The FX5 records X-OCN internally. Run one as A-cam on a festival and you come home with RAW from that body and XAVC S-Log3 from the rest — two file types, one timeline. The Camera RAW tab is where they part company: Highlight Recovery lives there, and it does nothing for an XAVC clip. From node 1 onward the two want the same tree. This page is about where that line sits.
If you have not shot yet, the exposure side lives in the S-Log3 exposure guide. This one starts at the node tree.
Where the RAW tab ends and the node tree begins
Settle the numbering before anything else, because advice from different places counts nodes differently. Throughout this site, node 1 means your primary exposure and white balance on the native log image — that is how the homepage FAQ and the DaVinci Resolve page both use it, and it is the numbering used below. The Camera RAW tab comes before node 1 and is not counted in it.
Three controls, three homes:
| Control | Where it belongs | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Highlight Recovery | Camera RAW tab | It is a Camera RAW control. It does not exist on the CST node, and it does nothing for XAVC S-Log3. |
| Fine exposure trim | Node 1, on the log image | Offset is additive, and an additive shift in log space is a multiplication in linear — a stop change. On linear data the additive wheel is a pedestal lift that washes the blacks out; the multiplicative one is Gain. |
| The creative look | After the conversion | A LUT is a fixed mapping built for Rec.709 input. Hand it log and you get the washed, milky image people read as a broken LUT. |
The Color Space Transform
A CST is a computed transform rather than a lookup. Resolve processes in 32-bit float and the transform tone-maps, so highlights are compressed rather than hard-clipped. That is worth knowing precisely, because it sets what you can still do about them: the compressed block can be moved, but it cannot be pulled back apart.
Set it up as:
- Input Colour Space: S-Gamut3.Cine · Input Gamma: S-Log3
- Output Colour Space: Rec.709 · Output Gamma: Rec.709
The node's other controls are Tone Mapping Method, Gamut Mapping Method, Saturation Knee, Saturation Max, Adaptation and Use White Point Adaptation. There is no Highlight Recovery among them, which is the subject of a section below.
Our technical Sony S-Log3 → Rec.709 conversion does the same job as a baked file, generated from the transform library this site ships. Its S-Log3 curve lands 18% grey at 0.4106, matching Sony's published 420/1023, and every row of its S-Gamut3.Cine → Rec.709 matrix sums to 1.0, which is what keeps a neutral grey neutral through the gamut change. It is written red-fastest per the .cube spec, so it is correct in Resolve rather than merely self-consistent with our own previews.
Use one or the other. A CST and a conversion LUT on the same clip is a double conversion, and it is the sneaky failure because each half is individually correct.
Node order: correct, convert, then look
Camera RAW tab → Node 1 → Node 2 → Node 3
Highlight Recovery Offset trim CST Creative LUT
on log
Correct before you convert. Once the transform has squeezed the highlights into Rec.709's much smaller range, pulling exposure down afterwards drags that compressed block down as a whole — you get muddy greys, not recovered detail.
The look goes last, and never before the conversion. S-Log3 is a recording format, not a viewing one: deliberately flat and desaturated so it can hold the dynamic range. A creative LUT built for Rec.709 and dropped straight onto it gives you the washed, milky image that makes people think the LUT is broken.
The two jobs also ship as different files at different resolutions. The creative looks here are 17×17×17 and the conversions are 33×33×33, because a conversion has to be accurate rather than merely pleasing. Seventeen points can band on smooth gradients in 10-bit delivery, and a haze-filled stage wash or a night sky is exactly that kind of gradient.
The fuller professional version of this chain is the sandwich: convert into DaVinci Wide Gamut / Intermediate, grade there, convert out to Rec.709, then apply the look. Install steps and the same node order in generic form are on the DaVinci Resolve page.
Highlight Recovery is a RAW control, and stage colour is not its job
Highlight Recovery lives in the Camera RAW tab. It applies to RAW formats such as X-OCN or BRAW, and it does nothing for XAVC S-Log3 — which, on the job described above, is every camera but the A-cam. Copying the tip out of a RAW context is exactly what makes it false.
For blown stage colour the control is on the CST node instead: set Gamut Mapping Method to Saturation Compression, then use Saturation Knee to place where the roll-off begins. A rig is built from saturated, narrow-band LED and laser sources, so a red wash or a magenta spot can sit far outside the colour space you are delivering in. That is an out-of-gamut saturation problem rather than simple over-exposure, which is why pulling exposure down does not fix it — the reds smear and the faces go plastic. Saturation Compression rolls those extremes back inside the container smoothly instead of letting them clip and posterise. More on that on the concert LUTs page.
What "matched" actually means
One CST input pairing is named consistently across this site: Sony S-Log3 / S-Gamut3.Cine. Whatever arrives at node 2 has to genuinely be in the encoding the transform has been told to expect. A conversion fed the wrong log format is one of the three things that make a LUT look wrong here — the others being a Rec.709 look dropped straight onto log, and an outright double conversion — and none of the three can be corrected downstream, because anything after a fixed mapping is fighting a transformation that has already happened.
The transform library is a useful definition of what "matched" means. It implements eight cameras, and all eight land 18% grey on the same Rec.709 value, 0.373. Eight different log curves converging on one display value is the cross-check that matters, and it is grey they converge on, not skin or sky. On set the same anchor applies: middle grey, 18% reflectance, sits at 41% IRE in S-Log3.
If the B-cam is an FX3, there is a side-by-side spec comparison of the two bodies.
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Sources
This article draws only on material in this repository:
- The site's architecture and colour-pipeline notes — the FX5's internal X-OCN recording, the eight-camera transform library and its shared 0.373 grey anchor, the Sony S-Log3 curve against the published 420/1023, the 33×33×33 conversions written red-fastest, the note that 17-point looks can band on 10-bit gradients, the CST's control list and its 32-bit float tone-mapping, the Offset wheel's additive behaviour, and the rule that Highlight Recovery is a Camera RAW control.
- The transform library this site ships — the Sony S-Log3 curve and the S-Gamut3.Cine → Rec.709 matrix quoted here, each matrix row recomputed and confirmed to sum to 1.0, and all eight cameras recomputed to land 18% grey on 0.373.
- The homepage FAQ — the three-node order and what node 1 means, the sandwich, double conversion, the 17³ and 33³ lattice sizes, S-Log3 as a recording rather than a viewing format, and the tip separating Highlight Recovery from Gamut Mapping.
- The site's DaVinci Resolve install page and concert LUTs page — the install steps and node-order copy, the 41% IRE grey target, and the stage-lighting section on narrow-band LED and laser sources.