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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 :)

1st Scarlet 60fps test, Brief Review, and questions.

Adriaan Kirchner

Adriaan Kirchner

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I finally had a chance to run a little test with my new Scarlet...Needless to say, i'm digging it. I love how compact the camera is, it feels light and bullet proof at the same time. The screen is awesome and the menu flow is relatively simple. Although, i'm still learning what all the RED specific lingo jingo means since this is the first RED camera i have ever owned..

Check out the footage below, its about 1/4 of the original size Either way, ITS RED (literally):



FOOTAGE DETAILS
-Quick color pass done
-5k color balance
-2k size
-60fps
-1/144 shutter
-canon 70-200 2.8L II: shot at a 4.0
-exported to 720x486


QUESTIONS
1) GRAINY PICTURES- I've noticed that in low light areas the Scarlet displays a pretty grainy picture. Even if the subject is lit/exposed correctly the blacks and grays will look terrible, a picture that i wouldn't consider acceptable. Any input on this?

2) BLACK SHADING- Still trying to grasp the concept of this. I look at is as a really time consuming black balance (I'm probably wrong?). Either way, i've had some problems with it. While doing this test i tried to calibrate the shading to current settings/FPS..after 3 calibration failures at current settings i went back to 4FPS(2k) and it calibrated fine, why is that and is that why my grain problems were eminent?

3) ISO- After some serious lurking i've read that people shoot ISO 800 (instead of native 320) to protect highlights. Is this method solely to protect against over exposed footage?


Appreciate all of yours time and looking forward to your comments.

Cheers,
Adriaan
 
Last edited:
Adriaan Kirchner said:
I finally had a chance to run a little test with my new Scarlet...Needless to say, i'm digging it. I love how compact the camera is, it feels light and bullet proof at the same time. The screen is awesome and the menu flow is relatively simple. Although, i'm still learning what all the RED specific lingo jingo means since this is the first RED camera i have ever owned..

Check out the footage below (sorry about the download but vimeo won't accept current codec for some reason). Eventually i will use this shot in my demo reel or repurpose it for something else. Either way, ITS RED (literally): https://public.me.com/adriaankirchner

FOOTAGE DETAILS
-Quick color pass done
-5k color balance
-2k size
-60fps
-1/144 shutter
-canon 70-200 2.8L II: shot at a 4.0
-exported to 720x486


QUESTIONS
1) GRAINY PICTURES- I've noticed that in low light areas the Scarlet displays a pretty grainy picture. Even if the subject is lit/exposed correctly the blacks and grays will look terrible, a picture that i wouldn't consider acceptable. Any input on this?

2) BLACK SHADING- Still trying to grasp the concept of this. I look at is as a really time consuming black balance (I'm probably wrong?). Either way, i've had some problems with it. While doing this test i tried to calibrate the shading to current settings/FPS..after 3 calibration failures at current settings i went back to 4FPS(2k) and it calibrated fine, why is that and is that why my grain problems were eminent?

3) ISO- After some serious lurking i've read that people shoot ISO 800 (instead of native 320) to protect highlights. Is this method solely to protect against over exposed footage?


Appreciate all of yours time and looking forward to your comments.

Cheers,
Adriaan
Click to expand...

I've found you can change your ISO and your footage still looks fine, I won't go below 320 though. I've noticed the grainy images as well. More recently then in the past. Even properly lit, and exposed I can't get over how much noise and grain I am picking up. Especially since the newest firmware upgrade. I blackshade right before every shoot and it doesn't seem to help at all. Not sure whats going on.
 
Jeffrey Loewe said:
I've found you can change your ISO and your footage still looks fine, I won't go below 320 though. I've noticed the grainy images as well. More recently then in the past. Even properly lit, and exposed I can't get over how much noise and grain I am picking up. Especially since the newest firmware upgrade. I blackshade right before every shoot and it doesn't seem to help at all. Not sure whats going on.
Click to expand...

The grainy images are definitely a bummer..I've upgraded to the latest firmware as well and even after applying the grain reducer in Redcine, it still looks poor. Have you heard of any other post programs for this? Have you had any problems with the blackshading at weird shutters and frame rates?

I hope the grain can be fixed because my 5d looks better shooting against blacks at this point.
 
The Red does zero noise reduction in camera, use Neat Video, fixes the noise. Also works great for sharpening, which Red also does not do in camera.
 
Red cameras are not meant to spit out a pretty little image from camera, like the c300 or 5d. They are meant to be professionally graded and processed, if you don't do these things your images will look pretty bad.
 
Andrew Allsbury said:
The Red does zero noise reduction in camera, use Neat Video, fixes the noise. Also works great for sharpening, which Red also does not do in camera.
Click to expand...

I'll give it a shot. I'm assuming it probably works best in After Effects, is that what you do?
 
Andrew Allsbury said:
Red cameras are not meant to spit out a pretty little image from camera, like the c300 or 5d. They are meant to be professionally graded and processed, if you don't do these things your images will look pretty bad.
Click to expand...

I'm aware but it seems like the amount of noise is more of something i'm doing wrong in camera. It's pretty excessive- i'll post a frame grab later.
 
To be honest I was a bit set back myself upon first viewing...but once I processed the images correctly they looked great. Black shading and exposing properly are pretty key, I'll check out your example when it's posted. Post a still r3d.
 
Thanks for your review. I haven't yet updated to the latest firmware and reading so many reviews on the noise at low light worries me. Is this just speculation at this point that the low light noise is actually worse with the new firmware or has anyone proven this to be a problem? Also looking forward to the still image.
 
Adriaan Kirchner said:
Heres the link to download the Grainy r3d file

https://public.me.com/adriaankirchner
Click to expand...

To be honest - I don't see anything out of the ordinary. The shot is quite heavily underexposed. Remember - when you shoot black BCKG you should lit it up at least one stop above the floor (zero) level and grade it accordingly in the post. Or keep it at zero level and expect to get a noise in the blacks. This is normal for any camera since at zero level all you see is electronic noise. This is easily dealt with with post denoise (The Foundry's DeNoise or NeatVideo). What would help is a frame from later in the clip when there is plenty of the "blood" in the "brain". But once again - I don't see anything out of the ordinary in this clip - the noise is as expected from shot lit and exposed in this way...

Peter
 
Peter Majtan said:
To be honest - I don't see anything out of the ordinary. The shot is quite heavily underexposed. Remember - when you shoot black BCKG you should lit it up at least one stop above the floor (zero) level and grade it accordingly in the post. Or keep it at zero level and expect to get a noise in the blacks. This is normal for any camera since at zero level all you see is electronic noise. This is easily dealt with with post denoise (The Foundry's DeNoise or NeatVideo). What would help is a frame from later in the clip when there is plenty of the "blood" in the "brain". But once again - I don't see anything out of the ordinary in this clip - the noise is as expected from shot lit and exposed in this way...

Peter
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I'm still working on understanding the concept of exposing blacks!
 
Hey Adriaan,
We were initially concerned about the noise levels in the blacks and other darker areas, but quickly remembered that almost all other cameras use SIGNIFICANT firmware noise suppression on board, so clips that exhibit noise from the Scarlet would also show the same noise from a 5D if the noise suppression were not in the firmware. The beauty of RAW is that we get to choose exactly what final look we are interested in, not the camera.

An easy solution is the Neat Video plugin which does an amazing job with noise reduction with little sacrifice in sharpness. Even so, a little post production sharpening mask will bring the sharpness back in most cases. The AE denoiser works well, but the Neat works better... it is about $99 a bargain IMHO!
 
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