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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 :)

How can Canon manage not to put a fan in C300 while we have a noisy fan in scarlet?

If I'm not mistaken, isn't the camera currently running without power management features? I wonder if everything is running at full power now and later firmware updates will allow chips to draw less power at certain times. Could help the heat/noise issue somewhat. Kinda like how my laptop is dead silent when i'm surfing the Internet, using little power, but gets noisy when i'm playing back a HD clip.
 
I wonder if this isn't partly the result of being Epic's little sister. I imagine that there's quite a bit of 'dead weight' in every scarlet that's generating heat and draining power but can't be entirely disabled since say 1/4 of the cores are actually functioning. In the case of the C300 it's probably binning pixels at the sensor level so it's not actually dealing with 4x the data. DCT compression is also a lot lighter on the processor load than Jp2k.
 
Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
I also did a test where I put on a lens cap and put the record fan level around 25% and just left the camera recording starting at ~46C all the way until it hit 75C. Looking at the images in RC-X at ISO3200 there was a visible image noise and black level increase as the camera heated up. I did another black balance with the camera running around 70C and found it helped a bit in reducing noise in this environment. It is worth considering that it's not just a question of how low you can set your fan to avoid hitting 75C and overheating, but there is also a tradeoff where if you allow the camera to heat up even if it does not overheat your images may have a higher noise floor.

For the cleanest images, if you are shooting MOS, it may make sense to crank the fan up all the time. What's interesting is I wonder if to some extent it is preferable to keep the camera temperature consistent rather than low when idle and high when recording since it may not be desirable to have a changing noise floor during recording takes.
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Just wanted to re-post Noah's comment, as it's pure genius and very helpful, and need not get lost in the thread.

People tend to point out the loud noise of the Scarlet. From struggling actresses to CEOs running 4 billion/year companies. "Hey is that thing an air conditioner?" I tend to smile and say it has to pull more air through because it's recording far more than the average camera. Then I remember it's compressing far more than quieter cameras, and marvel at Graeme's magic...

Finally, the airflow on the Scarlet/Epic chassis is far from a "flaw." The processing boards are contained within a separate inner compartment around which the air passes like wind around a house, intake on the bottom, outtake on top. Compare this to the Red One "toasty attic" design and we've come a long way.
 
The next 4K cams (Canon & JVC) process a lot of data with real time full debayering without any fan : the miracle of low power components.
 
Epic and Scarlet are workhorse cam. They can last for whole day shoot without any problem as far as I know. I highly doubt you can use any Canon DSLR or any 4k DSLR for whole day shoot without being overheated. I shot with 5D2 DSLR before we usually have 4 backup cams as the these DSLR easily get overheated.
 
I had a famous actress shouting at me to turn off that nerving noise between takes. She couldn't hear herself thinking. I definitly see the noise as a problem. I hope that the power-management update comes soon. In some points RED still has a long way to go before they reach this state of "just right". But i can't blame them, since i bought into the program.
 
I can remember when they made film cams quiet without adding a huge blimp.

I know many might disagree with me, but hey... This is 2012. Cameras should be quiet, and have full size XLR audio inputs. It's not really that much to ask.
 
Now this does not address the fan issue, but it's a modular camera thus you can add full size XLR if you want through modules to be released(I know not out yet but that's the price of being an early adopter plus there are workarounds). Who knows, though I'm not sure how you would accomplish it, but perhaps they could even make a cooling module, once again no idea how to pull it off.

Nothing in this world is perfect and never will be, you just have to pick the compromises you are willing to accept and what product suits your needs and move on.

Have a good one!

p.s. plus you get many solutions on just the brain itself so you can go minimal and get your foot in the door, or build it up to suit the needs that a professional production require with very few compromises.
 
David W. Jones said:
I can remember when they made film cams quiet without adding a huge blimp.

I know many might disagree with me, but hey... This is 2012. Cameras should be quiet, and have full size XLR audio inputs. It's not really that much to ask.
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You don't have to ask for it, there are dozens of cameras that are quiet and have full size XLR inputs, just none that are also small and record more than 2k RAW and are affordable. But hey, this is 2012 where all tradeoffs in price/performance/design/market no longer exist so why aren't all of our cameras exactly what we dream they should be?

Personally I like RED's modular approach, so why have a larger camera with full size XLR in one spot when a $8 cable turns much smaller TRS inputs into a full size XLR that can be wherever you want it?
 
Togan Gokbakar said:
I truly love my scarlet,but annoyed with couple of design flows. Such as the noisy fan and the cmos being in a tunnel which makes wide leica lenses impossible to use. Today I attended a C300 presentation. I don't like the c300. Why on earth someone pay 15-20 thousand for a 4:2:2 8 bit camera. But I appreciated one thing.I realised that there is no fan in it.( maybe a silent one I dunno) How can canon manage not to put a fan in a camera where probably using more processing power to turn the raw data to a XF codec? I wish a silent scarlet in future. What do you think?
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Strange. My handy cam and iPhone also preforms without a fan... but My car has a fan and that nuclear reactor I saw on internet also had some sort of cooling or fan... maybe it's something due to size. Since the c300 is recording such really small pictures it might not need one.
 
Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
You don't have to ask for it, there are dozens of cameras that are quiet and have full size XLR inputs, just none that are also small and record more than 2k RAW and are affordable. But hey, this is 2012 where all tradeoffs in price/performance/design/market no longer exist so why aren't all of our cameras exactly what we dream they should be?

Personally I like RED's modular approach, so why have a larger camera with full size XLR in one spot when a $8 cable turns much smaller TRS inputs into a full size XLR that can be wherever you want it?
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To be honest I like a larger camera that is designed to be shouldered out of the box.
And how much bigger would the camera be using industry standard XLR inputs, 2 inches?
 
David W. Jones said:
To be honest I like a larger camera that is designed to be shouldered out of the box.
And how much bigger would the camera be using industry standard XLR inputs, 2 inches?
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A RED ONE is what you are looking for, perhaps. (Although, since it has mini-XLRs you might just have to move on.)
 
Which type of fan are Red using in their cameras? I know certain 'premium' fans like Noctua with their SSO bearings are much quieter than yout typical sleeve bearing and ball bearing fans.
 
David W. Jones said:
To be honest I like a larger camera that is designed to be shouldered out of the box.
And how much bigger would the camera be using industry standard XLR inputs, 2 inches?
Click to expand...

But I like one that can be hand-held :-). And I'd take a guess that people building 3d rigs would also disagree with the need for 2 full-size XLR inputs hard-wired into the standard body. I think the modularity of the system is a strength, though I definitely had a period of time where I didn't realize that modularity means that you have to budget differently and answer more questions than with a traditional mass-market one-size camera.

I'm not a fan-boy at all, I just think that people who say Scarlet should have been "X", but "X" can be accomplished with accessories, don't realize that if they'd made it one-size-fits-you then it'd probably have cost 2x to 3x the price.

I also think that it's valid to point out the irksome elements of the camera such as the fan noise (it does indeed sometimes resemble a hair dryer), but as people have noted it was probably due to complex design decisions and not some sort of simple oversight.

Scarlet is not for everyone, and is not perfect, but it's bleeding edge stuff. I'm sure it could have gone through another year of design/testing/R&D investment to round off the edges and get it closer to plug-and-play, but then it would have cost more and been delayed another year. I'm fine with having it now with a few rough edges, but then again I wouldn't critize anyone for deciding that it wasn't the right camera for them at this point.
 
Liana said:
Which type of fan are Red using in their cameras? I know certain 'premium' fans like Noctua with their SSO bearings are much quieter than yout typical sleeve bearing and ball bearing fans.
Click to expand...

Looking in the front vent of a Scarlet-X you can see that the front fan appears to be a ~40mm fan. Fans that size and have to run about 2-4 times as fast as 80mm fans just to get 1/4 the airflow. Realistically, a fan that size will always have to be fairly noisy to make any difference in cooling. It would be great if RED could have fit in a larger slower quieter fan, but then our camera bodies would be a bit larger.
 
Terry VerHaar said:
A RED ONE is what you are looking for, perhaps. (Although, since it has mini-XLRs you might just have to move on.)
Click to expand...

Been shooting on the Red One since it was introduced.
It's not a great shoulder cam either.
To be honest the Alexa is just the right size and fit, but out of my budget range for the low end work I knock out.
 
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