If RED=Film why Epic?

[cinemano]

Hello Giorgio.. Honestly didnt want to start a Digital vs Film war with the question.. gulp... but the amazing feedbacks have answered the question well. I thinks its fair to say, in terms of film or digital, that its also a question of taste. I think Epic will be the better and cropeable 4k thanks to 5k.. But also shows if you dont have an EPIC you can still have same results with your RED if you use it well and dont crop.. ?

[Alberto Caprioglio]

Cinemano, if you film with Epic at 5k and not crop, then I'm pretty sure you will have better result then filming with Red One (the sensor seems to be of the same size). Because of its much higher resolution (and dynamic range; actually they said that a sensor upgrade with better dynamic range will be available for the Red One too, but it think it will cost a bit, not as much as the Epic price, of course.)

Otherwise, it depends on how much you crop. 5k has several megapixels more then 4k. There are more megapixels in this difference than in most professional high definition cameras available today! I wouldn't call it simply an upgrade.

But you have to have fantastic lenses in order to not loose that much higher resolution in the first place. But, you MAY also have an advantage with lenses with a little less qualty, and tiny chromatic aberrations, if you reduce the resolution in post production to 4k, since reducing (resizeing) everything also includes reducing artifacts, and if in a frame the artifacts are smaller in pixels than the reduction you are going to make (i'm sure this can be calculated), by doing so the MAY even desappear. This is what I think about it.

Buying an Epic would hardly be a wrong action, but you have to decide if Red One is enough for you. Till some months ago, Red One was more then enough for everybody, for quality pictures. It is enough for us. But since we can afford Epic and it sounds so incredibly good, I think we will buy Epic in a not distant future.
Saying that "Red One is enough" only shows how we are spoiled.
We are using one with great satisfaction and have orders for others. But why should we not get the best of the best?

My fast opinion - concerning picture quality, based on the paper:
Will you be happy with Red One? I think so. Oh yes, defenitely. You can't be desappointed, it's sooo good.
Will you be even more happy with Epic? Absolutely!

Epic costs about twice the Red One. If you want to spend that money, buying 2 Red Ones instead of an Epic may also be a solution, depending on your needs...
Like, buying half a Red One with a very good partner, if you think of using it not too often.

[RedRay]

The idea is not necessarily to crop the 5k image, (although you could do that and has it's advantages in digital post production, visual efx, etc.), but what's exciting is squeezing all the info from your 5k raw image to eventually end up on a 35mm digital intermediate film frame. The 35mm film frame is actually thought of as having something like 4k resolution (that obviously is not totally correct) so having 5k is even better. But it is interesting to note, as much as digital technology pushes forward to somehow imitate film - (exposure latitude, tonality, resolution, 24fps, etc.) one thing that would be difficult to imitate is the randomness of the film grain. Through an electron microscope you will see how the film grain/crystals structure is so random both in size, shape, as well as position. So you actually have a fresh new and different "imaging sensor chip" (so to speak) in a film camera 24 times a second, and not one "sensor" is like the other. Whereas in a digital sensor, you are working with a fixed array of sensors/pixels, each in the exact same position everytime. Maybe this is what makes digital video still look so "cold" or "electronic" (i know, those words may not really mean much to some) :) I think you get the point

[Alberto Caprioglio]

one thing that would be difficult to imitate is the randomness of the film grain.

I agree, but I really don't mind about that. The randomness of the film grain is at the limit of its resolution, so we are talking about something we don't see on the screen unless perhaps with a magnifieing glass. Once you have pictures with huge resolution, then I'm sure we don't go hunting the grain.
I don't want to see the grain, and I am not able to see the grain when I go to the cinema. I never heard about one single person watching or being able to watch the grain of film emulsion when he goes to the cinema. The definition of details may degrade as much as you want, but fiml grain stays the same, and it's so fine that nobody sees it, and nobody complain or appreciate the grain, being it visible or not.

Through an electron microscope you will see how the film grain/crystals structure is so random both in size, shape, as well as position.

I agree, you need an electron microscope to be able to see the crystal structure of film.
Even watching very big enlargements of pictures from digital still cameras at close distance, while I may see the limit of the camera's resolution, I can't see any pattern, so, instead of having a random pattern, you haven't any part, which I prefer.
At very high ISO there is some noise, which can be digitally eliminated.
Anyway, in video, noise is less unpleasant because also digital noise is random.

Whereas in a digital sensor, you are working with a fixed array of sensors/pixels, each in the exact same position everytime.

yes but you don't see the image from the sensor directly; algorithms interpolate all the data and produce an image from calculations for every frame, and every frame is different.
Alsos, while the pixels are in the same position every time - of course: you have a orthogonal matrix - but the electrons wich arrive to them always change. And you don't see the matrix because it has too many pixels.

Maybe this is what makes digital video still look so "cold" or "electronic" (i know, those words may not really mean much to some) I think you get the point

I undertand what you say, but I don't see any benefit in film anymore.
Cold or warm or hot are abused words which do not say anything about picture quality or goodness.
Saying that a random crystal = a warm picture, doesn't mean anything.
And even if there were any truth in this, who said this is a good thing?
I may like sub-zero pictures, cold as hell. Still it doesn't mean anything.
Also, blue is hot, red is cold; and not viceversa like a lot of people still say when they talk about photography.
So many wrong things are taken for granted as right things, like making images blu to represent the night. I don't know and I don't care to know where this fashion came from and why copying-hords decided to adopt this strange fashion, but it remains very wrong, and I does'nt look at all like night time.
please do not insist on the fact that now it's widely recognized. It's easy to say that something you can't excape from, is "widely recognized". Rather, it is recognized as movies that want to look big make this misuse of color, and sound too. (in foreign films dubbed in another language the voices sounds like their characters mumble from inside the listener's ears, you hear the intimistic sound of saliva in their mouth with the microphone in their mounth from meter away etc... hahaha, well it's not funny). It does't imply it's accepted, it remains very wrong, like if I made underwater images always yellow. A child playing with photoshop.
Starships making noises in space is also a wrong and stupid error, very similar. Children make noises when they play with plastic spaceship toys.
Here we are, with modern fake cinema for children.
Cinema is now so impure and pretentious. It defenetely needs to be cleaned. From it's common places and fakeness. Technical, artistical, and intellectual common places and total fakeness.
bah...

[RedRay]

I totally understand what you are saying and i wouldn't argue on your points. But i wasn't trying to be just poetic or metaphorical with words, they did mean something relevant to what i'm pointing out, and I was not implying that people would really see individual film grains (well, we do sometimes to a certain extent) after all we are watching 24 flashes of images per second and our persistence of vision aids in "blending" these frames to create the perceived smooth images and the illusion of motion. But i still think there is something to that, the way these random "grain-formed" images are perceived by our eyes on a cinema screen is quite different from seeing a digital projection, or as progressive images on and LCD screen, and more so as alternating fields on a CRT monitor. And is still different from DI film footage from digital acquisition. I know I'm not exactly talking exact science here and I don't have empirical data to explain it, but i know that factor contributes to that "enigmatic" difference we call "film look".

[Brook Willard]

The randomness of film grain will appear in your print... which is re-exposing your noise-free footage onto a stock with inherent grain.

If you're not finishing to a print, add digital grain. Movies have been doing this for decades. Every digital effect you've ever seen has had digital grain added over it to match the plate. It's just how it's done... and it works. Just because the grain plugin you use in After Effects doesn't feel "organic" enough to you doesn't mean that grain plugins don't work.

I really think that the grain argument is a useless one. Every film you see in theaters has had at least one [if not two] layers of grain added: in the print and in the effects. Yes, the grain of the original stock shows through... but digital grain has "made it" in my opinion.

If you're going to talk about RED vs. Film, the 90% argument is dynamic range. The 10% argument is up to you.

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Just because the grain plugin you use in After Effects doesn't feel "organic" enough to you doesn't mean that grain plugins don't work.

Are these better grain effects part of the high-end finishing stations - Da Vinci, Scratch?

Personally, I think that even Magic Bullet could look pretty decent.

[RedRay]

The randomness of film grain will appear in your print... which is re-exposing your noise-free footage onto a stock with inherent grain.

If you're not finishing to a print, add digital grain. Movies have been doing this for decades. Every digital effect you've ever seen has had digital grain added over it to match the plate. It's just how it's done... and it works. Just because the grain plugin you use in After Effects doesn't feel "organic" enough to you doesn't mean that grain plugins don't work.

I really think that the grain argument is a useless one. Every film you see in theaters has had at least one [if not two] layers of grain added: in the print and in the effects. Yes, the grain of the original stock shows through... but digital grain has "made it" in my opinion.

If you're going to talk about RED vs. Film, the 90% argument is dynamic range. The 10% argument is up to you.

I totally understand what you mean and I will not refute any of that. :) But I was not talking about wanting to see the film grain (in fact it's supposed to be virtually unnoticeable to a viewer who wants to focus on absorbing the film's story) , i was simply explaining that it is a totally different way of forming the images and delivering them to viewers, hence a different experience both for the filmmaker and the audience. Much like drinking the same beer, but with the choice of draft in a mug, or straight from the bottle. Oh i don't know really, haha :) There is no argument here. That's why I am dealing with dynamic range, exposure latitude, tonality, neutrality, etc. and that is also why after shooting on film for 25 years I am now excited to work on the Red One. :D

[cinemano]

my last feature was shot on 35mm and we transfered to HD tapes, to do special effects with Digital Fusion, then back to 35mm, and honestly, very hard to tell it ever left film to the regular guy, which is 99.5% percent of our audience