Sony A7R II / Neutral creative style?

[DPC]

I have been trying out all sorts of PP combinations for my Sony A7R II, with varying degrees of success. Different gammas, different gamuts. Often producing footage that is difficult to grade. Skin tones are particularly tricky.

Today it occurred to me that I might be making things unnecessarily difficult for myself and I turned PP off and just used the Neutral creative style instead, all at "0".

Frankly, I think it looks better out of the camera than anything I've got using PPs so far. 

Has anyone else had a similar experience? 

[Geoff CB]

If I don't need to grade much I use the same settings, they are great.

If I do need to grade, I use a Custom Version of S-log.

 

[tellure]

My current settings, very basic, which I think have been pretty successful for me.  I'm not super experienced with color grading so I haven't delved into SLOG yet.

PP6

Black Level +3

Gamma Cine4

Black Gamma - Defaults

Knee - Defaults

Color Mode Cinema

Saturation 0

Color Phase 0

Color Depth - Defaults

Detail --> Level: -3

This gives a pretty flat / somewhat low-contrast / low-saturation image that you can push or pull different ways. Here's an example of ungraded (top) and some basic contrast / saturation tweaks [contrast +19, saturation 147] in Premiere Pro Lumetri Color where I was just aiming to get the skin tones looking natural like they looked to me in person:

[DPC]

If we're getting on to Profiles in general, I'm a great fan of Paul Leeming's LUTS http://www.leeminglutone.com/