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1st Weekend shooting with Epic-X - Warning: Lots of Images. Heavy page.

Jason Beckwith

Jason Beckwith

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Greetings all.
I've had my S2 Epic-X for just barely over two weeks now. For the first weekend that I had it, I wanted to set up a shoot to test it out. Instead of going around getting bugs/pets/kids in my back yard, or birds at the beach, we set up a test shoot with some folks from modelmayhem.com. I wanted to get some standard stuff in our studio, black/white backdrop so we did that on Sat. On Sun, we set up some vignettes and shot them more like it was a narrative shoot. We put a lot of emphasis on testing the low-light capabilities as well as the over-cranking abilities.

Due to work/family/life stuff, I've only just today been able to play with the footage that we shot. It was a total blast. The wait seemed like forever for the camera, but now I'm sure that it was worth it!

Don't bother pixel peeping these too hard, it was just a test shoot, and we did some deliberate things like shoot without fill to see how far we could push the camera and footage. It pays to make your mistakes on a test shoot, rather than at the real deal.

Just thought I share a few with you all:

Motivated Light:
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We blacked out the stage, and used just the candle for this one:
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Backlight only:
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Lit by the candles and a 150w diffused and bounced off the ceiling:
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Lit by the candles and a 150w diffused and bounced off the ceiling:
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Golden guns:
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Golden guns:
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Golden Guns:
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Suave:
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Peek:
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Streak filter + Xmas Lights... Cliche, I know.
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Crisp:
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Clear:
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I did a little compositing on this one:
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I absolutely love the last image. Good stuff dude.
 
Thanks!

It was a super fun shoot.

The lenses were all Canon L series. And the Tokina 11-16.

Here are some R3D stills from the shoot, if you want to play along at home:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/T2dkWWV0UnFVbS9OTzhUQw

Be sure to post your grades if you do anything.

Oh, and Happy Holidays and stuff.
 
Great stuff!
 
Jason, love it!

I am a future epic owner so this thread is incredibly helpful. I'll be mainly using Canon L glass so its really quite reassuring seeing how beautiful the images come out with them! Care to share what lenses, F stop and what Redcode you shot these? What are your conclusions/impressions from these tests? Tried any high speed stuff? Anything we should take notice when shooting with the Epic?

Thanks for sharing, Jason, and seasons greetings! Downloading your file now and will try to play with it. Of course not at the level of our resident colorist Patrick who did an amazing job with the "Snatch" look!
 
1st Weekend with Epic

1st Weekend with Epic

Nice stuff! A little brighter than my 1 lights, contrast looks great!

We were moving very fast, and I didn't keep notes as to what image was which lens. All of these are either L series primes, or the 24-70 f/2.8

While we had a lot of light control in the studio, the second day was run and gun and shot outside. I had reflectors on hand, but it was overcast that day, so they were no use. An HMI or 2 would have been brilliant, but we didn't have any on hand. We were shooting very quickly, akin to what I've done on a lot of independent low/no budget short films. It was really fun to shoot with a bunch of friends, with no real pressure.

I shot some over-cranked stuff, both at 2k and 5k. One thing that I definitely need to track better is the compression rate. When you switch to varispeed, the compression ratio is changed and I consistently forgot to change it back when I reset the frame rate. I always changed the shutter speed back, but kept forgetting about the compression rate. I'll definitely keep a better eye on that in the future.

Many of these were shot hand-held with the side handle, and outrigger. The camera gets heavy after a bit, but it wasn't bad. It wasn't until the last set up of the second day that my arms started burning a bit from the weight. I was also running a crosziel matte box and zacuto FF on 15mm rails with the wooden camera base adapter. I have a modular assault plate on order, but couldn't wait. I'll have to sell the WC base and 15mm adapter at a loss when the modular assault plate ships. Using the side handle and outrigger feels a lot like working with a Fig Rig.

Overall, I found the camera intuitive, and easy to work with. The touch screen was some times hard to use with my big fingers, but the side handle navigates the menus very nicely. The Canon L lenses and the Epic's image seemed to complement each other nicely, creating creamy goodness in the areas where the focus fell off. Playback worked great, but I did have 1 clip that got corrupted or something. Then, I couldn't back up past that clip in the playback menu.

Over the 2 days, I recorded almost 700gigs of data.

Focus functions worked well with AF lenses, although I think 'Continuous' focus needs some work. I was hoping that meta data would record which lens was being used on each shot, but I can't find that info, if it is being recorded. Since the lenses are all recognized and characterised, I'd love to have that data available for FX work.

It's been a long ass wait for the camera, and I have to say that I am not at all disappointed in it's performance.
 
Jason Beckwith said:
Nice stuff! A little brighter than my 1 lights, contrast looks great!

We were moving very fast, and I didn't keep notes as to what image was which lens. All of these are either L series primes, or the 24-70 f/2.8

While we had a lot of light control in the studio, the second day was run and gun and shot outside. I had reflectors on hand, but it was overcast that day, so they were no use. An HMI or 2 would have been brilliant, but we didn't have any on hand. We were shooting very quickly, akin to what I've done on a lot of independent low/no budget short films. It was really fun to shoot with a bunch of friends, with no real pressure.

I shot some over-cranked stuff, both at 2k and 5k. One thing that I definitely need to track better is the compression rate. When you switch to varispeed, the compression ratio is changed and I consistently forgot to change it back when I reset the frame rate. I always changed the shutter speed back, but kept forgetting about the compression rate. I'll definitely keep a better eye on that in the future.

Many of these were shot hand-held with the side handle, and outrigger. The camera gets heavy after a bit, but it wasn't bad. It wasn't until the last set up of the second day that my arms started burning a bit from the weight. I was also running a crosziel matte box and zacuto FF on 15mm rails with the wooden camera base adapter. I have a modular assault plate on order, but couldn't wait. I'll have to sell the WC base and 15mm adapter at a loss when the modular assault plate ships. Using the side handle and outrigger feels a lot like working with a Fig Rig.

Overall, I found the camera intuitive, and easy to work with. The touch screen was some times hard to use with my big fingers, but the side handle navigates the menus very nicely. The Canon L lenses and the Epic's image seemed to complement each other nicely, creating creamy goodness in the areas where the focus fell off. Playback worked great, but I did have 1 clip that got corrupted or something. Then, I couldn't back up past that clip in the playback menu.

Over the 2 days, I recorded almost 700gigs of data.

Focus functions worked well with AF lenses, although I think 'Continuous' focus needs some work. I was hoping that meta data would record which lens was being used on each shot, but I can't find that info, if it is being recorded. Since the lenses are all recognized and characterised, I'd love to have that data available for FX work.

It's been a long ass wait for the camera, and I have to say that I am not at all disappointed in it's performance.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed write up and the excellent images, Jason! Patrick is as always doing an excellent job on the grades. The last low light one looks simply stunning and again reassuring on shooting low light with it. Glad you are enjoying it. I'm waiting for mine and every single positive and reassuring post like yours just makes me glad on my decision. I hope I can share similar tests when I get mine. I think over here we can get some very interesting natural light to test the camera. Here's a link to a video that was entirely shot with the Red One MX over here. Forget the story and do concentrate on the picture :) (Events portion shot with DSLR's and poorly graded, in my opinion).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzGKtA8TgN8

When can we see a video of your tests, Jason? Vimeo quality would suffice! All in all,
 
In case you missed it, Patrick has posted a walk through of his Davinci grade in another part of the forum:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-DaVinci-amp-RED&p=912386&posted=1#post912386

The shot that Patrick is using to grade with was shot in a blacked out room. We duved the windows. The only light used was a diffused 150w tungsten and the light from the tea candles. Also, I bumped the auto white balance button at the beginning of this set up, and left it unbalanced so that I could apply a single correction to all the footage in post. I NEVER would have lit this scene this dark, if it wasn't a camera test where I wanted to know just how far I could push it.

I've posted some other motion R3Ds on my yousendit account here:
https://www.yousendit.com/sharedFol...d=3n6e7zzxbY3FWxsQck9kfzHBKBezw5EYT7XMBicR62w

They are full 5k R3Ds, and are large files. You may want to run your DL overnight.

They will only be available until Jan 19th, as I need the space. If someone else wants to mirror these, that would be fine as long as I'm credited.

Sergio, watched your video... Some good looking footage in there, for sure!

Have fun!
 
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