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I hope this is the correct forum for my question. I'm using a Panasonic GH5 with V-log L. I'm a bit confused on using V-log L. I was told that the reason for using log in general is to save the highlights (especially the sky in outdoor shoots). But in most forums, they are advising to over expose the shot to get rid of the noise in the shadows. But doing this blows out the skies. Therefore, I think there is no sense in shooting with log. Just shoot with a standard profile and light the scene correctly as v-log can't save both highlights and and shadows at the same time. The problem is, it's not easy to do this when shooting outdoors run and gun in the morning when the sky is in the shot. Am I thinking correctly or am I missing something? Thanks! God bless!

I recently posted this to lighting then realized this may be a better place to pose the question. I'm new to the forum and can't figure out how to delete posts so I apologize for any repetition. Anyways, I recently shot a music video and have run into a bit of an issue with the highlights. One of the hero props on this one was a set of floating, glowing orbs a la John Carpenters "Starman". The characters had them in most scenes. Images attached. I was shooting on a Sony F5 with the Raw recorder. We also had proxies at XAVC 2k going to SXS cards. I rated the camera at 1250 most of the time to lessen noise, but when dealing with extreme highlights went to 2000 to have the most headroom. No LUTS were baked in, and I shot S-LOG2 Both the proxies and the RAW recordings have this issue. It shows up in Sony RAW Viewer and in Premiere CC. It shows up when looking at the RAWs and the SXS XAVC proxies. We decided early on to fly an actual LED light source on strings and do our best to hide the wires (which were also powering the orbs) It turned out great and we were ecstatic on set. Being able to key light with a moving source that was also a prop was amazing. However, when looking closer at the captured footage we found that the banding and pixelation around the orbs was terrible, especially when pushing the exposure towards the dark end. Quick movement seems to accentuate the issue. The odd thing is that the frames themselves seem fine, only when playing back do they look odd. The paused frames are clean of banding and posterization. I figured with 16BIT RAW we would be fine. It was obvious we were clipping the highlights. We tried to do so whenever possible to avoid too much compositing. Most modern digital cinema cameras aren't film....but highlight roll of is quite decent nowadays. What I wasn't expecting was terrible banding and posterization. Here is a clip (prores export, not de-squeezed, Slog) that shows the worst of it. It happens a lot. You have to watch in HD to notice the issue. https://youtu.be/vbKAWkfgCA8 Notice the posterization on the orb as it descends and on his face as it crosses around his back. We had planned to composite a VFX orb over some of the blown white highlights anyways. So, I would imagine that smoothing the banding in post might be an option, but it even shows up on hands and faces that get too close to the clipped highlights, as seen in this clip. I have no idea how to fix this issue. Is it something debearing or reincoding may fix or am I just out of luck? Im no expert, but I assumed the camera would be able to handle some blown highlights. After all, clipping windows, little hot spots, and clouds can look fine on this camera in my experience. All of my research pointed to the ability to wrangle down highlights in post. If anyone has any helpful words it would be most appreciated. Im not the most tech savvy at this point in my career, and even if this project is unfortunately hurt by this issue I would love to know why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Or if anyone has any pointers towards a fix/workaround. My hope is that is an issue with post processing and not something that the raw recorder or F5 did internally...Like I said, the frames themselves are clear of the issue, it is only when you hit play that the digital garbage appears. Thanks so much for your time!

Hello everyone. I recently shot a music video and have run into a bit of an issue with the highlights. One of the hero props on this one was a set of floating, glowing orbs a la John Carpenters "Starman". The characters had them in most scenes. Images attached. I was shooting on a Sony F5 with the Raw recorder. We also had proxies at XAVC 2k going to SXS cards. I rated the camera at 1250 most of the time to lessen noise, but when dealing with extreme highlights went to 2000 to have the most headroom. No LUTS were baked in, and I shot S-LOG2 Both the proxies and the RAW recordings have this issue. It shows up in Sony RAW Viewer and in Premiere CC. It shows up when looking at the RAWs and the SXS XAVC proxies. We decided early on to fly an actual LED light source on strings and do our best to hide the wires (which were also powering the orbs) It turned out great and we were ecstatic on set. Being able to key light with a moving source that was also a prop was amazing. However, when looking closer at the captured footage we found that the banding and pixelation around the orbs was terrible, especially when pushing the exposure towards the dark end. Quick movement seems to accentuate the issue. The odd thing is that the frames themselves seem fine, only when playing back do they look odd. The paused frames are clean of banding and posterization. I figured with 16BIT RAW we would be fine. It was obvious we were clipping the highlights. We tried to do so whenever possible to avoid too much compositing. Most modern digital cinema cameras aren't film....but highlight roll of is quite decent nowadays. What I wasn't expecting was terrible banding and posterization. Here is a clip (prores export, not de-squeezed, Slog) that shows the worst of it. It happens a lot. You have to watch in HD to notice the issue. https://youtu.be/vbKAWkfgCA8 Notice the posterization on the orb as it descends and on his face as it crosses around his back. We had planned to composite a VFX orb over some of the blown white highlights anyways. So, I would imagine that smoothing the banding in post might be an option, but it even shows up on hands and faces that get too close to the clipped highlights, as seen in this clip. I have no idea how to fix this issue. Is it something debearing or reincoding may fix or am I just out of luck? Im no expert, but I assumed the camera would be able to handle some blown highlights. After all, clipping windows, little hot spots, and clouds can look fine on this camera in my experience. All of my research pointed to the ability to wrangle down highlights in post. If anyone has any helpful words it would be most appreciated. Im not the most tech savvy at this point in my career, and even if this project is unfortunately hurt by this issue I would love to know why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Or if anyone has any pointers towards a fix/workaround. My hope is that is an issue with post processing and not something that the raw recorder or F5 did internally...Like I said, the frames themselves are clear of the issue, it is only when you hit play that the digital garbage appears. Thanks so much for your time!

I'll be shooting soon a short film (as DP), and I only have a small amount of choices in term of which camera I can use. I was wondering if anyone has personal experience to share as for how these cameras work in a low key light system, which of these cameras render the black at the best, with which one we can play with sort of gamma settings so as we can get a good latitude? I also have the opportunity to work with Panasonic AF101, but I don't like codec so much beside the fact it crashes the highlights very quickly and can't go beyond 2 stops 2 stops and a half in the blacks, so I was wondering if actually opt to shot with a DSLR. Any ideas? What about how each of them react in a low light situation, if I have to compare these cameras? CANON 5D Mark3 SONY A7s AF101 thank you so much!

Saw this today and noticed a lot of clipping in the highlights. Anyone have similar experiences?...