samroden wrote:All this is to say, if I'm not worried about matching cameras, and just want to take my log footage, get it correctly to rec709 and grade from there, how would you suggest I approach that? Thank you much in advance!
Unless you need to deliver both SDR and HDR deliverables, ACES and RCM aren't necessary. Since they aren't designed for using REC709 LUTs, they are going to be more trouble than they are worth if those LUTs are often used in your grades.
For normal REC709 deliverables, if you're recording BRAW, the easiest thing to do is set it to "extended video" in camera (but do make sure you're recording BRAW, not ProRes) and that will be recorded as metadata and also be the image you see when monitoring (so make sure to have any LUTs applied to your LCD, viewfinder, and SDI out turned off).
Then, in Resolve just work in standard DaVinci YRGB and the camera metadata will be applied with the clips automatically set to "extended video" by default so they'll look exactly as you saw them on set. Then, in the raw tab you can make fine adjustments to temp, tint, exposure and, if needed, tweak the shadow or highlight rolloff, etc.
It's a really fast way to work, it makes on set monitoring dead simple, and it will allow you the flexibility to add things like standard REC709 "look" LUTs or FilmConvert OFX to your grades if you wish.
From a workflow perspective, the beautiful thing about recording BRAW set to "extended video" is that if you have to hand your BRAW files off to another producer, editor or a colorist, the image that you saw on your monitor is exactly what they'll see through the whole workflow in Resolve or in any other app that supports BRAW (like EditReady, for example). And, if you want to adjust the exposure, saturation, etc. just kick out sidecar files for each clip and those will be how the clip is read.
If you decide you instead want to apply LUTs designed for BMD Film v4 (like Kholi's excellent Comet Color set for v4), just change the setting in the raw tab to film mode and you can apply those LUTs.