Welcome to my picture profiles and luts page! Hopefully this page becomes an awesome resource for you, your crew and your friends!
As you may know, being confident in a neutral and unsharpened picture profile and/or lut is very important for producing great-looking films. Picture profiles can give you a natural place to start your grading process or in some cases, even give you a great looking image straight out of the camera with no additional coloring needed in post. Picture profile tweaks and/or luts can even allow cameras manufactured by different brands to look very similar to one other or better yet, even match!
I’ve been shooting multicam stuff for years using different Canon, Panasonic, Nikon, Sony and Red cameras. Below you’ll find specific profile tweaks, preferred profiles and preferred LUTS I’ve either created or found through years of trial, error, testing and tweaking.
I encourage you to not only load these into your workflow but take the initiative to test and tweak for yourself. We don’t all have the same taste and it’s perfectly alright for you to tweak hues, saturation and/or white balance however you may please. Enjoy!
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SONY
Julien’s Sony Mirrorless Picture Profile – This is something I’ve been tweaking for a while now and I think I’ve finally come to what I think is the best possible in camera profile for Sony A7iii type cameras. My main focuses with this in camera profile is good skin tones, as much dynamic range as possible and good overall colors. Load this into your A7ii and let me know what you think. If you have a different Sony A series type camera, load it in and see what it renders. Tweak things up and down until you find a pleasing look for yourself.
Black Level -13
Gamma Cine4
Black Gamma Range middle
Black Gamma Level 0
Knee Mode Manual
Knee Manual Set Point 85% Slope 0
Color Mode S-Gamut3.Cine
Saturation +24
Color Phase +2
Color Depth R+2 G0 B+3 C0 M-3 Y0
Detail -7
SONY 10-bit cameras (FS7, F5, F55, FX9)
SLOG2/3 – If you’re an FS7 or other Sony 10-bit camera shooter I have to assume you know what slog 2 and 3 are. If you’re not already confident shooting in either one of these profiles this resource and others linked here should be able to get you up to speed. Over the years there has been an overwhelming amount of information on the topic of exposing, monitoring and grading these Sony log profiles. However, over the last year there have been significant findings through hours of determination and simple time spent that makes life in the slog world not only simple but better than ever before. It’s a great time to be a Sony slog shooter.
Phantom Luts by Joel Famularo have changed the game. Joel has worked tirelessly to produce a lut that feels like it shouldn’t exist. It’s a lut that basically transforms your Sony 10-bit (and even 8-bit but we’ll get there) camera into what feels like an Arri Alexa. He’s taken his Arri Amira and Sony FS7, shot countless side-by-sides across different environments and lighting conditions and applied some sort of post-color-magic-voodoo-sourcery and out came a set of luts. Phantom Luts.
If you use my name ‘Julien’ as a coupon code upon check out you’ll receive 20% off your purchase. Sweet deal.
It’s important to note that with Phantom Luts, you no longer need to rate your camera at a lower iso setting.
With all log shooting I highly recommend monitoring your lut on set to make sure you nail exposure and white balance. This is my favorite monitor.
Every episode we’ve shot and produced for Sennheiser’s PRO TALK Series Season 3 has been shot using FS7’s shooting slog2 and graded using the Phantom Luts. You can view them here.
SONY 8-bit cameras (A7 and A6000 series)
SLOG2 (PP7) – Just like the Sony’s 10-bit camera’s, Sony’s 8-bit cameras are right at home shooting slog2 and in-turn being graded using Phantom Luts.
If you haven’t already, read my thoughts on Phantom Luts in section above titled Sony 10-bit cameras, Sony SLOG 2/3.
I only ever recommend using slog2 and not slog3 when shooting on 8-bit cameras. This is because the slog3 curve is a bit more aggressive in the pushing of shadows.
Remember, with all log shooting I highly recommend monitoring your lut on set to make sure you nail exposure and white balance. For the A7 series camera’s, this is my favorite monitor.
Not only have I been using slog2 on A7sii for years but I have also been matching it almost identically to FS7. This is a big deal.
Julien’s SLOG2 TWEAK – After about a year of shooting the A7sii alongside the FS7, both capturing slog2, for Sennheiser’s PRO TALK Season 1, I knew the ins and outs of the cameras, their codecs and what it took in post to match them just about perfectly. The first step in matching the cameras in post was always the same.
To my eye, when shooting PP7 the A7sii’s blacks were always lifted and had a magenta hue compared to the FS7 which felt just about perfect and punchy. It was also less saturated. Finally, the A7sii suffers from an overall yellow/green cast.
As I said, we can adjust this in post but I thought if I could change these issues in camera, it would save me a step and bring the A7sii more towards FS7 level.
In my experience, older Sony A7 and A6000 series cameras can all benefit from this tweak.
Newer Sony A7 cameras with their latest color science (A7iii, A7riii, etc) can benefit from the PP7 but don’t need as much help in the white balance department. They do not suffer from the yellow/green hue issue as much. As always, I encourage you to test for yourself.
So I changed settings in PP7 to the following:
Black Gamma Middle -7
Knee 95% +5
Saturation +5
Color Phase -2
WB adjustments: A-B: B2 G-M: M0.75
As you can see, the tweak to PP7 on the A7sii is creating a more efficient workflow. The A7sii is looking more like the FS7 straight out of the camera. This allows for the same post color processing to be applied to both just like they’re identical cameras. However, it’s important to know that they aren’t the same camera and there will still be a few things here and there you’ll want to tweak in post but I’ve found this is as good as it gets and it’s really helped me.
Remember, with all log shooting I highly recommend monitoring your lut on set to make sure you nail exposure and white balance. For the A7 series camera’s, this is my favorite monitor.
Canon
CANON DSLR and Mirrorless
Prolost Flat by Stu Maschwitz
I’ve been using Prolost Flat for years on everything from Canon 6D, 5D mark iii, 1DC and 1DX mark ii. It produces the Canon colors we know and trust in a slightly flatter and unsharpened package. I’ve put it up against cinestyle and fake log profiles and it always comes out on top. It has as much dynamic range as anything and retains vital color information you’ll need in post.
I shot the following videos using Prolost Flat on the 1DX mark ii:
You can find the original Prolost Flat source and learn more here.
Panasonic
LUMIX GH5 and similar models
VLOGL – VLOGL is a go-to profile of mine if I know I need to match to a Red camera or other camera shooting in a log profile. It’s important to monitor a standard VLOG to Rec709 lut while shooting to make sure you nail exposure and white balance. In my opinion, the camera’s gamma assist doesn’t cut it.
I recommend the SmallHD Focus monitor.
If you want to see my VLOGL workflow, specifically matching it to Red, check out this video.
Julien’s Natural for GH5 – If I am not shooting VLOGL it’s usually because a client that I’m passing footage off to doesn’t know much about log or it’s because I want something as close to perfectly neutral as possible straight out of the camera. After a bit of testing and tweaking I came up with the following profile for GH5 and I am actually very pleased. In my opinion, for most shooting, it’s actually better than VLOGL and gives more accurate and natural-looking images.
Notes: If you want more a less noise reduction in-camera, tweak it.
I would keep sharpening all the way down always, the GH5 is still too sharp at -5.
I’m a proponent for keeping the saturation up in-camera. If you take it down in camera you don’t have it to work with in post. You can always take it down in post. I’ve learned that the hard way.
The highlight/shadow function is cool. In my testing, pulling the highlights down don’t do anything but pull high highlights down for more perceived dynamic range. Boosting shadows is a no-to. That will introduce unwanted noise.
There are two things to change for this profile setting:
LUMIX GH4 and similar models
Julien’s Standard for GH4 – Back in 2017, I was shooting a lot of stuff on GH4’s and a multi-cam shoot had come up where we had to shoot on three GH4’s, a Canon 1DC and a 1DX mark i. I was forced to dial in an in-camera profile to make matching the different cameras easier. To my surprise, it was easier than expected and I was able to set up the GH4’s to almost match perfectly in-camera!
The Canon’s were set to Prolost Flat (see above for Canon profiles) and the GH4’s were set using the following in-camera picture profile:
