virtually zero grain.
Here's my a7S III, with the ISO at 2500, cranking it up,
and as you'll see, it's getting brighter but also noisier.
Here at ISO 10000, it's the noisiest.
But wait a second, switch it to ISO 12800, and bang!
The footage is clean and doesn't have any noise.
So as a final rule of thumb,
I would recommend avoiding some of the noisier ISOs
when shooting in SLOG3,
namely ISO 6400 to 10000.
If you're shooting at ISO 5000
and you need to brighten things up a bit,
skip a few ISOs and go up to 12800
so your image will be cleaner.
Now we have one last thing to talk about,
and this is a tool that will really help you
when it comes to properly white balancing
your SLOG3 footage.
Open your camera's menu, go to setup, display option,
turn gamma display assist type to auto, if it isn't already,
and then turn gamma display assist on.
When you're filming in SLOG3,
your camera will now show you a preview that adds contrast
and saturation to your footage,
and shows you what SLOG3 will look like
after you've color graded it.
To be clear, this is just a preview,
your recorded footage will still be flattened to saturated.
But if you want to see how it will look,
this is a fantastic feature.
Gamma display assist
is also going to be super helpful to you
when you're setting your camera's white balance.
Because SLOG3 is so desaturated,
it can be difficult to tell
if your white balance is set properly,
especially if you were filming in a mixed lighting scenario
like a wedding or other run-and-gun documentary style event.
I have gamma display assist
set to a custom button on my camera.
So with a simple button press I can enable it
to increase the saturation of my footage
and make sure my colors aren't looking too warm or too cool.
You can watch my a7S III setup videos
to see how to set up this custom button yourself,
or you can save time and download my a7S III setup preset,
which will give you all of my settings immediately,
all into that preset file and my setup videos below.
All right, and that is how to film in SLOG3
quickly and easily.
I will also link down below to my SLOG3 color presets,
if you wanna check those out.
If you combine those presets
with these settings that we've talked about,
your footage is gonna look awesome.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.