Getting started with Nature and Wildlife video

[Kaya Saman]

Hi everyone,

this is my first post! :-)

I'm coming over from a stills photography background where I have 2 systems in a Pentax and Nikon. Around 2 years ago I had a trip up to Scotland where I used 3x DJI cameras in terms of Action 4, Pocket 3, and Air3 drone.

It was so much fun and I really enjoyed creating the content though being my first time I really messed up in quite a few places including the grading as the whole thing was processed in ShotCut.

Later on I started reworking the content in Davinci Resolve and instead of using LUTs, I used 2x CST nodes and doing the "grading" in between.

So.... now I am looking at going for an R5C so that I can get the best of both worlds in terms of stills and video.

First of all does anyone have any advice or things to think about regarding wildlife and nature videography?

My road map I guess is something like getting the R5C and the 100mm macro RF lens at first coupled together with an iFootage Shark Nano II slider and DJI RS5 (Pro?) gimbal

This video really impressed me with the DZO probe which I could probably go for later:

This Rig Unlocks a Whole New World of Filmmaking - YouTube

as well as the 200-800mm RF and 1.4x TC.


The reason I want to go with Canon is that the Nikon Z range seems harder to color grade from what I read and also there is no articulating screen for vlog / selfie mode on the Z8 for example.


Currently I am trying to color grade the C50 sample footage off Canon's website as a precursor to learn but I'm really stuck with it additionally.

I am using the landscape mountain videos and created my CST nodes going from Canon CLog2 to Davinci Wide Gammut then DVWG to REC.709

These are already high contrast scenes so I'm not really too sure in terms of what to do with them?

Straight out of the box they look pretty good anyway so, so far I have just added a bit of Sharpness -> increased to 15 and Midtone Detail -> increased to 25
In the RAW tab.

I can't work out what to do from here as it seems different from the DJI DLogM....

Maybe someone can point me to a good Youtube video if there is one? I found a few which I'm watching but they're mainly studio based and not like the clips.

Thanks