Epic vs Alexa Producer Arguement

[Gavin Greenwalt]

If display devices showed 15-stops of DR we'd probably want cameras that captured 19-stops of DR. Since a lot of distribution and display methods show about 10-stops of DR, we want cameras that capture at least 14-stops of DR, something like that. You get the logic. It's like oversampling, but for DR instead of resolution.

That's true up to a point. At some point though a scene just doesn't have any more dynamic range to offer. I think we can all agree that most scenes just fit within about 15 stops of dynamic range anyway without much tweaking. And that even if we could display those 15 stops would probably want to compress it artificially so that the human eye can actually see it. It would look weird for instance having two actors lit at completely different exposures even if the camera could capture it. And the eye would flare out if you had a bright window behind a dimly lit actor.

Of course I'm not arguing that we're actually approaching the limit of useful dynamic range. One really great argument I do see for increased dynamic range beyond 15 stops is that it frees you from having to add extra optical elements like ND in order to adjust your shutter or aperture. I also look forward to extreme dynamic range capture for better filtration simulation. Why bother with optical pro-mist if you have the full 20 stops of dynamic range.

[David Rasberry]

Thanks for the charts and explanation it sort of makes sense to me. However in the real production world we experiment during pre-production with raw files before we actually go shoot. We create looks the creative team agrees on in redcine, then send the metadata to the camera. This way throughout production we have a consistency in our overall looks. Once we are in post we just transcode using those metadata settings straight to DPX or Prores. AS you can see this is where the module fits in the pipeline favorably, will kill two birds with one stone.
We can produce a 1k, 2k, and 4k program simultaneously for immediate and future uses. 1 out of every 1000 redusers will see their film in 4k this year, but in a few years we could all be able to see our productions in 4k because we will have the edl's, Aces, cdls, aaf's, metadata, footage etc.
Now you see how important a module is for eliminating the debayer trans-code step.
We already know all the limitations steps involved with working with prores 4444 12 bit, tiffs and DPX's. Debayering and trans-coding with Redcine-X is a very tedious and potentially disastrous guessing game. Its far safer to shoot tests, create looks for camera and shoot freely according to the meta parameters you've set for your show. Since you are shooting raw simultaneously you can always go back to your archived r3d's and re-work them in RCX. This is the same formula the Alexa and f65 work on. Even the silly announced C500000 works with this principle.

Producers are demanding this from us, so we in-turn are demanding it from Red. Producers would rather buy Alexas at 3 times the price of Epic-x's just justified as a one time expense that saves time.

We fully understand Red's strong long standing position and idealist philosophy on this matter.
True!!!! we want 6k, we want 15 to 18 stops DR, we want lightweight form factor ergonomics, we want to be able to communicate with our camera manufacturer for excellent camera service, most importantly like all thing Red, we want Red to reserve the right to change their philosophy and give us what we've been begging for since 07 a prores module..........

I think we need to start a Pro-res petition thread.

OK, that makes a lot of sense. Hadn't thought about it that way.