Working With the RED

[Sanjin Jukic]

Working With the RED

AC’s technical editor shares
some tips and observations about
shooting with the Red One
digital camera.

by Christopher Probst

February 2010, American Cinematographer, pages 56-67


I have so far used the Red to photograph more than 50
music videos and commercials. The first was the music video
for Chris Brown’s “Forever,” which I shot in early 2008,
when the camera was still fairly new in the marketplace. At
that time, few rental houses had them, and even fewer rental
houses or post facilities knew how to handle them. As with
any new technology — and certainly with any new model of
workflow — there were some growing pains. I’d shot loads of
digital imagery with other platforms, but I quickly found
that many aspects of working with the Red were unique to
the camera. For example, early on, you
could quickly get bogged down just
trying to define the best codec to use so
you could edit your files on an Avid;
the Red was launched with a post
protocol geared primarily toward using
Final Cut Pro, leaving post facilities
initially at a loss as to how to edit and
online footage in other systems.

Read more>>>

 

[Petri Teittinen]

I'm a few pages in, and the tone of the article feels very negative indeed. So far it's been almost nothing but a long list of problems the writer has had with the RED One.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

I'm a few pages in, and the tone of the article feels very negative indeed. So far it's been almost nothing but a long list of problems the writer has had with the RED One.

But he did 50 commercials, music spots , etc.. with RED1.

 

[Petri Teittinen]

But he did 50 commercials, music spots , etc.. with RED1.

Yes, he did, and it's actually mentioned once or twice in the article. Apart from that the article reads like a cautionary tale of things that can and do go wrong when shooting with R1. I guess it serves a purpose.

 

[Ben Brainerd]

Yes, he did, and it's actually mentioned once or twice in the article. Apart from that the article reads like a cautionary tale of things that can and do go wrong when shooting with R1. I guess it serves a purpose.

One of the things I've noticed about AC is that a LOT of their digital articles read like cautionary tales. I think the editors are die-hard film people.

Let's see... July '09. 2 articles on digital (A RED article and the Public Enemies F23 article) both fairly cautionary.

Jump back a bit to May 2004 (Ok, jump back a LOT). 3 or 4 digital articles, all of the same kind of tone.

I admit 2 issues is not a representation (They're the only ones I had handy), and I'm not trying to get down on AC. I guess it's just how they write things.

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

Just finished reading the article, and what I felt is that all it seems like is a roll call of what is wrong with the RED One, I don't remember him writing one good thing about the RED, and yet he has shot +50 projects...If you are someone that has not really used the RED and was thinking about buying one, after reading that article, you would be much less inclined in buying one...But, what is strange is why did he not talk about what the RED One does well? The difference in price to the other available cameras, etc...I am a relatively new RED One owner, but I have already shot a fair amount of stuff on it, and it is for me by far the best camera I have shot on. It is not every day you get to shoot on FILM (35mm or larger), or on a Phantom...It does have problems, but what camera does not have problems? But for the price, it is a very VERY good camera...

 

[David (dudi) Namir]

Just finished reading the article, and what I felt is that all it seems like is a roll call of what is wrong with the RED One, I don't remember him writing one good thing about the RED, and yet he has shot +50 projects...If you are someone that has not really used the RED and was thinking about buying one, after reading that article, you would be much less inclined in buying one...But, what is strange is why did he not talk about what the RED One does well? The difference in price to the other available cameras, etc...I am a relatively new RED One owner, but I have already shot a fair amount of stuff on it, and it is for me by far the best camera I have shot on. It is not every day you get to shoot on FILM (35mm or larger), or on a Phantom...It does have problems, but what camera does not have problems? But for the price, it is a very VERY good camera...

Maybe the guy is an undercover agent of Arri or Sony?hmy:

 

[Martin Weiss]

In the real world, the only way the Mysterium could deliver true 4k resolution would be if the sensor were used as a monochrome chip.

And in the real world, the only way 35mm film could deliver true 4k resolution would be to shoot 65mm negative.

And in the real world, the only way a mere human being could afford to actually own a 4k digital cinema camera would be to buy a RED.

And in the real world, the only way to stop RED would be by writing one-sided articles.

And in the real world, RED has never claimed to deliver 4k with the Mysterium sensor.

 

[Vico Martin]

Mr. Christopher Probst, Wellcome to the future.

 

[A. Järvinen]

It's funny when he compares Red One to Phantom HD and makes a negative comment about Red One using a bayer patterned sensor but doesn't mention Phantom HD using bayer pattern too. It feels like many people remember the 'negative' sides of some wide used technologies only when they talk about Red One.

 

[Milan Nikolic]

To my mind the article is honest but not balanced peace. There are all bad side of RED but not good side!

 

[Ruairi Robinson]

And in the real world, RED has never claimed to deliver 4k with the Mysterium sensor.

Okay so I go to red.com and click on cameras and there it says:

PIXEL SHIFTING AND UP-REZZING
NOT SPOKEN HERE

and underneath:

Typical high-end HD camcorders have 2.1M pixel sensors and record with 3:1:1 color sub-sampled video at up to 30fps. RED offers the Mysterium ™ Super 35mm cine sized (24.4×13.7mm) sensor, which provides 4K (up to 30 fps), 3K (up to 60 fps) and 2K (up to 120 fps) capture, and all this with wide dynamic range and color space in 12 bit native RAW. At 4K, that’s more than 5 times the amount of information available every second and a vastly superior recording quality. In addition, you get the same breathtaking Depth of Field and selective focus as found in film cameras using equivalent 35mm P/L mount lenses. Mysterium ™ boasts greater than 66db Dynamic Range thanks to its large 29 sq. micron pixels. And 12,065,000 pixels deliver resolution that can only be called Ultra High Definition.

Call me crazy, but that sounds suspiciously like it's claiming to deliver 4k. Specifically, the part where it says it's 4k.

 

[Vico Martin]

Call me crazy, but that sounds suspiciously like it's claiming to deliver 4k. Specifically, the part where it says it's 4k.

Red said is a 4K sensor camera and it is.
I can´t talk about the 4K land, I shoot allways in 4K, but live in the 1080P world. (and take the advantage of downscale and downsampling :smilewinkgrin

 

[Thomas Wright]

If arriscan is also CMOS then wouldn't it be the same too? Making a muppet of himself then wouldn't he?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

As I've said before, in any image sensor system design, you have the choice between resolution and aliasing. If you want the full resolution that your sensor is capable of, you must expect aliasing artifacts also. Similarly, if you don't want masses of aliasing artifacts, you cannot ever get the full pixel resolution out of the sensor. This is not a bayer v 3chip argument, but a basic sampling theory argument that applies to all sensors in all configurations.

I have no problems with reading about camera negatives. All cameras have them and only an idiot would think otherwise. No matter what the perceived negatives there are of RED, there are many, many positives that vastly outweigh them. For instance, the RED's REDCODE RAW compression is sometimes seen as a negative. However, to us that know better, it's the positive that makes the RED affordable, and usable and compact and portable. It's that positive alone that allowed the writer of the article to do 50 shoots with the RED, as without it, the camera would have been as used and as successful as the Dalsa.

Graeme

 

[Petri Teittinen]

No matter what the perceived negatives there are of RED, there are many, many positives that vastly outweigh them.

Wouldn't it have been nice if the article had mentioned that, too?

 

[Emyr R. E. Pugh]

And in the real world, RED has never claimed to deliver 4k with the Mysterium sensor.

I'n not trying to stir things up; I'm just curious as to what you mean when you say RED has never claimed to deliver 4k with the Mysterium sensor? I was reading your post and nodding in agreement, but I can't wrap my head around this statement.

What am I missing here?

 

[Martin Weiss]

There are numerous articles about this on Reduser - just have a look at Græme's previous posts. 4k delivers about 3.2k, thus the new cameras have 5k sensors to deliver 4k resolution.

That said, currently pretty much all feature films finish in 2k, and I've always found this discussion pretty academic.

 

[Emyr R. E. Pugh]

I honestly didn't know that, but as Graeme says it's one thing or the other. I didn't realise the actual value was more 3.2K. In that case, what is 4.5K in practical terms?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

We can see detail in a 4k shot out to around 3.2k, with minimal aliasing beyond that - it's pretty darn clean. In effect we measure nearly 80% of the pixel resolution horizontally (and the same factor vertically) which is why you don't see the nasty aliases.

But let's do some thinking here....

In the old interlace days, vertical resolution was around 70% of the number of lines so as to avoid interlace interline twitter.

HDCAM had a luma resolution of 75% of 1920. A Canon DSLR measures around 70% of 1920 horizontally.

Say we removed the OLPF, which is the major limiting factor on the resolution of the RED you'd get:
Aliasing and moire
false colours
higher bit rates as the aliased sharp edges take up more bit rate even on an advanced codec like REDCODE

In the end, it turns out, for now, for the RED One, it's the right way to do things.

Graeme