How to Grade N-Log for the Nikon Z6
Categories
GUIDE Nikon Z6 Guide Nikon Z6 Info

How to Grade N-Log for the Nikon Z6

The simplest way to grade N-log from the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7.

In this video I show you how to grade N-log from the Nikon Z6 (AmazonB&H):

Color grading steps

You can divide grading into four simple steps:

  1. Primary grading – you add a LUT/Transform to bring your footage to a standard level, or in the case of multiple clips, you try to match white, black and grey levels.
  2. Secondary grading – this is the creative part of grading. A lot of shooters use LUTs to set a custom look and grade from there. Or, you can grade from scratch. Both are possible with N-Log.
  3. Noise Reduction – if the noise is too much for you, use a noise reduction app to remove noise.
  4. Dithering – if you see banding and hate it, use dithering to remove banding.

The bottom line is color grading is a specialized skill that takes years to master, and if you treat it lightly your results will be poor.

This is why I’ve shown how to use LUTs to grade quicker, but it’s never the perfect choice because you still have to learn to match clips. There’s no free lunch and no shortcut with grading.

What LUT should you use?

Since Nikon hasn’t published an official LUT at the time of this writing,  the closest LUT you can use is the official Panasonic V-Log to Rec. 709 LUT. Get it here

UPDATE: As of 27th August 2019 Nikon has finally released an N-Log to Rec. 709 LUT, and you can download it from the Nikon Download Center.

This will get your footage from flat-looking to tolerable. As you can see from the above video, the colors will still be off, since LUTs are not a magic pill. It also highlights the stupidity of using third-party LUTs without knowing the color science. Still, if it makes your clients happy…

The second step is to use creative LUTs or grade yourself. I don’t endorse or recommend any third-party LUT or application. If you would like to learn how to create your own film looks easily, use my crow chart as shown in this video:

Noise Reduction and Dithering

You can use noise reduction in Davinci Resolve or use NeatVideo. The latter is better, but both are fine for Internet work. Here’s a video that shows you how to use noise reduction and dithering for banding-free videos (go directly to the 14-minute mark):

The process is the same for any camera or footage.

Can you use this for the Nikon Z7?

Yes, you can follow these tips for the Nikon Z7 as well. Please use the Nikon Z7 LUT, which is separate.

That’s it! I hope the above videos give you confidence to grade N-log footage from the Nikon Z6 (AmazonB&H). The good news is the 10-bit 4:2:2 footage is great for grading and offers many creative possibilities.

Sometimes though, you just don’t want to grade. If you need a picture control that you can use with confidence, sign up below and get my favorite picture control:

3 replies on “How to Grade N-Log for the Nikon Z6”

I fixed Nikon’s new overly saturated and way too contrasty LUT. It almost perfectly matches my Epic-W footage after I apply RED’s rec709 LUT…

Hi Sareesh! Greetings from Czech Republic. At first just some small explanation. I’m architect, designer, graphic designer and also a photographer for more than 25 years. And because I’m very technically based, I think I know a lot about the color science in general. But I have never had any closer contact with video or cinematography. Couple of months ago I bought Nikon Z7 and I naturally started discovering video capabilities of it. And I was becaming more and more hungry to understand all the video and cinematography science. And this brought me to your YT channel and here. But (unfortunatelly) after I saw tons and tons another (mainly worthless) videos and read tons and tons (mainly worthless) articles. I just want to tell you, that for someone like me, your pages here, your articles and videos are just a GOLDEN TREASURE. Every day after work I try to steal a little time for myself to watch or read next piece of your stuff here, including the basics, which I already know. I want to you know about my deep respect to your knowledges and skills and mainly your ability to explain everything so flawless and understandable. Just wanted you to know… Many thanks for sharing your knowledge like this!

Comments are closed.