Lowlight?

[Raul Quintanilla]

This is the first time I've asked a question in the forums, although I've been following them since the rumors in dvxuser. But I've already looked around and couldn't find the answer I wanted:

Can a Scarlet 2/3 fixed match the 5d in lowlight capabilities?

Ok, I know the answer is no. What I really want to know is why? I know that there are a lots of things that make the 5d crap, so I'm waiting to buy my fixed lens Scarlet. It's just that I saw a video in vimeo where the 5d lowlight blew away the Red One. Is it because the difference of sensor size? Does that mean that the FF35 will have the same lowlight capabilities? Is there a way to make the 2/3 fixed Scarlet shoot in such dark conditions?

Lowlight is very important for me because I usually just use available light, and I would love a camera that would almost match the light as my eyes see it (ok, I'm exaggerating). Could a Scarlet or Red One produce the same results as a 5d in lowlight? Doesn't matter if it's grainy. Thanks!

Btw, I love what you guys are doing to the industry. I wish someday all my video, audio and editing equipment comes from Red.

link to Red One and 5d comparison: http://vimeo.com/5179976

 

[jimhare]

No one will know until Scarlet comes out. If they have increased the dynamic range and sensitivity, it will do amazing things.

And I don't have a lot of faith in those 5D/Red comparisons. It's really not about how it comes out of the camera, it's what you can do with the footage from there.

On the web at 640 pixels they will look similar.

The 5D is H.264, Red is RAW.

 

[Chris Newman]

Canon has many more millions of dollars and years of research making professional grade CMOS sensors than RED has. While RED has made some design decisions and innovation that make their cameras very good for film production, they couldn't expect to leap-frog such a giant as Canon with their first camera. When it comes to areas such as dynamic range and sensitivity, lots of time and money spent on research are the only way to be the best.

Scarlet is the next generation, so it will undoubtedly be better than RED One (per unit sensor area), but the 2/3" sensor is less than 1/4 the area of the RED One sensor, so it automatically has a 2+ stop disadvantage. (Though it has been argued that this doesn't matter if you want to avoid the super shallow depth of field of shooting an S35 camera wide open.)

So, in practice, no, I don't think Scarlet 2/3" will beat the 5DII in terms of low-light sensitivity, but it will beat it in a lot of other areas.

 

[Brandon Fraley]

So, in practice, no, I don't think Scarlet 2/3" will beat the 5DII in terms of low-light sensitivity, but it will beat it in a lot of other areas.

agreed.

 

[Evin Grant]

My advice is learn to light. Shooting available light will only get you so far no matter what your cameras sensitivity is. Sure it's cool to see in the dark but it's not as useful for real filmmaking as you might imagine. Even natural, motivated lighting takes a lot of skill and equipment to pull off convincingly. Certainly there are times where a super sensitive camera would be great, but it's much less important than lighting technique. In the end most available light scenes just end up looking unlit.

 

[Raul Quintanilla]

Thanks for the answers... I was still wandering what exactly is better in the canon sensor over the Red One.

 

[Brandon Fraley]

Straight low light comparison? 5D over the RED ONE, no doubt.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Soy, I think the answer is that Canon has spent an enormous amount of time, money and research in improving their low-light capabilities with CMOS sensors. If I am not mistaken, this is achieved both at the hardware level (noise reduction on the sensor itself), and with ever-improving firmware/software.

No one here -- aside from the Red Team -- probably knows much about how much improvement we will see with the new DSMC cameras. We could see an improvement with Mysterium X, and then an even greater improvement with Monstro.

This is not easy stuff to master. Look at what happened to Sony with their first "flagship" full-frame DSLR -- the A900 -- which turned out to have disastrous low-light performance.

Sony A900 at ISO 6400:

Nikon D3X at ISO 6400:

Even with all of Sony's knowledge and resources, their F35mm DSLR gets kicked in the teeth by both Canon and Nikon's competing DSLRs.

 

[Raul Quintanilla]

Thanks! I do hope Scarlet beats them all up

 

[morgan_moore]

If you are trying to catch rain in some buckets having bigger buckets spread out over twice as large area will catch more rain

Same with collecting light on a sensor

Of course the buckets are getting less leaky every generation of chip

S