how to grade log footage in davinci resolve

If you've switched to shooting log and opened your footage in Resolve for the first time, the initial reaction is usually the same: flat, grey, washed out. Nothing like what the camera showed on the screen. Nothing like what you expected. That's correct. That's what log is supposed to look like.

Log footage isn't broken. It's just unprocessed. It's holding a lot of information in a compressed format, waiting for the grade. The question is what to do with it.

why cameras shoot log

Log (logarithmic) profiles were developed to preserve as much dynamic range as possible from your camera's sensor. Instead of committing to a look in-camera, log encoding maps the full range of light your sensor captures into a flatter, more compressed image.

The result looks wrong until you transform it. But that flat, grey image is holding highlight and shadow detail that a "normal" (Rec.709 or cinematic) profile would have already clipped or crushed. That extra information is what you're grading. The more dynamic range your camera captures, the more you have to work with.

the wrong way to grade log footage

The most common mistake is treating log footage like normal Rec.709 footage - just cranking up contrast and saturation until it looks good.

Sometimes that works, in a rough way. More often, you end up with crushed shadows, blown highlights, and colors that shift badly when you push them. You've skipped the transform and gone straight to aesthetic decisions, which means the color science underneath is wrong.

The other common mistake is applying a creative LUT directly to log footage. This can work if the LUT was specifically designed for that log format. It usually doesn't work if it wasn't, and most LUT packs don't tell you clearly what they were tested on.

the right approach - transform first, grade second

The cleanest workflow for log footage in Resolve:

step 1: bring your footage into a proper working color space

Use a Color Space Transform (CST) node at the beginning of your node tree. Input: your specific log format (S-Log3 for Sony, LogC3 for Arri, BRaw for Blackmagic, etc.). Output: a wide working color space like DaVinci Wide Gamut.

This is the transform step: you're converting the log encoding into a space that Resolve can work in cleanly. Your footage will look more natural immediately, and you now have room to grade.

step 2: correct before you create

Before any creative decisions, fix what needs fixing. Exposure balance, white balance, any inconsistencies between clips. Do this in your working color space. This is technical work, getting every clip to a neutral, consistent baseline.

step 3: grade in the middle

Now the creative work. Contrast, tone, color relationships, any specific look you're going for. You're working in a wide color space with plenty of headroom. You can push exposure further without clipping, pull saturation without the colors breaking.

step 4: output transform

At the end of the node tree, add your output transform: another CST from DaVinci Wide Gamut to Rec.709 Gamma 2.4. This is your display transform. This is also where you'd add any film print emulation (like Kodak 2383) if that's part of your look.

The order matters. Transform into your working space. Grade. Transform out to your display space. That's the pipeline.

what to watch on the scopes

When you're grading log footage in a scene-referred workflow, scopes behave differently than you might expect. Before the output transform, your waveform might show values above 100 or colors that look odd. Don't panic: you're working in a wide space that's designed to hold that information. Grade to the image, not the numbers. Trust what you see after the output transform is applied.

The main things to watch: make sure highlights aren't clipping after the transform (check the waveform post-node), make sure shadows have color in them, and check your skin tones under a vectorscope if you're shooting people.

a note on different log formats

Not all log is the same. Sony S-Log3, Arri LogC, Blackmagic Film, DJI D-Log.. they each encode differently, have different dynamic range characteristics, and transform differently.

The camera manufacturer's recommended IDT (Input Device Transform) for your specific camera is always the most accurate starting point for your CST node. Don't use a generic "log to Rec.709" transform if you can use the specific one for your camera.

If you shoot multiple cameras, you'll want a CST node tailored to each log format. The grade in the middle can stay consistent. The transforms at each end change per camera.

this is what coolgrades was built around

We shoot on multiple cameras, in multiple countries, in conditions we can't control. Log footage is the only format that gives us enough information to work with when the light is wrong: which is a lot of the time.

The coolgrades pipeline handles log and Rec.709 differently depending on your setup, and the masterclass walks through exactly how that works. Not just the steps, but why the pipeline is structured the way it is and how to adapt it to your own camera and footage.

Knowing how to handle log properly is probably the single biggest leap in a colorist's workflow. Everything else builds on top of it.

→ see what's inside coolgrades

— ricardo & camille