1st 24 hours with an Epic

[Gunleik Groven]

Which by now would be silly to say too much about, as I haven't dug into the files yet.

BUT

It has been incredible fun to handle Eiriks camera.
I urge everyone to rent it from him to get a hold of it. Seeing is believing

The setup is peretty basic. Basically the body, LCD and SSDs.

I didn't do chart bonanza. But challenging exposures with and without HDRx.

I'd really love to put it through its paces for another couple of days after initial analyzis.

OK.
That was the reservations...

I think I have never so intimately bonded with a piece of hardware in so short time.
I feel like just taking it away with me.

No grip?
Who cares.
No internal battery?
Who cares.

The images (on set) just look so smooth and "fat" and in a good way noisefree.

Haven't a/b'd it with any other cam yet.
This was just a matter of oportunity, that had to be taken.

But from an operators perspective, this gives you all the confidence and comfort that the R1 in a way never seems to offer.

With the R1 (especially MX) I get the feel that every bit it stretched to the farest capacity.

With the Epic I get the feel of surpluss positive energy.

So.

This was not very scientific or analytical.
But emotions are good, too.

They can give confidence to a DP/operator.

I really fell in love with this kit - for lack of better words.

And redLogFilm in-camera is just what the doctor ordered. Thanks!!!

More to follow!

Cheers!

Gunleik

 

[Clint Lealos]

Thanks Gunleik, that all sounds like really good news... another super positive first impression from someone I trust

 

[michael zaletel]

Received my REDMOTE and DSMC Side Handle today. It's really starting to come together. Can't wait for the REDVOLTS.

-michael zaletel

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Ouch.

Will come back with a more thorough report.
But I had far too much fun using it, than measuring it at the first encounter.

I might just post some images from the shoot, but they don't show the incredible versatility of the cam, they will however show you how much fun I had.

If it is possible to say that a tool is inspiring, Epic is!

 

[Gunleik Groven]

So, I'll just start off with some informal and non-analytical examples of new non-distracting fun...

1. It does not seem to go magenta when overexposed, just beautifully white even under tungsten:

It does seem to like some IR filtering when you fire off a 650 directly into it, though:

 

[Gunleik Groven]

The positive vibe of the kit, seems to even give the subject some extra confidence and happiness...

 

[Brice Ansel]

Hé hé those Black and white shots reminds me a hot experimental short you made public a while ago.
I've an idea of Gunleik atmosphere.

Really like that one though

Thanks for your time sharing, I like your unconventional aproch when it comes to play with a red tool.
Please keep it up.
Cheers

 

[Detlev Eller]

The positive vibe of the kit, seems to even give the subject some extra confidence and happiness...

EPIC makes Happy ...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

EPIC makes Happy ...

And happiness is a warm Gun...

@ Ansel, if it is what I think you are talking about, it's actually just finnished editing and is in online now. It developed a lot since the first cuts...

I will be posting examples as I develop them. As said, most of the technical focus were on dynamics.

Later on I'll focus a bit wider, and probably do some comparisons to relevant cameras, too.

BTW. some have suggested i remove the doorhandle from the IR image... Agree? I sort of liked the disturbance...

Bang Bang Shoot Shoot

 

[Brice Ansel]

@ Ansel, if it is what I think you are talking about, it's actually just finnished editing and is in online now. It developed a lot since the first cuts...

A link?


BTW Call me Brice. Ansel is my family name
Cheers

 

[Gunleik Groven]

@ Brice
No link, until it's done later this summer, but I might put it out for initial response before pulling it...

On another note, I'll be posting some HDRX niceties later today...

Stay tuned

 

[Gunleik Groven]

HDRx, part 1

HDRx, part 1

So...

This was the day of dynamix...

And of course I tested HDRx under different conditions.

I have a lot of thoughts about this feature, but will reserve them for later. Maybe in this thread. But I DO think this is the most promising and groundbreaking technology presented with the Epic. At the same time, the implementation - as in RCX, is still in many ways in its infancy.

I do understand why Ivan (I think) from Light Iron said he preferred to do the blend manually, and Jim (again: I think) said the RCX implementation was "for quick proxies", or something to that nature.

Unfortunately this clip is neither sexy, good looking, nor particularily funny, but it's kind of informative.
(and, yep - I'm in there somewhere. A pint to the ones who can recognize me...)

And here is the downloadlink to the movie examlple:
http://gunleik.com/tests/hdrx/hdrx_01.mov


I have examples of much better and much worse implementations, but as a startingpoint, I like this.

Discuss!


Cheers!

G

 

[Mark Toia]

Looks like your having fun mate

 

[Eric Z]

Gunleik,

I think you need to brighten-up the combined HDRx footage a little more.
The A track seems properly exposed, but when you add the X track - it all goes a bit too dim inside the shop.
Of course, brightening the scene needs to be done without "blowing up" the outside, which is what you used HDRx for in the first place.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

@ Mark: Yes!

@ Eric: sure...
I'll maybe discuss exactly that in a little while...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Overexposure - 01

Overexposure - 01

Most cams I know, start doing weird stuff when the exposure borders on clip.

Especially skintones seem to suffer as they are exposed farther awway from a cameras comfort-zone, so one of the first things I wanted to look at, was how the Epic handled this.

I started 4 stops over, and stopped down to "base" exposure, one stop at the time.

+4 stops:

+3 stops:

+2 stops:

+1 stop

Base exposure

No alterations done in RCX from the camerasettings, except from a bit of wb adjustment...

In my eyes, this the most beautifull looking overexposure I have ever seen on a digital camera, bar none.

Yes, I would like to hear comments to what you see!

The slight color-oddities seen in + 2 and +1 are due to the jpg compression and in no way the Epics fault....

More to follow....

 

[Gunleik Groven]

HDRx and overexposure - single subject

HDRx and overexposure - single subject

... but I wouldn't have done that without recording an X-channel, would I?

Of course not.

Here are the same images with the X channel applied to all, including the base exposure.

For all but the base exposure, I lowered the ISO from 800 to 640 in post...


+4 stops

+3 stops

+2 stops

+1 stop

Base exposure + slight X-channel

Soooooo... that leads to some conclusions....

A bit more than: HDRx is nice and Tuva is a lovely girl...

 

[Eric Z]

Wow...HDRx allows for a very nice recovery of the highlights.

I wonder what would happen to the image with +4 stops if you tried recovering the highlights in post using only the A channel, much like you would try to do with a single RAW still image from a DSLR.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

So... I'll do some more HDRx stuff later on (other images with different scenarios).

This has become a more of "notes for an initial article" while I go through the files, than anything else. Hope that's fine. And I'd love to hear some of the more experienced Epic users thoughts on what I think I see.

Anyhow, a couple of temporal conclusions by what I've seen so far:.

1. The Epic clips more elegantly than any other digital camera I have seen
2. That's what makes HDRx thinkable. It wouldn't look very good if any or all of the channels went into overdrive when approaching clip, because in that blend, the nasties would still be there. The cleanliness of the clip is a premise for HDRx
3. The way the controlls currently work, it's not suited for all occations "straight out of RCX". In the first case, where I basically wanted the whole image to work, and both exposures had extreme high and low exposed levels in it, it doesn't really work the way I want it to work because of the linear (?) blending of the two images, which basically just weighs which image has most influence over the image. The faces are sometimes exposed quite low, even in the A-track, which makes the +4 stops track being quite (and here we're talking: relatively) noisy and unprecise. I would love to see some kind of limiter/knee adjustment to how the tracks mix. So that you could controll that bellow a level of X the weighing of the X-track fades towards zero over a number of levels towards y.
I think that might solve a lot of the preliminary issues I see.
4. When you have a clear exposure recovery goal, like the skintones in the second example, the current approach works extremely well.
5. HDRx is probably going to be as important for RED as Redcode has been and RedRay will be. It's pure dope.

OK

Move on...

 

[Clint Lealos]

Wow! I see many possibilities for future post tools using HDRx. Can't wait to see what else you got Gunleik. Thanks for sharing.