How to Properly Expose Canon Log on the R5 and R6

Shooting video has never been better for consumers and with C-Log and C-Log 3 profiles on some Canon cameras, you gain access to far more malleable footage when it comes to post-processing. However, when you look at the preview of log footage, it looks like it's sitting beneath a high pass filter in Photoshop, so how do you properly expose for it?

As Todd Dominey points out straight away, this video is something of a beginner's guide, but I'll add that it's a valuable one. There is a lot in photography that directly translates to videography and if you make the transition or you want to add that media to your repertoire, you will have a solid foundation. That said, there is also a lot of nuances — particularly if you want to achieve commercial-standard results — and one such area is color profile.

C-Log is, for all intents and purposes, a Canon color profile that is popular within filmmaking for its high dynamic range and preservation of detail through that. When filming scenes that are high contrast, that is, there is a large number of stops of dynamic range between the darkest and the lightest areas of the frame, C-Log can be invaluable.

In this tutorial, Dominey walks you through the basics of setting up your Canon camera to shoot with C-Log or C-Log 3 and then how to properly expose for that profile, despite the confusing and sometimes misleading previews.

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Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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Hi I just wanted to mention to those reading this article that I'm fairly certain that hdmi does NOT support Cinema Gamut so you need to use rec 709 or 2020. If you don't I believe you will get a yellow shift. Something to do with hdmi not supporting the larger Cinema Gamut color space. Cheers.