How do 3D LUTs affect the visual dynamic range of the camera?
The 3D LUT technology from IRIDAS using their SpeedGrade software allows the cinematographer to map the greater than 10-fstops of the SI-2K MINI in any imaginable way possible. The full floating-point rendering pipeline of the CineForm RAW™ codec means that no pixel information is ever lost, nor does clipping ever occur. Values over white and below the black clip of the 3D LUT can be described an manipulated, even in post as long as the sensor itself is never saturated. For instance, a DP can create a very contrasty bleach-bypass style look using Speedgrade, and then apply that 3D LUT to the camera footage. The camera will now take on the “look” of that 3D LUT. Because the LUT is simply metadata, values in the high-contrast area are still accessible in post. While values may have seemed to visually clip in the LUT’ed representation of the raw data, over-white and values below the black clip are still present up the full dynamic range of the camera. The colorist can then extract detail
