The RED 18-55mm Can't do Sunset Reds

[Will Keir]

I was shooting a beautiful sunset today, with deep reds. I have done this once before, and failed as well. You know that kind of deep red that quiets the soul? The kind of red that radiates off tree branches, it's not impossible to capture, I got it with a little Canon $200 digital camera on movie mode.

Well the Red 18-55 lens, full open, just can't do the job. I've used REDCINE, both the new alpha and beta to bring saturation back, but it's nothing like the magic out in the field.

I also noticed that this lens doesn't capture a sunset very well, especially after sunset when the light turns into reds and blues. Anyone else having any better results with this lens? I'm hoping the error is on my part and not the camera or the lens. I'm also still running build 18, not sure if 20 will make a difference when it comes to the deep reds, I know it should help with the noise a bit.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

 

[Charles Angus]

I don't really see what the lens has to do with it, unless you're getting flaring that you don't like.

If you want that glowing-fireball-sun effect, you'll need a much longer lens, but if you want to capture the wider vista, 18-50 should be in the right range.

Perhaps if you posted some stills we could be more helpful?

 

[MichaelHalsell]

Could you post a screen grab of your results? Would be interested to see why the lens didn't meet your expectation.

 

[Matthew Duclos]

You mentioned that you were shooting wide open.... Not the best way to capture deep saturation no matter what lens.

 

[Cal Brunker]

Sounds like an exposure issue. Your Canon in movie mode probably auto exposed the sky way down where saturation lives. Try stopping down or ND'ing your 18-50 until the sky is richly saturated on your monitor, then when you grade it/redcine it, pull a bit of detail back out of the blacks.


Cal

 

[Will Keir]

Sounds like an exposure issue. Your Canon in movie mode probably auto exposed the sky way down where saturation lives. Try stopping down or ND'ing your 18-50 until the sky is richly saturated on your monitor, then when you grade it/redcine it, pull a bit of detail back out of the blacks.


Cal

First off, the way we have the R1 LCD is terrible... what you see is NOT what you EVER get. I am learning... the LCD cannot be trusted, and I keep the ISO at 320 because changing it will just trick me... so I'm left with adjusting the shutter, or my iris.

Maybe NDs will help get the color I'm seeing while I'm out there, will have to try this, or shooting sunsets with the R1 is out. Or at least the spectacular ones I'm viewing with my own eyes. I can take the R1's second rate sunsets too, but with a camera like this I'm settling?

My $200 Canon still came captures the light better.

 

[Will Keir]

Here we go, first the $200 canon.

I'm humbled to be in this place, the canon captured it well.

U can see the R1 takes some nice shots, but no where near what I was looking at with my own eyes. These are some color grade tests in RedCine-X Alpha

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[Will Keir]

The deep reds I was seeing radiated off the trees, washed across the sky, poured over the valley. These shots are nothing special, would a new lens or a matbox/ND filter really make that much of a difference?

When shooting, I tried to keep the histogram ETTR, all the way to clipping. Clipping I assume is when the highlights build on the right vertical edge of the histogram, and then they start climbing up the more you clip. The false color setting will help me expose even better, but what about the color not being captured the way I'm seeing it?

 

[Will Keir]

Could this also be a build 18 issue that was resolved? Colors in camera are less saturated?

 

[Stephen Strangways]

What I see there is that the Canon lens shows a ton of flare and haze that the RED lens doesn't, and part of the flare is vertical smear on the CCD. Most people would consider it a technical flaw, because it is impossible to remove in post if you don't want it, but pretty easy to recreate with a few plugins on your RED footage if you do.

 

[Will Keir]

You mentioned that you were shooting wide open.... Not the best way to capture deep saturation no matter what lens.

Do tell more Matthew, where's the sweetspot? Somewhere in the middle?

 

[Cal Brunker]

Saturation tends to live in the midtones, watch the histogram, make sure it's not clipping in any of the channels, this will give you full sky detail and more saturation in the image before grading.

Try a test where you roll the footage and drop your exposure to what you think is properly exposed, under exposed, very underexposed, then pull those into CINE and see which ones come closest to what you're looking for when graded.

Cal

 

[Cal Brunker]

The sweetspot of the 18-50 is probably somewhere around 5.6, most lenses (if not all) don't behave as well at either end of the spectrum. Somewhere on every lens is the sweet spot, and as you move away from it in either direction, lens performance decreases.

This is the beauty of having your own RED, haul it up to that sunset and roll tests with different ND/exposure combinations.

Hope this helps.

Cal

 

[Will Keir]

What I see there is that the Canon lens shows a ton of flare and haze that the RED lens doesn't, and part of the flare is vertical smear on the CCD. Most people would consider it a technical flaw, because it is impossible to remove in post if you don't want it, but pretty easy to recreate with a few plugins on your RED footage if you do.

Well the point is the haze that the canon got, was actually how the view looked, and my problem is getting the same with the RED1. I could "recreate" but I think God didn't a pretty nice job of it already, I just want to figure out how I can get the R1 to capture what I'm seeing.

 

[Will Keir]

Saturation tends to live in the midtones, watch the histogram, make sure it's not clipping in any of the channels, this will give you full sky detail and more saturation in the image before grading.

Try a test where you roll the footage and drop your exposure to what you think is properly exposed, under exposed, very underexposed, then pull those into CINE and see which ones come closest to what you're looking for when graded.

Cal

Cal, thanks for responding with some helpful information.

What I'm finding is all my histogram info is usually to the left, and the negative is very thin when shooting at sunset. I have not been able to get a nice histogram period.

By clipping are you referring to the RGB stop lights, or when the highlights touch the right edge and climb up vertically? The sweet spot information is good to know, I haven't learned to think like this yet, so today I'm gonna go looking for the sweet spot, out in the woods.

Thanks again,

 

[NateWeaver]

Well the point is the haze that the canon got, was actually how the view looked, and my problem is getting the same with the RED1. I could "recreate" but I think God didn't a pretty nice job of it already, I just want to figure out how I can get the R1 to capture what I'm seeing.

Color correction.

The Canon does a lot of processing in camera that you happen to like for this particular shot...including boosting saturation.

The Red, by design philosophy, is whatever you want it to be...it leaves many decisions, including color saturation and color balance up to you in the debayering stage in post.

In this case it looks like the you could warm up the white balance and increase saturation on the Red to match the Canon.

 

[James T Mather]

close down on the lens for starters - ton of over exp in that shot
put on a hot mirror (although you might like the magenta cast who knows - lots of IR contam in that canon shot)
go to menu - video - look - brightness (down) contrast (up) dilute to taste
set your colour temp at around 8000-10000 (depending on lens - lower for cooke more for zeiss) dilute to taste

 

[Will Keir]

close down on the lens for starters - ton of over exp in that shot
put on a hot mirror (although you might like the magenta cast who knows - lots of IR contam in that canon shot)
go to menu - video - look - brightness (down) contrast (up) dilute to taste
set your colour temp at around 8000-10000 (depending on lens - lower for cooke more for zeiss) dilute to taste

adjusting brightness and contrast in camera makes an actual difference? It's not a meta data thing you can change later?

 

[Matthew Duclos]

This is not a lens issue at all. This thread should be in the cinematography section.
The RED 18-50 is a good lens and should work fine for a shot like this, given it is used properly.

 

[dino g]

downscaled 16 bit tiff

shot with the red 18-50..a copy appears in Noah's book and on the adobe website for red workflow examples.

this has not been altered in any way, straight out of the camera in redspace from a snapshot.