Imitate the Sony Venice Look with LUTs for FS7, FS5 or a7s Cameras

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by Olaf von VossJuly 9^th, 2018

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The Sony VENICE is a pretty decent piece of high-end filmmaking equipment. Its (claimed) 15-stop dynamic range and especially its superb highlight roll-off produces beautiful imagery, indeed. Want the same look for the more budget-friendly Sony FS7, FS5 or even the a7 series of cameras? Not a problem, Alister Chapman has created a whole bunch of Venice Look LUTs in order to get you closer to that special look.

Most of Sony’s prosumer to pro cameras sport a dynamic range of about 14 stops. The new Venice flagship cinema camera, however, is a different kind of beast. It’s rated at 15 stops of dynamic range. That’s why the official s709 LUT doesn’t work very well with these lower end cameras (if compared from Venice’s perspective) cameras. Alister Chapman (XDCam-User.com) has created a set of tweaked LUTs to cater for the needs of different Sony cameras and to bring you closer to the Venice look.

Sony VENICE Look LUTs

You can download these bespoke LUTs directly from Alister Chapman’s own site, XDCam-User.com. He created those custom LUTs because quite a few users had problems downloading the official LUT by Sony (link). Since that offical LUT has been designed especially for the 15-stop Venice camera it wasn’t the best for all the other 14-stop cameras such the Sony FS-7, FS-5, F5, F55 or the a7 range, anyways.

image credit: Krists Luhaers | unsplash.com

In order to get closer to that Venice look you should set your camera to S-Log3 and SGamut3.cine. There are LUTs especially desinged for certain monitors such as Atomos or Zacuto ones, too. Furthermore, Alister has created some LUTs for use with S-Log2, so users of the original Sony a7s are not left out here.

The original Venice s709 LUT on which these LUTs are based on is intended to create a first pass look. It’s not for finishing or polishing your footage but to create an instant viewing output for monitoring on set or for a DIT. Keep this in mind and try for yourself if these fit your workflow. For further tweaking you can use the very handy online tool called LUTCalc.

Pricing

If you want to say ‘thanks!’, you can do so by buying Mr. Chapman a (virtual) drink of your choice: A Latte for $5, a Premium Beer for $7.50, a Cocktail for $10 or a Singapore Beer for $15. This helps him running his (very helpful and informative) website and as you might guess: Providing this kind of extensive LUT library takes quite some time to put together.

This set of LUTs might bring you a little bit of that premium Venice look but it certainly won’t transform your Sony a7III into a full-blown Sony VENICE, that’s for sure. It’s still a very valuable set of LUTs and I certainly will buy Mr. Chapman a drink once I’ve found the perfect LUT for my given project.

Links: XDCam-User.com | LUTCalc

Do you use LUTs in your workflow or do you even use these LUTs to get that Venice look already? Let us know in the comments below!