ProResRAW S-Gamut3.cine LUT several levels underexposed in Highlights at ISO 12800

Thanks for your input, this really helps me a lot understanding everything better.

I tried a bit more with the normal S-Gamut3 LUT, and it appers to be good (the colorspace in S-Gamut3 is actually a bit bigger in the greens than with .cine), when I adjust the exposure to be the same with the cine LUT, it also basically looks the same. So a little bit of oversight here, so I'm thankful again for your input that pushed me to check again.

Basically I think the only problem really is that you are expecting that the S-Gamut3.Cine Lut should work and it doesn't, at least not with the ISO 12800 shot. As you say it makes the 12800 shot look incredibly dark. Just use the default S-Gamut3 Lut and all is fine. You still need to do a bit of grading in FCP but that is normal.

As you said, the problem just seems to be the LUT not working as expected. I'll probably create a bug report. In my opinion this should work, especially since it seems to be bound to ProRes RAW only, XAVCS-I works fine with this LUT.

One important thing. Your approach to dealing with what you are seeing as underexposure is incorrect. You should not push the highlights beyond 1000 Nits as in the scopes you provide. If the clips come into FCP with highlights above 1000, then pull it back so they are at 1000 max. If they are clipping, indicated by a flat line, there is nothing you can do. You need to make sure you don't clip when shooting.

I left the examples in the screenshots just as they were when after the LUT was applied. I honestly don't even know why the first one is so high. I'm always shooting with the exact same settings, and I always try to expose for the highlights (sometimes it's not possible, but usually it is). So when I determine the brightness, I make sure there is no highlight clipping and that's usually the point to which I am exposing and happy. I'd rather have an image slightly overexposed as long as it is not clipped. I was planning to go for 1000 Nits in the edit, since the Ninja V has a 1000 Nits screen and was my reference when shooting, so I more or less now: If I aim for 1000 Nits and get the LUT done properly, I'm at the starting point I was looking at when shooting.

Anyway, I downloaded the two clips and imported them into a Rec2020 HDR PQ Library as it is impossible to tell anything with the screenshots. The 640 clip is too glary to really say anything much about what was intended. Either Lut will work. The 12800 shot looks ok to me if left at the FCP automatic default S-Gamut3 Lut although it looks overexposed. I pulled it down using the Color Wheels so everything is sitting below 1000 Nits. The sky is clipped so there is nothing you can do about that but it grades up fine if you pull the shadows down and play around with the rest. It is way too blue so especially in the shadows and unfortunately there is no raw adjustment for you camera but you can use the wheels to warm it up.

Yeah these were probably not the best clips, but they worked to show you the point of the LUT not working as expected. The 640 clip is pretty much showing what it's supposed to show, it was just a lot of fog over a lava field in weird lighting conditions one morning. I agree on the 12800 clip. The sky in the first second is clipped, but isn't visible in the rest of the scene. This was exposed to the blues in the waterfall which sit a bit lower and aren't clipped (as I described my process of exposing above). The white balance is off, but as you already said fixable. On Iceland I shot almost everything in Auto WhiteBalance (usually a sin in my books), but conditions change so frequently, you can't keep up with all the adjustments you'd have to make. So I'd rather fix it in post which is "good enough". Shame that there is no RAW adjustment, especially since you can adjust ISO.

Thanks though for the tips, very grateful for them anyways, they give me some more confidence that I'm not completely on the wrong track. :)

Really there is nothing written in stone that says you have to use any particular Lut. Just use what works best.

True. I'd just would've liked to use the "correct" one beacuse of the slightly different color space. Realistically I probably won't notice it anyways, since it's just the greens.

Thanks for your input @joema.

Currently I'm only using a LG 40WP95X, which peaks at only 300nits (connected via Thunderbolt 4). The monitor is said to be calibrated from the factory, but checking it again properly is on my to-do list. I'm also looking to get an Apple Studio Display to replace my good, but non-HDR second monitor, mainly for the purpose of having an HDR monitor on the top as a reference monitor, and use the LG as a timeline monitor (as I intended it to be). Currently I'm just using it for HDR because it supports it, not because it's a great solution, even though except for peak brightness it's actually completely fine. That being said, are you satisfied with the Studio Display? I might just use my 32" Samsung as a third monitor then. It's still a great monitor, to good to sell, but having a nice HDR display for grading would be awesome as well!

Anyways, the color profile in the settings is called LG Ultrawide, I'm not sure if it was received from the monitor or if MacOS has a preset for this monitor. It get's the job done and from a different set of videos, the calibration seems to be pretty near perfect, at least from what I can tell by just looking at it and comparing it to the real life scene.

Overall I'm fine with the result I can get, I probably just assumed to get a perfect replica of the monitor preview when using the camera LUT. Which in hindsight wouldn't even make sense, since the FCP camera LUT is still different to the Sony LUT as well as the Ninja V PQ preview for example. What still stands is the issue with the 12800 ISO shots. Fixable, but annoying.

The fact that I only have firmware 10.62 installed is at least very annoying. I probably last updated it when I bought the A7SIII and I was activating ProResRAW. This would fit the timeline since I bought the camera in 02/2021.

I really should up my game to check for new firmware more often. My cameras are actually up to date, but thats probably because Sony doesn't release to many (big/important) updates after a year or so. The last notable was with the A7SIII getting S-Cinetone.

But it's good to know that there is actually white balance control with newer updates. And funnily enough, just today I got the same mail on two accounts that the Ninja V firmware is now able to update to version 11. So this time I wouldn't even have missed it without your help.

Thanks again for the input, I really appreciate it!

Here is an image from the Project Settings (however i noticed that even in preview this occurs, so it has nothing to do with the project settings) - and before I forget it: I'm working with an HDR monitor and the preview is set to HDR Tonemapping, so this should also work.

For ProRes (RAW), Final Cut seems to just pick the "correct" LUT based on the informatin in the files, for my normal clips from the camera I have to choose the LUT manually. That's what I meant with automatically.

Here is an image shot at 640 ISO with the wrong LUT:

Here is the same file with the correct LUT applied:

Here is a file shot with 12800 ISO with the wrong LUT, notice the image quality in the greens e.g. (don't know if it comes through though, but there is a reduced quality there) :

And finally: The same vidoe file with the correct LUT applied:

As I said, in theory, the final image should be a bit brighter and correct exposed with the .cine LUT, same as it did with the first example at ISO 640.

The two clips shown in this example are available as a 1-second clip to download with this link.

Also: This problem is only affecting ProResRAW files. The same videos but with files straight out of my camera do not have these issue and behave correctly when I select the LUT.

There was very little info back in 2020 on how to grade in HDR in FCP. It has advanced a lot since then. I learnt by trial and error really. I guess it's the best way - make all the mistakes possible and you don't forget them.

Pretty much like the ProRes RAW workflow in Premiere Pro. There is a good reason why after years of trying I gave up. It's impossible to figure out properly since it's such a nieche to work with ProRes RAW and export to HDR at the same time. Since my Iceland Project is only personal but still already at least 12 months overdue I finally switched to Final Cut (and therefore to a Mac). Final Cut is a lot more user friendly, and I was convinced I made the right choice after just a day.

Thanks again!

Also they have made the update process quite complicated compared to what it used to be. I did get the firmware update for Nikon cameras which allows modifiying the white balance and ISO in FCP which is pretty essential. There was also a feature added that allows timelapse recording with output to ProRes Raw which is really useful.

The only free one just updates the interface with no new features. I'm not going to bother paying for an update as I can record ProRes Raw and HEVC internally now in my cameras anyway.

Updating went as I remembered it for me: Download the zip file, copy the file inside to the SSD, plug it into the device and turn it on. Seemed pretty easy to me. Anyways, having Timelapse output to ProResRAW is actually something I might want to look into. I'm currently on the go, but I wanted to take a deeper dive into my issues here next weekend anyways, so maybe I can try around a bit.

The new interface is nice, but they removed the power off option under power where you had to hold the button on screen for a few seconds, and I can now for the life of me not find a way to power it down without a forced shutdown haha. Other than that it's the same for me. I'm happy with the internal recording and ProRes RAW on the Ninja, so no need for the paid update. However I think it's worth noting that they still offer new features for the original Ninja V, which by now is already a few years old. Might as well just throw it under the bus with the newest update and keep it at 10.x But there is probably to big of a usergroup with the Ninja V, that has no instentive to switch to V+ or Ultra.