Shooting the Hong Kong night with my Mysterium-Xed Red

[Dan Carew]

I got my Mysterium-X sensor back from Red on Friday and next day, 29 May 2010, shot my friend's band "Perfect Mind" handheld at a gig in Wanchai, Hong Kong at ASA800 with a Zeiss Planar T1.4 50mm Nikon still lens. Forgive the shakes and crappy focus. Several pints of beer later and excited at the amazing low light capability of the X, I clamped my Red with a Novoflex clamp to my home office window sill and shot night scenes at ASA800, 1600 and 4000! Very sweet. Here's a low res still from the shoot (hi-res version attached):

And here are some of the results, quickly edited:

http://indie2zero.com/2010/06/01/red-mysterium-x-hits-hong-kong-and-films-perfect-mind-live/

or watch in high def on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc-b5-IJHH8

I believe my Mysterium-X is the one of the first (if not the first) based in Hong Kong. Others have theirs coming very soon. We'll do some Mysterium-X test shooting (and show sample footage) at the next Hong Kong Red User's Group end of June (details to be posted soon).

cheers,
Dan

 

[Andrew T Foster]

Very cool!

I love some of those city shots. Spooky yellow shot with the cars on the bridge and the buses parked underneath.

Wish I could afford the upgrade. Ugh!

Best,

A

 

[Shane Betts]

Very nice. I wish I'd get the invite to upgrade!

 

[Cail Young]

Your time will come Shane, and soon. Meanwhile if you'd like to check ours out drop me a line.

 

[Dan Carew]

Thanks, Shane and Andrew. Yeah, the spooky yellow shot was interesting--the street lamps really were yellow (perhaps sodium vapor?). When color correcting, I tried to make sure the red taxi stayed real red. I wasn't able to use my new trick (from Von Thomas and the guys at Reducation) of shooting an 18% grey card at the head all shots. The band footage was under cheesy multi-colored lights and strobe. And no way to get a grey card into dark cityscapes at night.

 

[Dan Carew]

"Memorium": another little Mysterium-X test in Hong Kong

"Memorium": another little Mysterium-X test in Hong Kong

Here's more Mysterium-X Hong Kong night test shoot results. Shot in the rain on the night of 9 June 2010. Lens was a Zeiss Planar T1.4 50mm Nikon-mount still lens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu0K2fGi0rk

We shot everything at ISO800. The only light used was a daylight-balanced DedoLights LEDzilla for fill on a few shots. We adjusted the ISO in post--up to ISO 2000, all the way up to ISO 4000 in one shot. ISO ratings are noted in lower right-hand corner of frame. We manipulated curves to minimize noise (e.g., in the ISO 4000 shot, cranking down the black point on the blue channel) . Obviously compressing these low light shots is unkind--much better to see this in ProRes or Blu-Ray. It even looks beautiful at AppleTV res on an iPad.

Interesting note: we shot an 18% gray card (thanks Von!) at the beginning of each shot. Then we used the auto white balance dropper to adjust white balance in post--which resulted in making everything cooler/bluer and "more accurate". But because the light was so low, bluer meant "more blue video-esque noise", esp. in the candle shots. So we opted in most shots for just a standard 3200 color temp, Tint=0. For some shots we did approx 2800 color temp, Tint=-5--far less radical than what auto-white balance was telling us to do.

In any case, we (and our clients) think it looks great and are very happy with what Mysterium-X is doing in unlit night shots with small kit (all in one new Petrol Red bag), tiny crew and no permits.

 

[sidbarnhoorn]

Excellent work, Dan.

 

[Martin B.]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing this!