Custom Picture / Canon Log setting when shooting RAW in R5 and R5C

[pedz]

A YouTube video enlightened me on "Picture Mode" when shooting RAW still images. It does not affect the image stored but it does affect how the view screen displays the image. The first part I knew, the second part I had never thought about.

Now we come to the same question, I think, for videos. Both the R5 and the R5C can shoot RAW videos. But they still have either "Custom Picture" in the case of the R5C or similar options such as "Canon Log" submenu with the R5. "But I'm shooting RAW", I say to myself. Why is the camera giving me these choices?

With the R5C, I shot two short clips, both in 8K RAW. One with CP set to CP1 which is BT.709 / Wide DR and the other with CP2 which is Canon Log 3 / Cinema Gammet. Viewing the clips with the camera, the two clips looked different. Changing the CP mode after the fact did not affect things. When I import them into Premiere Pro, both show up exactly the same. Selecting a clip in the source monitor, picking Effect Controls, under Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings, the color space and Gamma of both clips showed up as Cinema Gamet / Canon Log 2. So, if the metadata is different between the two clips, Premiere Pro doesn't see it.

I set the Color Space and Gamma in the Premiere Pro Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings panel to BT.709 / Wide DR and put both clips side by side in a sequence and I can't tell them apart.

So, I'm concluding that what the YouTube video said about RAW format for still images basically is valid for RAW format for video files. When shooting RAW, what is recorded on the card is not affected by the "Custom Picture" setting. Does anyone want to confirm this or perhaps you have a counter example?

[AtticusLake]

EDIT: this has been a learning experience for me!  Thanks for prompting this.

RAW may not be entirely what you think it is.  RAW bypasses some of the processing that a camera would normally do; but not all.  Actually, pretty much everything -- except that RAW data is usually compressed by the camera.

The main benefit is that it doesn't do de-bayering.  De-bayering sucks, because it turns each photosite (one integer value) into a pixel (three integer values), essentially by interpolation.  So the detail you get is fake -- it's interpolated -- but you now have three times the data.  To compensate, they reduce the bit depth, say to 10 bits.  In RAW, you get the raw photosite values, which is one third of the number of values, so they can be bigger, like 12 bits.  This is the big benefit of RAW -- 12 bit values.

Everything else in this post was wrong.  If they had strikethrough I would use it.   Anyhooo...

[AtticusLake]

UPDATE: I found the "Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings panel"!  It was not obvious to me that there was an effect controls panel for the source monitor; normally effect controls only apply to clips in the timeline / program monitor.  Anyhow...

It looks like you're perfectly correct; the settings in the "Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings" panel determine, after the fact, how the RAW data is treated by Premiere Pro. I wasn't seeing this because I always shoot Log, and by default Premiere treats the RAW from the R5C as Log 2. So applying my normal de-log LUT in an adjustment layer worked.

So your premise is correct; in RAW shooting, at least as far as Log goes, what you record is not affected by the picture profile. There might be some things in the picture profile that have an effect, but I don't know what.

And it looks like the "Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings" panel can be used to get the RAW footage directly into whatever colour space you want, like straight to REC 709, for example. However, I don't think I'll be using this feature.

The thing is that if you set your RAW footage to be treated as Log, then in your timeline, you can apply a Lumetri effect to adjust the exposure while the data is still in the Log domain. Then, add an adjustment layer with another Lumetri effect, with a LUT added in the "Basic Correction" setting, to convert to 709. That way you can do radical exposure corrections without clipping, because the correction is done BEFORE the 709 conversion, while the data is still log.

And yes, you CAN add a Lumetri effect to the source clip. But it seems that it's then happening AFTER you choose 709 (need to check this). Plus, doing it in the timeline makes everything clear and explicit, which I like.

[AtticusLake]

Nope, looks like I was wrong about that last bit too... if you use the Source effects panel to set your colour space to 709, then drop a Lumetri effect on there to pull down the exposure, it recovers clipped highlights.  Maybe PP does the added effects BEFORE the colour space correction?

Anyhow, I'll still be doing it on the timeline, because personally I find it helps to have all my editing in one place.  But it looks like it works either way.

[pedz]

Excellent replies!  Thank you.  That "Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings" panel isn't well known it seems.  Your explanation about de-bayering helped me a lot.  There is a YouTube video I can find if anyone wants me to where how Canon does "RAW" is rather nicely explained.  It's by a videographer so it seems very real world to me.

I watched a Gerald Undone video about DaVinci Resolve and he explained a little bit about how LUTs work.  One thing I never considered is (according to him and it makes sense) a LUT assumes that the footage is at the perfect exposure.  He goes through some examples of what LUTs do with over exposed footage.

This brings up a number of questions for me that I want to go play with such as over exposed footage and how versatile are the effects for the source clip.

For me, I'd rather have all the "corrections" on the source footage and then all the artistic manipulations in the time line (where "corrections" and "artistic" are left vaguely defined).

[AtticusLake]

Hey,

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Excellent replies!  Thank you.  That "Canon Cinema RAW Light Source Settings" panel isn't well known it seems.

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Great!  Glad that helped.  Yes, after using Premiere for 10 years plus, you'd think I'd have known about that panel... it's just that in my head effects go on the timeline, so they become part of your edit decision list.  I guess Adobe have a way of applying effects to source clips.

I watched a Gerald Undone video about DaVinci Resolve and he explained a little bit about how LUTs work.  One thing I never considered is (according to him and it makes sense) a LUT assumes that the footage is at the perfect exposure.

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Well... not really / sort of.  A Lut is just a colour correction preset.  It's like a Lumetri preset which says "set exposure to +2, contrast to -5, ..." etc.  Except it's in a more basic format which can work with any colour correction system, including devices like some monitors.

A particular LUT may well make assumptions, for example a log correction LUT will assume that your footage is actually log -- in other words, the person who made that LUT assumed that.  If you apply that LUT to non-log footage, it will look wierd.  But there are LUTs for all kinds of purposes, like LOG correction, film emulation, adding a teal Sci-Fi look, etc., etc., ...  Each LUT will be designed for a particular purpose, and the person who designed it should tell you what state your footage should be in when you apply it.

For me, I'd rather have all the "corrections" on the source footage and then all the artistic manipulations in the time line (where "corrections" and "artistic" are left vaguely defined).

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Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.  Go with what makes sense to you.  Sometimes the problem is that there are too many answers to choose from...

[EngineerKyle]

Hey there Pedz! 

For the R5C, I am not entirely sure but there are some different things going on in the R5. Canon's internal Raw video is not processed the same as the photo raw files. Due to a RED patent, there is some steps that the camera takes before saving the "RAW" file. Because of this, you can actually get a greater dynamic range on the canon R5 if you shoot Raw video with canon log 3 enabled in camera, and then interpret the raw video as clog 2 in post. I am not sure if this is the case with the cinema EOS operating system on the R5C, but it's definitely worth a try. 

As far as them looking different in camera, it may be applying the desired lut for you as it is included in the meta data. The video should still be the same, as it is all raw, but depending on the software you use, it may or may not automatically apply the metadata gamma to the footage. 

On the R5, though, shooting raw with Clog 3 is not identical to the raw footage you get when you shoot with no picture profile. I would definitely run some tests between clog 3 enabled raw in camera vs rec 709 enabled raw footage in camera on the R5C because they're definitely not completely the same on the R5 - some things are going on in the processing pipeline that might make changing the profile advantageous. This is only true of Clog 3 on the R5. Regular Clog and no Picture profile yield the same results.

Would love to hear what you find out!

-Kyle

[crharvey12]

I film on the Canon C70 and I have been testing out the RAW record format.  When testing I noticed that even though my main record format is set to RAW ST, the custom picture settings make a big difference on how exposure levels are displayed by the camera on the camera screen.  I know this does not affect how the footage looks in post really but you really do need the correct custom picture settings to make sure you are exposing correctly for RAW.  I have not found a lot on the internet about this oddly...right now custom picture setting "canon 709" seems to be my exposure tools (waveforms, false color) to be reading more correctly for shooting in RAW than other custom picture options...Perhaps I should be turning off the custom picture altogether if that is an option...Weird that their isn't more info out there on making sure your custom picture is set correctly so that your exposure tools are correct for RAW recording.