The V-Log L is a logarithmic gamma curve that the DVX200 includes. And it's for times when you want to shoot footage that you don't want to have a baked in look in the camera. You want to have the flatest possible contrast and the widest dynamic range because you want to manipulate the footage in post and put your own look on it. We're going to show you how to use the log L here in this video. When you go into the scene file menu, you'll see a whole lot of image options for a color and contrast and gamma and all that. You can forget all those because when you turn on V-Log L, the camera disables pretty much every one of those functions. It's really giving you, it's not raw footage, but it's as close as we can get to raw footage from this camera. So really, that means when you're shooting with V-Log L, you really only need to get two things right. You have to get your white balance proper. So you have to do a proper manual white balance or trust in the presets, but you'll get more accurate colors if you do a proper manual white balance. And number two, you got exposed properly. Exposing for V-Log L is similar to normal video, but a little bit different because the way the curve is mapped, it places tones at a different level and these are a darker level than what you're normally used to. So for example, two rules of thumb that we use in video exposure on Caucasian skin, on the hottest point. So you know up here, maybe on the brow or the tip of the nose, you normally want to see that at 70 IRE or below for proper exposure. In V-Log L, that's going to be more like around 50 to 55 IRE. Then another major level we watch is for clipping when something's completely overexposed and the camera can no longer render it. In normal video, that normally happens around 100 to 105 IRE. In V-Log L, that happens at 80. That's a hard clip at 80 IRE. Now this clipping at 80 IRE, that can be a little bit tough for some people to wrap their heads around. I've seen footage where people were grossly overexposing their footage because they were only getting the exposure up to around 80 IRE and they're like, no, we need more, we need more to crank that up. It doesn't work that way. The range from 80 to 109, just forget it, it doesn't exist. 80 is the new 109, you know, it's just 80 is the hard clip limit. And 80 is, you know, if you open up the iris and point at the camera at the sun, the brightest possible thing with no no gelanty filters, it's still never going to show over 80 IRE because that's just limit. We have to know that and get used to it. So normal whites, like a white card, like a DSC camera white card, that would show at about 61 IRE. So the range from 61 up to 80 is overexposure range over white. So that's about one and a half stops over white. Your skin tones should normally be for a darker skin subject, maybe around 40 to 45 IRE for the lightest skin subject up to a maximum of 55 IRE. And middle gray, which is 18% reflectance. If you have a gray card or you go to a photography store and you ask them for a gray card, they'll give you a card that reflects 18% of the light that hits it. That's a normal standard used in photography in Antelatum zone system. That's referred to as zone five and 18% gray card should be exposed at about 42 IRE when you're in VLogel. That could be 50 to 55 IRE in a different gamma, but in VLogel, it's just different. And we need to abide by these rules. If you abide by these rules, you'll be getting proper exposure, your skin tones will fit where they belong and you'll have eight stops of exposure under middle gray and four stops of exposure over middle gray. Yeah, because the curve is asymmetrical, I don't really recommend. Some people, when they're exposing log curves, they like to overexpose by a stop or two. I don't necessarily think that's a great idea with a DVX200 because the curve is asymmetrical. We have eight stops below, but only four stops above. If you overexpose by two stops, then you're going to have 10 stops below and two stops above. That's not really going to give you great imagery. The four above and eight below get you good solid images. If you want even more highlight room, there's nothing stopping you from undersposing by a stop. You can always correct in post. When you expose lower, you might get a little bit more grain, a little bit more noise when you bring it back up, but you're going to have to do post production for noise reduction anyway. Remember, the DVX200 bypasses pretty much all the image processing when you're doing VLogel. So all the things that have to be done to a raw image in order to make it watchable and viewable, which means adjusting the contrast, adjusting the gamma, adjusting the color saturation, adding some sharpness because there's no sharpness added when you're in VLogel. So you're going to need to sharpen up the video and do some noise reduction. That all needs to be part of the workflow when you're processing VLogel footage to turn in to good looking footage. Now when you're monitoring VLogel, it can kind of flat, muted just on the monitor because it is. It's flat contrast. It doesn't make it all that appealing to look at on the monitor, but you can get a preview of what it'll look like after you've graded it if you assign log view assist to a user button and then press that user button. You'll see basically a Rec709 gamma overlaid on your VLog image and you'll see pretty much what it'll look like. And that also gives you a good idea whether you're overexposing or underexposing as far as video gamers concern. And one last thing about working with VLogel footage, the cameras internal recordings are done at 8 bit 420. And that's fine. You know, and it looks good, but it's not necessarily known as the most robust recording format, especially when you're doing extensive post-production, you know, with color correction and grading and shading and polling and pushing and manipulating the footage. I think most professionals would tell you they would rather have 10 bit 422. Well, the camera's capable of outputting 10 bit 422. And if you have recorder like the Odyssey 7Q Plus from Convergent Design or a sound device is Pixie 5H or a Tomas Ninja Sassam, something like that, they'll record a very full robust, intrafream 10 bit 422. And that will give you even that extra edge, that extra ability to work with footage. So if you're looking for one way to really increase the potential quality of your VLogel recordings, an external recorder might get you that extra bit that you need to really extract the best from the footage. Hope this has been helpful. Thanks for watching. Be sure to check out the other videos in this series to find even more tips and tricks on how do you work with your DVX 200.