How to Color Grade Canon C-Log2 & C-Log3 in DaVinci Resolve (Canon C50 Workflow)

After years of grading Canon footage, I've landed on one structure I use again and again. It's simple, it's repeatable, and it works on any Canon body shooting C-Log: a C50, C70, C80, C400, an R5, an R6. The node tree itself never changes.

In fact the only thing that changes from camera to camera is the Color Space Transform. Set the input color space and input gamma to whatever you actually shot, and this same tree works on Sony, Nikon, Panasonic or anything else.

The order matters: exposure, white balance, power windows, skin refinement, color space transform, creative LUT. Everything before the CST happens while the image is still in log. The CST is the second-to-last node, and the creative LUT is the very last one.

Add a serial node and label it. Use a gentle S-curve, lifting the highlights slightly and pulling the shadows down slightly, while watching the histogram so nothing clips or crushes. Small, compounding adjustments beat aggressive moves every time.

If you're shooting Canon Cinema RAW Light, you also get post-capture control over ISO, white balance and highlight recovery without degrading the image. Worth exploring if your camera supports it.

New node. Use the eyedropper on a neutral part of the frame, and a white shirt works well. Resolve auto-adjusts temperature and tint; fine-tune the tint slider manually if it skews too green or too magenta.

Add a node labelled PW, draw a circular mask over the subject's face, and feather it. Inside the window: lift the midtones slightly to brighten the face, and drop the blur radius to around 48 for subtle sharpening.

Then add an outside node. Everything beyond that window gets its midtones pulled down slightly, creating the separation and depth that makes the subject sit forward. Track the window to the subject's movement using the tracker tab.

New node, labelled SKIN. Use the qualifier tool to sample skin tone, refine with the hue, saturation and luminance sliders, then clean up the matte with denoise, blur radius and clean black.

For that polished, commercial look, drop midtone detail to around -12. Somewhere between -10 and -12 depending on how much texture the footage has. This softens skin and reduces blemishes without looking artificial.

This is where the image finally comes out of log. Add a serial node at the end of the tree, label it CST, and drop the Color Space Transform effect on it. For C-Log2 footage on a Canon C50:

• Input color space: Canon Cinema Gamut
• Input gamma: Canon Log 2 (set this to Canon Log 3 if that's what you shot, nothing else in the tree changes)
• Output color space: Rec 709
• Output gamma: Gamma 2.4

This tells Resolve exactly what you shot and what you want to deliver. Gamma 2.4 is the broadcast standard and what I grade to; if you're delivering mainly to YouTube, Gamma 2.2 is the closer match.

Last node in the tree. Right-click it, go to LUT, and select your look. If it's too intense, and most LUTs are straight out of the box, go to the Key tab and drop Key Output to 0%, then slowly bring it back up while watching the monitor. Stop when it feels right, not when it feels maximal.

Right-click the monitor and choose Grab Still, which saves a thumbnail to your gallery. Select your other clips, right-click the still, and choose Apply Grade. Just know that different lighting or lens setups in the same scene usually mean re-adjusting exposure, white balance and retracking your power window.