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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

12800 ISO

also...how do you name calibrations for different exposures?
 
Remember that Dragon's "recommended" usable ISO range is ISO 250-2000.

The variance that comes with the image texture between the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF and the Low Light OLPF is relevant for low light shooting of course.

The LLO OLPF gets you cleaner higher ISO performance and you may even land usable ISO 4000 and 5000 material if you know what you're doing.
 
Just for the record. The ISO setting has ZERO effect on Black Shading.

The camera does no in camera noise reduction at high ISOs
The camera does no in camera sharpening either.

So so if you plan on shooting high ISO (above 2000), plan a repost noise reduction strategy.


The dsmc manual is a very handy read when you are doing a lot of testing.

Battistella
 
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Marc Rochon said:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vzei9fnzacy018/A005_C041_0116FS.0000070F.R3D?dl=0

messing around tonight. I black shaded at this exposure and ISO. I allowed the camera to warm up. Is this what I should get? I realize this is very low light and I haven't gotten the new low light OLP yet but give me some feedback. Looks like I should never shoot at 12800

-Marc
Click to expand...

Looking at those gaps in the histogram it looks like 12800 ISO is shifting the curve so much that there's not a full 8 bits of data left per pixel... because the sensor is 10 bit that means your raw data is somewhere below 25% of the exposure range... looks like a LOT below 25%. If it's below 6% (which it looks like it is) then you've only got a 64 step gradient per color plane - that alone is going to cause problems. Add to that the fact that your noise floor is going to be very high and you're going to have a hell of at time getting usable images out of that setup. I suspect that even if your exposure was biased on the high side of the histogram at 12800 you'd probably not like the result... but if it's on the low side like this shot it's going to be tough to get anything usable.
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5jma7djtjbbqojx/A001_C027_12058T_001.R3D?dl=0

Might be easier to play with a monochrome r3d to see what's happening at ISO12800. This shot was taken by setting up the Camera for correct exposure with the lens (Nikkor 50mm F1.2) at F1.2... then stopping the lens down to F16 (8 stops). ISO was set to 400 for every shot (I'm not exactly sure what ISO setting equals 'looking at the raw exposure values' on the Dragon). If you open this then play with the ISO slider... at 12800 you'll see the histogram start to show discontinuities - meaning there's not enough 'steps' in the data to allow a smooth histogram anymore. That shot used about 10% of the range of the sensor... and at 12800 only shows a couple discontinuities. Your shot showed a LOT of discontinuities... from the histogram it looks like you're mostly around 5% at 400ISO.

I'm kind surprised the shot looks as good as it does. :)

Also... in the mono r3d you'll see that even at 12800 the brighter bars were relatively clean, which makes me think that an image that is biased toward the higher end of the histogram might actually look pretty good, it'll just lack much range (if you push that shot much farther you'll see that the image is clipped around 18 (well.. the signal falls down below the noise level)... and it gets pretty noisy much below 14/15.
 
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I would never shoot that high an ISO with red with either OLPF. That's just crazyness. It's not a lowlight camera. :)
 
all good to know. I just wanted to push it to it's limits and see what the result would be. I don't plan on ever shooting this hi for a job. My D800 go's up to like 20000 iso and it's actually pretty dam good. To bad it's so limiting. Thanks for the feedback.

-Marc
 
Hey Marc,

one thing to remember when comparing to dslrs is that with red only the shutter and aperture affect exposure. The ISO is metadata and can be changed after the fact. In a dslr the ISO is baked in so this means that they can employ soecific curves, NR and processing for one frame capture.

The RED cameras leave all this processing to post production, including sharpening, to taste.

its an important distinction if you are coming from dslr.

cheers,
battistella
 
One request for clarification- David states above that the sensor is 10 bits. Isn't it actually 16 bits?
 
Marc Rochon said:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljpibk5t0yrbcy4/A004_C007_011112.0000020F.R3D?dl=0 12800 ISO
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0lc4qqcy2dqpigu/A004_C006_0111UN.0000000F.R3D?dl=0 800 ISO

David, check this one out. This was shot at 12800 iso but over exposed. When graded down it actually looks pretty dam good. I built it out to a 1080 quicktime and it looks good. The second one was shot underexposed at 800 ISO

-Marc
Click to expand...

Overexposed how (i.e. more light, iris)? And by how much? I'm not really seeing a difference in exposure between the two shots. If I put them both at 4000 ISO, for example, they look almost identical in brightness.

When I toggle between the two, the area of the histogram representing the stomach area of the man's shirt doesn't change at all in terms of brightness.
 
I agree with you Brian. I think he means it looks underexposed at 800 ISO. They are both underexposed. He's just gaining/boosting the image to 12800 (or to whatever for that matter). Sensor needs more light, light, light, not just cranking ISO up.
 
I wouldn't shoot and image at such a high ISO even if i wanted to create an image that looked underexposed. I would capture at a lower ISO setting and light it for a proper exposure/ lighting ratio then grade down. Unless you want all the noise that comes with such high ISO's for effect.
 
Jake Wilganowski said:
I would never shoot that high an ISO with red with either OLPF. That's just crazyness. It's not a lowlight camera. :)
Click to expand...

Red cameras have no internal noise reduction. See how far you can go by removing noise in the post in this test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USUBF2mTCTM Absolutely usable images even in 2K 12800 ISO
Red epic MX/Dragon LLO is the best low light camera. See what Shane Hurlbut says in this test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9riqeqHYN0 Absolutely amazing. The c500 and others they are not lowlight cameras. ;)
 
Denoising in post is a "fix". You cannot shoot these cameras the way the OP is if you want clean images out of the camera. It's fundamental to know this. That way you know what you are getting into, and whether you will need to "fix" (de-noise) in post if you have no other options. I'm assuming the goal is capturing a clean image.
 
Abe Espinoza said:
Denoising in post is a "fix". You cannot shoot these cameras the way the OP is if you want clean images out of the camera. It's fundamental to know this. That way you know what you are getting into, and whether you will need to "fix" (de-noise) in post if you have no other options. I'm assuming the goal is capturing a clean image.
Click to expand...

Out of the camera is for live broadcast video. ''Fix'' in post sometimes is for film and Red cameras.
You choose the camera for your needs. I choose Red cameras. I choose 16 bit redcode raw 15+ DR 19,4 MP 300 FPR and reduser.
 
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Abe Espinoza said:
I meant clean images out of camera without de-noising…
Click to expand...

Dragon even with LowLight OLPF is not exactly a no-light "night vision" camera. Nowhere near the A7U craziness for example. In the very near futute it might be possible to have flexible extremely sensitive sensors with several native ISOs. Low numbers for broad daylight and super high numbers for extreme low light shooting. Who knows what they are cooking at Red? It's not all about the K's for Red, Dragon with STH OLPF is a proof of that. They've made a camera that handles highlights and skin tones as good as film and it's less grainy than 35mm film at given ASA.
 
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