How to expose and white balance Log footage
Log gives you a lot of room in the grade, but that room starts with how you shoot. Get exposure and white balance right and grading on your phone takes minutes. Get them wrong and the tools can only rescue so much.
Exposure: aim for correct, not dark
Log already looks gray, so many people pull exposure down for fear of overexposing. The usual result is underexposure: shadow noise gets amplified when you brighten the grade, and the image looks muddy.
- Expose the subject correctly first. Getting faces and the main subject right matters more than the rest of the frame.
- Trust tools, not the screen. The gray Log preview makes brightness hard to judge by eye. Use the camera's histogram, zebras or false color (the Blackmagic Camera app has them).
- Protect highlights, within reason. Clipping a street light or a bit of sky is usually acceptable. An underexposed subject is much harder to fix.
- Keep exposure from jumping. Auto exposure pumps as you move and turn, which is hard to match later. In the iPhone Camera app, touch and hold the frame to lock exposure and focus; on DJI cameras, set it manually in Pro mode.
White balance: lock it
Auto white balance drifts within a shot as the light changes, warmer one moment and cooler the next, and no single correction can fix that. For Log, set a fixed color temperature manually:
- Around 5600K in daylight and around 3200K under warm indoor light are common starting points; when unsure, set it on a white wall or sheet of paper.
- Use the same temperature for every shot in a scene so they match later.
Getting it a little wrong is fine: white balance is the easiest thing to fix in Log. Develop Log reads the as-shot temperature recorded by DJI cameras and the Blackmagic Camera app, so the temperature control starts from that Kelvin value. The iPhone's built-in Camera does not record it, so the control shows a relative value. You can also tap something neutral with the eyedropper, or use auto.
A few more habits
- Always record 10-bit. Log packs values tightly, and 8-bit bands when graded.
- Shutter at about twice the frame rate. For example 1/60 at 30 fps for natural motion blur; in bright light use an ND filter instead of a faster shutter.
- Transfer the original file. Use AirDrop, DJI Mimo or a card reader to save the original to Photos; avoid paths that re-compress it, such as messaging apps.
- Record a reference. When the scene changes, film a few seconds with something white, gray or a face, so the eyedropper has a target later.
Back on your phone
In Develop Log: restore with Natural (the camera maker's official LUT), correct white balance, set exposure (in linear light and in stops, like adjusting the camera by one stop), then choose a look. The full workflows are in Color grade D-Log M on iPhone and How to color grade Apple Log 2.
Quick answers
Should I overexpose Log a little?
A common technique is to expose slightly bright (“expose to the right”) to reduce shadow noise, but only as long as highlights are not clipped, confirmed with a histogram or zebras. When unsure, correct exposure is the safe choice.
Can wrong white balance be fixed?
Log white balance can be corrected a long way in the grade. White balance that drifts within a shot is the hard part, which is why “fixed” matters more than “exact”.