this has been bugging me for a while and im not sure if its a shooting problem or an editing problem. i shoot d-log on my air 2s and i apply a lut and it just looks... flat? or sometimes oversaturated in weird spots like the greens go really nuclear. ive tried like 6 different luts and they all have the same issue more or less. other peoples drone footage i see on vimeo and instagram looks so clean and cinematic and mine looks like a bad instagram filter from 2014.

im editing in premiere, nothing fancy, and i honestly dont really understand the whole exposure triangle thing that well when it comes to d-log. should i be shooting d-log at all? maybe i should just shoot in normal color profile and skip the grading altogether? i dont know, feels like im making more work for myself

d-log can be really unforgiving if your exposure isnt pretty much spot on when you capture it. if you underexpose even a little bit the shadows get really nasty when you try to lift them in the grade and thats probably where some of that flatness is coming from. the general rule people use is to expose to the right, meaning bump your exposure up a bit so the highlights are close to but not clipping, and then bring them back down in post. makes a huge difference with log footage.

also a lot of generic luts are just not calibrated for d-log specifically, they might say "for log footage" but theres a difference between dji d-log and like slog or other formats. dji has their own luts on their website that are at least a decent starting point and you can adjust from there instead of starting with a random pack you bought for 12 dollars. not saying dont buy luts, just make sure they actually say d-log compatible. after you apply it try dropping saturation like 10-15 points and doing a gentle s-curve on the luma and see if that cleans it up

honestly i switched back to the normal color profile for like 6 months when i was learning and my videos got way better. d-log is great but its a tool and if you dont have the grading workflow dialed in it can make things worse not better. theres no shame in shooting normal color profile, you can still do a lot with color grading, its just less extreme. once i actually understood what i was doing in premiere i went back to d-log and it made more sense. just my experience anyway