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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 :)

NEW POLL: Would You Buy a Full Academy Aperture (4:3) RED Dragon Sensor Upgrade ?

NEW POLL: Would You Buy a Full Academy Aperture (4:3) RED Dragon Sensor Upgrade ?

  • YES

    Votes: 28 65.1%

  • NO

    Votes: 15 34.9%
  • Total voters
    43
One day I think Red will release something around a 36 x (18.95mm or 18.52mm), which would be a bit higher than 7K if they scaled Dragon to that size. Within that you can find a traditional Super35 Full Ap and Academy 4:3 aspect ratios.

Dragon in itself isn't that much smaller, but increasing the sensor to this larger size would add some additional costs. That approximate sensor size to me is the utopia most cinematographers are looking for.

Resolution for IMAX, opening up VistaVision/full frame 35mm as a format, the ability to shoot true 4:3 anamorphic, plus the ability to choose shooting at 5K/4K for a similar frame to traditional S35.

We'll get there one day.
 
Would love to have a Program option to go to the taller portion of the (theoretical) 4:3 sensor to shoot...compete with 70mm for Dome and Imax projection. Seems that is a very niche market though....one i bet is exploited sooner than we think.
 
Waste of money; 6k is already overkill for 4k delivery... 6k desqueezed and cropped, is still going to be gobs of excess resolution. I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time trying to make my footage look less digital by (technically) degrading the image. In fact, using anamorphic lenses kind of helps in that regard; so why would anyone pay to have an exclusive 4:3 sensor?

That said, what has more supersampling resolution: A 4:3 sensor cropped to 16:9, or a 16:9 sensor cropped to 4:3 and desqueezed to 2.4:1?
 
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I think there's a lot of factors to consider here. The Dragon sensor is already gaining some size over the current MX sensor. Not much, but probably about 2mm in vertical height. It also packs more pixels into the same area. The maximum 4:3 area on Dragon should be close to 21.25mm x 15.75mm, so it's very close to what is offered on those ARRI cameras.

For just shooting anamorphic, I don't see a huge advantage to get the extra 2.4mm horizontally and 2.5mm vertically at what may amount to a rather large price increase and an odd-sized sensor. If RED were to take the current sensor size and contort it to a 4:3 aspect ratio, we end up with something that's somewhat strange. If they make it taller to fill out the 4:3 proportion, then it becomes essentially an APS-H sized sensor, which is a pretty much screwed up standard. Unless you're a Canon shooter with one of the relatively few cameras to use the odd-sized sensor. It's larger than APS-C/ DX/ S35 if they were to do this, but still smaller than 35mm Full Frame.

Making the sensor a 4:3 aspect sensor in the Super35mm size, it would end up being a much smaller overall sensor. The MX and Dragon are essentially 2:1 sensors -- MX is 1.89:1 aspect.

If they were to only increase the height by about 3mm, then it would have enough vertical height to shoot 4:3 aspect and cover the full S35 aperture. But that would give the overall sensor about a 1.666:1 aspect, or roughly 15:9.... Kinda odd, so in most cases there would be wasted pixels. In contrast to most of what gets shot on these cameras, anamorphic is a very small niche.

I think they're doing just fine with the sensor proportions, however I think a lot of us are very interested in larger sensors for a variety of reasons. A number of people would be very interested in a FF35 sized sensor! A number of us are still hoping RED will release the EPIC-645 that was announced so long ago. That would give us the ability to shoot almost anything -- even placing us within 12% of the frame size of 15/70 IMAX and right about the same as the forthcoming digital IMAX frame size.

All things considered, I would gladly take any larger sensor that RED offers... Be it only 2.5mm taller or full 6x4.5cm medium format, I think many of us would find a way to use it.

That said, as I pointed out above, the wider sensor in the RED cameras is already larger than what is in the Alexa or the new Sony cameras. It just depends on how you use it, the size advantage runs horizontally.
 
We've worked so hard to get away from the SD 4:3 look. I'd much rather stay with 16x9 or wider.
 
Will Keir said:
We've worked so hard to get away from the SD 4:3 look. I'd much rather stay with 16x9 or wider.
Click to expand...

IMAX is 4:3 and so is 2.35:1 Widescreen Anamorphic. :P
 
Mike P. said:
Waste of money; 6k is already overkill for 4k delivery... 6k desqueezed and cropped, is still going to be gobs of excess resolution. I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time trying to make my footage look less digital by (technically) degrading the image. In fact, using anamorphic lenses kind of helps in that regard; so why would anyone pay to have an exclusive 4:3 sensor?

That said, what has more supersampling resolution: A 4:3 sensor cropped to 16:9, or a 16:9 sensor cropped to 4:3 and desqueezed to 2.4:1?
Click to expand...

I think 6k is absolutely not to much for 4k delivery, not to much as "extra look around" / "pan in scan", not to much for efx shots and absolutly not to much for 4k delivery greenscreen work... I'm now working on a 15minute clip for a feature that will be delivered in 4k and it has about 50 layers in it... keying without downscaling from original frame size is quite demanding to say the least...
 
In the end we probably have huge round sensors and then we just pick the frame size... 3:4, 1:3 or some of the old not used in cinema any more 1:1.85 or 1:2.35... :)
think it's odd that the DCP's are not keeping those old formats. As I understand 16:9 is also not an option for DCP's they went for 1:1.181 and 1:2.41 quite odd I think.
 
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