Hopefully you already know what a LUT is, if not, essentially it’s telling the computer how to interpret the colours of your footage. So you can apply different ‘looks’ and correct footage in post quickly and easily.

However not all LUTs are made equal, I took a quick rundown of some of the most popular ones and tested them in a very quick run and gun way.

The LUTs tested are:

LBK Neutral – https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=97623

55M PXK Advanced – http://55media.net/55m-p4k-color/

The ONE LUT – https://www.j-ballard.com/luts/the-one-lut-bmpcc4k

Leeming LUT Pro – https://www.leeminglutpro.com/

You can view the footage below and then I’ll let you know how I tested.

So in the footage above or at THIS link if you can’t see it for some reason, I created a basic scenario by filming some day to day clips, doing basic corrections and then applying the respective LUTs to see which one gives the most pleasing one click look.

I filmed this in CinemaDNG on the OG BMPCC, imported into Resolve using Color Science Gen 4, applied a few basic corrections for WB and Exposure, to give the LUTs the best chance, then slapped on the LUTs without any touches.

LBK Neutral Hi DeSat v10

LBK Neutral Hi DeSat v10

The goal was to get a natural looking image with most of the dynamic range intact, beautiful skin tones and a nice highlight roll-off. This LUT is almost neutral to the colors in any way, it handles mixed light situations quite well, the highlights roll-off increasingly de-saturated like analog film. It has a nice glossy look, but therefore does not show the last bit of details in highlights (they are there but very low contrast for a smooth roll-off). Price – FREE

I found the LBK LUT to actually be pretty consistent and give nice results, if not a tad ‘hot’ for my tastes, but easy to dial down. Not much colour cast, just a neutral look.

55M PXK Advanced Color

55M PXK Advanced Color

55M PXK Advanced Color provides never seen before color accuracy combined with a filmic look for the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and 6K. It also is the only option eliminating gamut clipping. Price – $39.95

The 55M PXK LUT is also quite nice, I liked the light levels, however it was rather desatured and looked a little ‘bleak’, again it could be fixed with saturation I am sure.

The ONE LUT

The ONE LUT

This LUT takes the confusion and guess work out of getting natural colours from the BMPCC4K. I found Blackmagic Design’s recommended BMPCC4K LUT rather underwhelming. The highlight roll off felt too severe, the skin tones were out, it added an odd ‘brown-ness’ to the image, it didn’t reflect what I was seeing on set. When I shoot with the Alexa, I use the one Arri Rec 709 LUT. It just works. I performed extensive tests against the Alexa to create one LUT for the BMPCC4K that achieves a comparable colour response, accurate skin tones and smoother highlight rolloff. I use it in camera and in the grade for consistent, natural results. No LUT packs. No snake oil. Just the one LUT. Price – $35

This one I was actually most looking forward to, as it has a lot of promises, while the light and contrast levels were great, all my shots managed to get a ‘greenish’ tint, which again is possible to fix fast but was not the point of this test.

Would definitely give it another go though, as everything else was good!

Leeming LUT Pro

Leeming LUT Pro

Leeming LUT Pro™ is the world’s first unified, corrective Look Up Table ( LUT ) system for supported cameras, designed to maximise dynamic range, fix skin tones, remove unwanted colour casts and provide an accurate Rec709 starting point for further creative colour grading. Multi-camera shoots are now much easier, because you are starting with a common, colour-matched baseline, meaning much less time trying to match cameras in post before starting your creative grading. Price – $16.50

Now this one is interesting.

The Leeming LUT Pro did have a VERY strange effect when applied as it underexposed the footage INCREDIBLY even on footage that was ETTR.

However this was resolved by using their free Pro Quickies pack and applying ‘Apollo Brightest’ which gave me pretty much perfect exposure.

I’m not 100% sure WHY it underexposes and needs to use another node, I gather it has something to do with preserving highlights and tonal range, then you just brighten it to taste. However once I applied the Brightest adjustment, it was great.

So it’s sort of a 2 part LUT I guess.

All of the LUTs apart from one gave one click results that were pretty good, although I would absolutely hand tweak any LUT.

Each LUT I think has good points and bad points, all seem to just be small tweaks of one another, apart from Leeming as that behaved far differently for me personally.

Ofcourse with some tweaking I am sure pretty much all the LUTs could look identical, but that’s not the point of this test, it’s to see what one gives the nicest overall starting point in my opinion without any tweaking.

Everyone will have a different favourite, but in my opinion I feel like Leeming LUT Pro did the best job of keeping things neutral and would make the easiest grade starting point in my workflow.

There are plenty of LUTs out there, so we will review more in future, but out of this specific First Look, I would recommend the Leeming LUT Pro and that is what I will use for the foreseeable future (until I find something even better)!

LUT links once more:

LBK Neutral – https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=97623

55M PXK Advanced – http://55media.net/55m-p4k-color/

The ONE LUT – https://www.j-ballard.com/luts/the-one-lut-bmpcc4k

Leeming LUT Pro – https://www.leeminglutpro.com/