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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Red vs Genesis vs Alexa

True RGB -:)

That's the Genesis, I guess....

The 2k Alexa... Not yet I guess... But probably will be in a while.

I have been testing the MX vs the Alexa quite extensively.
What can I say? They are different... -:)

They're good at displaying the others weak sides, but the advantage with RED, is that with just a couple of colorscience updates to the RAW development, a lot of Arris strengths are gone. (Not all). But The RED has much more flexible options as to higher fps and different workflows + flexibility of image in post, that I'd say they are pretty even now.

As systems, the Alexa I tried was more buggy - which is not unnatural that early in a digital product-cycle...

But you obviously want a more heated debate, I guess... -:)
 
@ Gunleik Groven
From your post I understand that the Alexa is not yet out for purchase? I was sure you can buy it for some time now...I heard people have shot with it, were they referring to pre production models ?
 
Martin Melnick said:
Hey,
I know this is probably a ridiculous post considering everyone on here is a Red enthusiast, but I wanted to get a discussion going about the pros and cons of Red and its major competitors: The Panavision Genesis (although obviously not a camera for purchase) and the new 2k Arri Alexa.
Any thoughts on bayer vs true rgb? Or comparison shots?


-Martin Editor/DI
Click to expand...

F35 is not "true RGB", no matter what Sony says.
F35chroma.png
This is a close up of a F35 zone plate shot. The zone plate is pure black and white - no colour in it, but the F35 shows rainbows because it's R, G and B channels don't line up with each other.

The F35 produces a more detailed image than the Alexa, from what I've seen, which always looks rather soft to me.

As for the RED, go ask someone who isn't biassed in it's favour!

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
As for the RED, go ask someone who isn't biassed in it's favour!

Graeme
Click to expand...

I love those "asss"'es -:)

I don't know if you'll get totally unbiased info anywhere. Check Arris forum, and Sony's, too...

Graeme is right in the soft appaearance of the Alexa.
I think it may well be a concious choice, to make the image more "stretchable", sort of the same philosphy as RED but with the opposite solution...

Of the three, RED has the lowest datarate, the most recording options as to framerates and image-formats, the highest resolution and the most flexible codec for post if you know how to handle it.
RED is also the camera that again and again has surprisingly improved greatly in quantum leaps over its lifetime, which is mostly due to two factors:
It records and gives you RAW AND the above quoted poster... -:)

REDs flexibility in post has also used to be its achilles heel, which I happen to think it isn't anymore. You can do fairly "batchy" operations, and get very good baselineresults, and those should only be improved by "fiddeling" with the default settings.

Earlier on, fiddeling was a neccesity.

There are of course good things to be said about the other cameras as well. The Alexa is the only of the three I have spent some time with.

But generally I'd say it's very hard to let go of RAW as soon as you have had the first couple of successfull hits of the RAW juice + Graeme's ongoing work for constant improvement...
 
You could go see "Secretariat" if you want to judge current Genesis photography.

Because the Red technology keeps changing, it's very hard to make any sweeping comparisons. Right now, I'd say that Red photography increasingly has the edge on sharpness/resolution, DR is now similar across the board between the current cameras (with Alexa having the edge -- but I'm not counting HDR-X), but I generally have never had much issue with the color of Genesis movies per se, for some reason they haven't had that problem with looking brown-magenta with cyan blues that some images I've seen in the past shot on the Phantom, ARRI D21, and Red One... but I suspect that's more to do with color science issues than inherent sensor design issues. But from the start, Genesis-shot movies have been fairly full in color spectrum, looking at movies such as "The Forbidden Kingdom" for example. Perhaps it is just due to how well PanaLog was designed from the start, as opposed to how long it took to get the color science behind the other cameras to get up to speed. Certainly I suspect that the output from an RGB striped sensor is simpler, faster to process into RGB, essentially needing a less sophisticated or complex algorithm.

But, as I said, color science keeps evolving, and recent Red-shot movies seem more natural and realistic in color rendition than ever before, and dynamic range seems better with the M-X sensor (and of course, HDR-X will be a major leap). And Red tops them all in terms of resolution, and usually more resolution, i.e. oversampling, gives you more flexibility in post.

But when I saw "Secretariat" in a 35mm print, I noticed basically that the colors were fairly film-like, but there was a lot of softness to the image. Now some of that was lens diffusion in order to give it a 1970's look, but I also think there are just limits to 1080P photography which are becoming more noticeable over time as our standards get raised.

Now in terms of edge sharpness, I prefer the look of Red photography, which is has the look of more resolution / less edge sharpness (i.e. more like 35mm film) versus the F35 and Genesis image, which seems to have less resolution but more edge sharpness, but sort of a twittery edginess, which makes the image feel more electronic.
 
I think a lot of what you mention in colorimetry is actually grading choices. Perhaps not all, but when I look at the colorimetry of the various cameras, to me, RED, Arri, Canon stills all look and measure really well. I wasn't impressed on the F35 from the available charts from CML. With better charts I could be more confident on that. Arri basic image seems to be very under-saturated though, but accurate enough on hue.

Graeme
 
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David Mullen ASC said:
Now in terms of edge sharpness, I prefer the look of Red photography, which is has the look of more resolution / less edge sharpness (i.e. more like 35mm film) versus the F35 and Genesis image, which seems to have less resolution but more edge sharpness, but sort of a twittery edginess, which makes the image feel more electronic.
Click to expand...

"Twittery Edginess" perfectly describes what I've always despised about the look of certain digital cameras. I'm going to use this one.
 
Hey guys, Apologies for not placing this post in the other camera section (new to the reduser.net map). I am a Red supporter, I just was curious what other people of whom have had experience on many of these new technologies has to say about the comparisons both in camera and in post work flows. Again, my apologies for any frustrations.
-Martin
 
You can get strong "twittery" edges with a less than super-sharp lens due to sensor sampling issues. With the RED we have a high native resolution, so we don't push it into edginess - there's no need. We don't sharpen or use too weak an optical low pass filter. We want a smooth, "chocolaty" (for want of a better word) continuous image. A high native resolution allows us to achieve that without the image being too soft.

Graeme
 
The F35/Genesis has the weight on both the Red and the Alexa, but it has a lot of plastic as well, I could imagine the Red with it's all metal body delivering some crushing blows to the SRW1 deck, one good whack and I'm pretty sure the fragile SR deck is useless.

Not so sure about the Alexa, it's got about 5lbs on the Red and is built pretty solid. That would be an interesting fight though.
 
Panavision Genesis lighter than a RED...?

From Panavision's own Genesis FAQ:
"The Genesis body weighs only 14.5 lbs with the videotape recorder removed."
"...The camera weighs about 28 lbs with the recorder on board, but it’s nicely balanced for hand held shooting."

RED body weighs 10lbs.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding someone here...

Anyways RED's a helluva lot lighter than the Panavision System-65 I used way back when...85lbs with 1000' of 65mm neg! (As my AC found out when the camera toppled over on him!)
 
Graeme Nattress said:
We don't sharpen or use too weak an optical low pass filter. We want a smooth, "chocolaty" (for want of a better word) continuous image. A high native resolution allows us to achieve that without the image being too soft.

Graeme
Click to expand...

I won't pretend to know how low-pass filters work, but I'm really glad y'all don't "sharpen" the images. This is a very big deal to me.
 
David Quinn Carder said:
I won't pretend to know how low-pass filters work, but I'm really glad y'all don't "sharpen" the images. This is a very big deal to me.
Click to expand...

It's pretty much a blurry piece of glass in front of the sensor. If you don't soften the image enough, you get aliasing, but if you soften it too much, the image will not be sharp.
 
David Quinn Carder said:
I won't pretend to know how low-pass filters work, but I'm really glad y'all don't "sharpen" the images. This is a very big deal to me.
Click to expand...

None of these high-end cameras "sharpen" the image unless you want them to, they are mostly shot without any artificial edge enhancement. What I'm talking about is the amount of low-pass filtering that these cameras use in front of the sensors to reduce aliasing. A high-resolution camera like the Red One can afford to apply a stronger degree of filtering to reduce aliasing; but my gut impression of many HD cameras is that they use a minimal amount of low-pass filtering in order to preserve as much resolution as they can, leading to a certain "crispy" look to the image. But that's not due to artificial edge enhancement (i.e. "sharpening") per se. Now the cynics would probably say that some of the softening of the Red image is also coming from the compression used, but I don't have any evidence of that one way or the other. My general point is only that I'd rather have an oversampled image with more anti-aliasing softening applied than the other way around because the image looks detailed without looking overly crisp, a more natural "film-like" sharpness.

In defense of the Genesis, however, I'd say that it came out of the box more or less with excellent color and contrast reproduction, and with a well-trod HD post workflow behind it, and a well-designed LOG format that worked in a wide variety of color-correction devices. There's a good reason why so many Hollywood features and TV shows have been shot with it. And the footage didn't suffer from being mishandled the way Red footage could if the workflow wasn't properly thought-out.

Until the M-X sensor arrived with the new color science, it was a toss-up for me between these cameras when asked which to rent because there were so many pros and cons both ways in terms of workflow, practicality, and reliability, not to mention, rental service / tech support. I'd give directors the laundry list of reasons why they might go one way or the other. Now the M-X Red One's have a lot more "pros" on their list than before because the technology has kept advancing, whereas the Genesis is still the same camera it was five years ago.

On the other hand, it's still hard to beat Panavision's tech support for renters. And I love Primo lenses.

BTW, I'm currently shooting Season Three of "United States of Tara" again on the Genesis, and it's working as smoothly as ever, the camera is very low-maintenance, easy to use. My main beef is simply the size & weight of the thing. The image quality is excellent for HD broadcast work and I use diffusion filters to get the softness I want. But I doubt I'd ever be able to switch the series over to the Red One because of the workflow; these series want to just dub tapes for post, they don't want to deal with the transcoding step. This is the main reason the Alexa has taken off for TV work, the simplicity (and thus low cost) of importing Apple Pro-Pres files into the post workflow.

But for feature work, resolution becomes a much bigger issue than dailies workflow costs, and I'm much more likely to push for an M-X Red One, and even more so, an M-X Epic with HDR-X, than I would a 1080P camera.
 
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