D-20 v. Red Filmout Test

[Poi Boy]

Mradeck,
You live in your own reality and it is a bit off.
-A

 

[laguun]

the problem is, that many people think, ah there's a new cheap camera we could use it and produce the same quality as other productions with much higher budgets, most of them are tv-video-cameramen's who has no 35 mm knowledge

... as peter jackson or steven soderberg.

And many of them haven't the chance to compare to other good cameras. May be the know HDV or HDCAM.

different from you, mr radeck, i own both camera systems. and i think your claims are just an testemonial to your own lack of qualification.

I work daily with all good best stuff of D20 Thompson Viper F23, F950, 1500er, any camera what you want.

I dont want you to work with cameras. If you cant resist: take HDV.

furthermore you dont work daily with the best stuff. you are an tv editor which, due to the lacks of funding and quality assurance in the german educational system is allowed to teach.

I'm Trainer for HD-Postproduction. On Our Workshops we provide all post systems: Quantel IQ 4k, EQ, discreet lustre, AVID DS Nitris, Sympony Nitris, Final Cut with color what you want.

And its imprtant to note that after all these years you were not able to buy just one of the systems you mentioned. Furthermore, please disclose who "we" is. I would be highly interested in directly contacting your managers at "we" to exchange some opinions.

Tell me, how many RED-Owner has worked with all that stuff? 1 percent? Well i have.

You don´t own a red camera, you donßt own any of the cameras you mentioned and you are not even able to adjust backfocus.

On the last handsonhd - workshop in hannover i have worked with michael ballhaus german DOP from Hollywood, he was trainer of the camera masterclass, they shot on D20, Viper, F750 a shortfilm,

You didn´t work with michael.
You were not even on the camera group.

i graded this material, i was head of postproduction, and main trainer of the post classes where we integrated the cameraclasses.

just to clarify for foreign readers: hands on hd is held once a year and the people who are attending it usually are doing their first steps in hd. ah, and yes, its the same group of people who want to proposed 720p as broadcast standard from 2011 on in germany ...

If you have a good highres digital projection you will see the problem and also the differnce in quality. Also with many hdcam-tv-productions we have this problem, we had not before with standard definition.

cruel world. suddenly you have to pull focus... btw, i know several mobile phones you might find more suitable for your needs.

i have spent many many days of grading D20 material, especially dark material. Noisefree as nothing else.

The D20 is much to noisy. One of the main reasons why corps like mine or fxfactory decided not to use it often. That you proclaim one of the most noisiest digital cameras beeing noisefree is underlining your level of expertise once more.

i would use F23 definetly for nightshots.

which is ok.
however you are doing PAL television, not cinema, so it doesn´t matter to much.

And in HD it's resolution is also better then red, because you loose much resolution if you downscale red material to HD. We compared several systems and algorithm.

mhm. oversampling reduces resolution. mhm.
aha.

how many people has the knowledge and long practice in dealing with 65 mm, and can produce sharp picture fast and safe and cheap!???

i think you need more question marks...

Think about that! And imagine then what will be the reality!

dada?

i not a cameraman anymore i'm a post guy,

an average tv-post guy, to be precise, correct?

show me the picture that poves the max resolution of the red.

if you can afford it, then buy some tickets for the upcoming soderbergh films or make sure you don´t miss reds 4k presentation at the d-cinema in amsterdam again.

well i have edited longform 35 mm films

for tv.

This camera has no 4k Resolution, and it's very difficult to get more the 2k out at the end of the workflow. I cannot tell you here all the experience we made: come to our next workshop: www.handsonhd.de there we will have several D20, RED, F23, in summary about 30 cameras and the capacity for more then 300 students for 7 day in june 2008 in Hannover.

I think its time for me to contact the management at handsonhd and maybe michael b.

 

[Ariana]

Whats your problem? I have no relationship to any camera-manufacturer.

I always have problems with manufactures and owners, because i analyse and demystify. Not more. Is it that?

If you read your posts it's quite clear you are so Arri biased that either you work for Arri or you see everything with a heavily biased Arri world view.

Looking at your comments and then looking at your test images it's also clear that your intention is very disingenuous. The images appear to have been processed with the least favorable settings for red. Laguun's comments make it even more clear and throws out any validity to the tests.

And you're from Arri's hometown...

 

[mradeck]

i have to add some insights to mr. radecks tests.

he mailed me offlist... and i have asked him from stopping that. in his mails, he stated quite interesting facts about his approach to resolution tests:

- they were not able measure focus - so they focused by the lcd.

Hi Jan, thats wrong!! I told you that we found out, that if you measure with a tape measure then you are most of the time off focus depending on lens type! because of the problems with the backfocus of the red. There are many other users who stated this on their websites! Also we found out, that's impossible to measure only with the monitor, my studend believed so i told and showed them that they were off focus!! You completly misunderstood my short comments! we used also the focus assist feature and external measurement astro-waveform scaled up and leader waveform. also we opend the aperture and used highcontrast testcharts!! but all that i don't told you, you did'nt ask for!!

so pleas pay attention of interpreting correct some short emails!!!

- he "invented" the testcharts himself, as, let me quote "no one is able to design digital testcharts so far".

besides "professional" testcharts (esser etc) we used also my own. for some extra tests, which normal testcharts does not provide!!! come to my workshops and learn new things!!

- he also was pretty generous and offered me his testcharts... which he designed in photoshop. my witty remarks regarding dithering, filtering and blending in this particular pipeline were met with "i can switch off filtering in photoshop". Btw, it seems he published his testcharts free of charge.

there is a setting in photoshop to turn off. i can show you. but in my testcharts need no interpolation!! we did not talk about dithering! that's also not part of the design of the cameratestcharts!


anyone who is interested in my testchart can asked me.

- he shared his interesting understandings regarding 1980ties state-of-the art debayer strategies etc.

jan has stated that's red chip is not a bayern pattern, as i know it is. I only stated that any bayern pattern has a 2 to 1 green to red/blue resolution, thats correct is it!? And you need four of those pixels to combine to on real rgb pixel, but the art of combinations are the mysterium! correct?

and what's that:?

http://www.redhax.net/wiki/Bayer_Demosaicing


and anyone should know the nyquist-theorem! you need 4k rgb to transport 2k rgb without moire or other loosing detail. And 4k raw bayernpattern could never be 3,5 k rgb. thats physically mathematically impossible.

therefore i have to regard his "measurements" as void - as he clearly has not enough expertise to measure anything more than his mistakes in the test setup.

wheres the proof of your knowledge that the red has 3,5 k resolution what you claimed??? thats theoretically and especially practically impossible. Not on a optical bank. Not in real production-workflows! Show it, then i will be quit.

An opinion shouldn´t replace knowledge imho. he might disagree.

yes i doo

We will luckily have to deal with that type of self proclaimed experts for some months still, and i think his findings are a valuable contribution for any educated reader.

If you have no arguments, then you provide only invectives.

 

[mradeck]

You don´t own a red camera, you donßt own any of the cameras you mentioned and you are not even able to adjust backfocus.

yes i know

You didn´t work with michael.
You were not even on the camera group.

all camera groups had to go to my postclass, especially the masterclass. thats concept of the workshop! ask the nordmedia or BANDPro Hendrik Vogt!

just to clarify for foreign readers: hands on hd is held once a year and the people who are attending it usually are doing their first steps in hd. ah, and yes, its the same group of people who want to proposed 720p as broadcast standard from 2011 on in germany ...

The work shop has classes for beginner and professionels i think you should go to the beginners class, because of your lack of knowledge, owning is no proof for professionality.

mhm. oversampling reduces resolution. mhm.
aha.

not oversampling - downconverting- depending on how much oversampling is there (nyquist theorem!!)
well thats show realy that you don't have much real post experience. and may be you use the wrong monitors. And you don't know how to adjust them correct.

an average tv-post guy, to be precise, correct?

I have done all kind of postproduction. You don't know much about me, so don't claim things you don't know.

if you can afford it, then buy some tickets for the upcoming soderbergh films or make sure you don´t miss reds 4k presentation at the d-cinema in amsterdam again.

i have seen the 4k presentation several times, also i have worked one year with the sony 4k projector as a product specialist, i have seen real sharp real 4k rgb virtual 3D pictures from BMW and AUDI on those projectors far away from any 4k film or 4k red that are much more unsharp.

 

[Poi Boy]

You have seen Red's 4K presentation several times ? where ?
-A

 

[SF Geek]

I have to say it does seem like everyone's jumping on mradeck. As much as I would like Red to be the best camera ever, considering I already paid for it, I'm still open to the idea that other cameras might outperform it in some aspects. Mradeck likes the D-20 image better than the Red. What's wrong with that? People need to stop jumping all over sources of dissent. Maybe you don't agree with his testing methods, but some of the posters seem like they wouldn't believe any test that shows fault in the Red because they don't want to see it.

 

[Martin Ludwig]

Just curious... where did you get 5 RED's in Germany? How many were "x" cameras (new ones)?

Jim

I should clear some things here :
On our Red workshop we had 5 cameras, nr 144,145,276,277,278. This workshop we called testing team and we had a seriuos number of well known german dop´s, assistants and post people on board. The plan was to bring this camera to those persons wanting to shoot with that camera. We tried to answer questions, we know this was a very empiric situation. Of course we had some issues with sharpness, with cf cards, with framerates and so on..- BUT we wanted to know exactly that. There is nothing new when we talk about the not ideal situation with the PL mount, the issue with not delivered viewfinders and also all know that a test to find out how big the dynamic range of the camera is - will be obsolete in some weeks.
The question of resolution and the way to get the best results is a scientifix thing. Most of us (or maybe not) know the problem of any artifacts - but mostly we do not know when and why. There are many facts about interpolation and cmos sensors, debayering and scaling - so everybody has to find out how to use the camera. Of course we will continue to develop the perfect workflow and the perfect way to use this camera - but we do it for us and for our customers. We will do not any shootouts between any cameras because we hate shootouts since the beginning of HD. We are sure that this camera will be a very good tool for many many filmmakers and productions and we have an increasing demand on it. In some weeks we will have more than our 5 cameras - so everybody can imagine why.
On the other hand it is well known how much the camera costs in comparism to a D20 and a F23. If I would be asked for my wishes I can say - make a Red Two very soon as a cinematographic tool with all the development of the RED one, but with some more features for the cinematographic people - and it could cost around 40.000 USD.

Why do we not post our results from the workshop? because there is noting new - it was an empiric situation, we did many stuff, we have a 23 minutes HDCamSR tape and one tb data with all important files. we will use this to move some steps forward - but this discussion / thread here is bowring and not really effective.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

I think here some Germans (not all) on this forum have got crazy just because of that ARRI is going to loose (or already have lost) a cine camera market leadership in digital age.

It's like in a football (soccer).

Now ARRI employed the Balkan's boy as a coach to fight the competition (RED, Panavision, Sony, etc...).

Interesting to see the end of a game.

 

[Martin Ludwig]

I think here some Germans (not all) on this forum have got crazy just because of that ARRI is going to loose (or already have lost) a cine camera market leadership in digital age.

It's like in a football (soccer).

Now ARRI employed the Balkan's boy as a coach to fight the competition (RED, Panavision, Sony, etc...).

No Sanjin - I don´t think so. Arri ofcourse is a german trade mark, but all the people have a good distance to Arri. Also Michael Radeck who is indeed and definitely not a Arri guy.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Ludumux.

OK, agree, as you said.

It was just my 2c's.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Graeme, I have a question. When you say 32 bit float YCbCr you mean each of the components Y, Cb, and Cr are 32 bits, or the total is 32 bits, i.e., something like 10 bits for each of Y, Cb, and Cr, and hence, 30 bits stuffed in 32 bits.

Thanks for any insight.

32bits for each component.

Graeme

 

[Seán_T]

i have spent many many days of grading D20 material, especially dark material. Noisefree as nothing else.

Well some of the modes the D20 shoots in are worse then others. We did a test last year of all modes the camera can shoot in (Log C, Log F, Extended range, and Linear-ish) and of all the modes available the Log C mode proved to be very noisey (very noticeable streaks of noise) and I had to push the saturation 500% to get it to look right. On the other hand the the Rec 709 mode looked absolutely great.

The camera has improved since then so I cant comment on it currently, but last year I know that it looked Great/Terrible depending on mode.

 

[Seán_T]

Arri is looking to be bought and this is no doubt because their attempt in get into digital has failed. Everyone knows that the D20 is too noisy for practical speeds and that there's no way for them to save the project.

Tin Man the Wizard of Oz re-do was shot on the D20 and the only complaint I heard from the producers was how much light it needed. I didnt grade the show but I've seen the master and it looked great.

So its definitely "practical" and not quite ready to be mothballed yet.

 

[Shawn Bannon]

I thinks its time for a blind taste test. Watching all the formats back to back and see what we like. The point of being a professional is making stuff look awesome. So i am sure all the major players will show up with some insane footage. I actually saw a similar test it had everything but the RED in it about a year ago i think at the DGA.

Every professional tool has to be modified by the user. And custom parts are made. I think coming from a rental background you go to a place like Clairmont and they custom make all types of cool stuff for Arri's, and they actually rebuilt the front of the body of the Sony HD cameras for back-focus reasons.

I watched Clairmont pull apart a 416 and give good advice to modifications they could make. and I know some of those modifications were made. I know Clairmont will make mods when they get their Red Cameras they know exactly what their customers needs and if they don't have it they'll make it. Any good rental house will.

 

[Alexander Nikishin]

The newest Jason Statham movie to hit apple trailers "The Bank Job" looks good.

So does "The Company" which was also shot on the D-20.

The D-20 is definitely an awesome camera.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488352/

 

[David Nardini]

share it ... do it !

share it ... do it !

i understand your point but think about that:

don't believe any test you haven't faked by yourself! Many words that are posted in this forum are blablabla. And a picture posted here is not a proof. Could be from any digital camera.

show me any picture that shows a better picture then arri D20 recorded on HDCAM SR or SII!?

Make your own tests and then believe or not.

at the moment i'm too busy to provide material. Sorry But its on my timeline.

Huh ... 'don't believe any test you haven't faked by yourself' what on earth are you on about ? Is this your measuring stick ? Faking your own results ? I'm sure you do not mean that !

All I'm suggesting is that you make available the raw footage from each device that you compared and I'm sure we can figure out for ourselves what is what.

On a subsequent post (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=156395&postcount=60) you say :

...
Can you tell us or show something interesting? So do it!
...

Well, given that you have apparently done it, you can surely share the output with us (I'm not so interested in the 'telling' & more on the 'showing') ?
As you say ... 'so do it!'

Cheers,

 

[Bruce Allen]

The newest Jason Statham movie to hit apple trailers "The Bank Job" looks good.

Bank Job was on a D-20?! I had no idea... funnily enough, we (mOcean) did that trailer.

I do remember the reflective glass in all of the cards taking a VERY long time to render at 2K though... good thing they haven't gone all 8K crazy on us yet!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Alexander Nikishin]

Bank Job was on a D-20?! I had no idea... funnily enough, we (mOcean) did that trailer.

I do remember the reflective glass in all of the cards taking a VERY long time to render at 2K though... good thing they haven't gone all 8K crazy on us yet!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

http://www.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?d-20

Great camera.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Bank Job was on a D-20?! I had no idea... funnily enough, we (mOcean) did that trailer.

I do remember the reflective glass in all of the cards taking a VERY long time to render at 2K though... good thing they haven't gone all 8K crazy on us yet!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

"The Bank Job" TRAILER>>>