- Moderator
- #1
Evin Grant
Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2006
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- 4,433
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- Location
- SoCal
- Website
- www.evingrantdp.com
I have owned my Red one since Dec. 31st 2007. I have shot and been a part of many high end productions that have been "shot on Red" so very little about the workflow surprises me anymore. I would also consider myself pretty liberal with exposure, routinely shooting at 400 (base) ISO, especially with 5600K lighting, which I have become accustomed too. So I hope you won't think me too "fanboy" or just plain barking mad when I say that I may have just discovered a whole new camera in my camera. In fact a whole new camera that I've had for a year and a half and all the footage I've ever shot with it is also new. OK, here's the rub (there always is one)...
...The new camera comes in two parts.
The first is the new Red Color science and is free but not released except to us test pilots, although that will change soon.
The second costs $100, and you'll need to put in some serious render time.
OK now you have the set up, here's the payoff...
I shot a little project for a director friend of mine a few weeks ago. It's supposed to be a night exterior, warm/cool deal and I had the entire lighting set-up worked out using those blue screen Kino bulbs, which were ordered but somehow got left out of the case and nobody bothered to check the order on pickup. Long story short to get the look the director wanted I had to blue gel the fuck out of a 4x4 Kino and push it through a soft frost leaving me with an exposure of T2 at about 1000 ISO 360º shutter. The noise didn't bother the director that much so we rolled with it. I figured we would have to run it through some heavy iron just to get it to look watchable, but it was what it was.
So tonight, feeling adventurous I ran the footage through the new color science in RA 3.72B and was very encouraged. The overall noise was at about a 1/2 stop better, but the most important difference was the reduction of the splotchyness in the blue channel. Again I wouldn't have characterized this as night and day at this exposure when played side by side but it was a significant improvement. Then a light bulb went off in my head, the biggest obstacle I have always had with noise reduction software is that splotchy blue channel, which always needs to be blurred to hell to fix and ends up killing all the detail. Enter the NeatVideo Pro plug-in (available for FCP, AE and AP). This is the video version of the NeatImage still noise reduction filter and the new Pro version that just came out in April supports 16 bit and 2K+ resolutions.
Sufficed to say the proof is in the pudding...
This is a full res 2K file so be patient, it'll be worth it.
(410MB 20sec 2K 2:1 Apple PR422 file, Cntrl/left click to download)
http://www.evingrant/com/flicks/JW_Noise.mov
The real thorn here is render time, the NeatVideo plug-in is amazing, this puts the Red one squarely in 5DMII territory now, but to get there will cost you about 45min of rendering for every minute of footage:yikes: (Mac Pro 3.0Ghz 8core, 12GB ram). The new Nahlems will probably really help and it may be faster in AE but still. I won't be shooting everything two stops under from now on but I also won't be afraid of the dark either.
...The new camera comes in two parts.
The first is the new Red Color science and is free but not released except to us test pilots, although that will change soon.
The second costs $100, and you'll need to put in some serious render time.
OK now you have the set up, here's the payoff...
I shot a little project for a director friend of mine a few weeks ago. It's supposed to be a night exterior, warm/cool deal and I had the entire lighting set-up worked out using those blue screen Kino bulbs, which were ordered but somehow got left out of the case and nobody bothered to check the order on pickup. Long story short to get the look the director wanted I had to blue gel the fuck out of a 4x4 Kino and push it through a soft frost leaving me with an exposure of T2 at about 1000 ISO 360º shutter. The noise didn't bother the director that much so we rolled with it. I figured we would have to run it through some heavy iron just to get it to look watchable, but it was what it was.
So tonight, feeling adventurous I ran the footage through the new color science in RA 3.72B and was very encouraged. The overall noise was at about a 1/2 stop better, but the most important difference was the reduction of the splotchyness in the blue channel. Again I wouldn't have characterized this as night and day at this exposure when played side by side but it was a significant improvement. Then a light bulb went off in my head, the biggest obstacle I have always had with noise reduction software is that splotchy blue channel, which always needs to be blurred to hell to fix and ends up killing all the detail. Enter the NeatVideo Pro plug-in (available for FCP, AE and AP). This is the video version of the NeatImage still noise reduction filter and the new Pro version that just came out in April supports 16 bit and 2K+ resolutions.
Sufficed to say the proof is in the pudding...
This is a full res 2K file so be patient, it'll be worth it.
(410MB 20sec 2K 2:1 Apple PR422 file, Cntrl/left click to download)
http://www.evingrant/com/flicks/JW_Noise.mov
The real thorn here is render time, the NeatVideo plug-in is amazing, this puts the Red one squarely in 5DMII territory now, but to get there will cost you about 45min of rendering for every minute of footage:yikes: (Mac Pro 3.0Ghz 8core, 12GB ram). The new Nahlems will probably really help and it may be faster in AE but still. I won't be shooting everything two stops under from now on but I also won't be afraid of the dark either.
