4 New OLPF's for Dragon!

[John Marchant]

no b&w john?

Not quite sure I understand, but to try and clarify:

We currently have two false-colour filters - Full Spectrum, and IR Spectrum

The full spectrum produces images with everything from just into the UV down to near IR range. A colour image (if used on a colour camera)
It can be used in conjunction with black and white style coloured filters. Often the final image is desaturated, but channel mixing/swapping can create interesting colour-IR effects.
Split or fuzzy focus can occur due to IR focussing differently, unless front of lens filtration is used. This varies from lens to lens.

The IR spectrum allows only near-IR light to hit the sensor. It still produces a warm-toned reddish image on a colour camera, but with almost no other colouration.
It's not essential to desaturate this, but that's usually the intention. It is more convenient to work with for wildlife and covert shooters working with IR illumination. Split focus is less of an issue and you don't need to work with either a matte-box or a variety of screw-on filters to cut daylight when switching out lenses.

Neither of these filters has an OLPF layer, so the image is slightly sharper than standard. Certain very fine details could provoke colour and spatial moire, however its very rare. Mitigating this is the fact that desaturation hides some of this, and additionally the standard OLPF is quite aggressive for sharpness. Some small moire patterns can stills occur even with the factory part.

For clarity, the monochrome OLPF Red supply is a regular filter in terms of spectral transmission, but with sharpness characteristics tuned to match the monochrome sensor's design.
The colour IR OLPF Red supply is also a true OLPF, matched for sharpness to the standard colour camera sensor, but with comparable spectral transmission to our Full Spectrum

In the near future we will also be selling true OLPF based options too.

 

[Brandon J.F.]

This was shot with John's full spectrum OLPF and custom IR LEDs I had made:

Here's a macro shot from today's tests with the custom infrared light strips and the KipperTie OLPF.

(see my previous post for more details)

Background:

I have been testing some "invisible" lighting to use with the IR OLPFs that are available. Custom LED strip lights that I had tuned for optimal use with Dragon. I have the KipperTie Full Spectrum Zero Lowpass OLPF and an infrared screw on filter.

It is the craziest thing to be in a dark room that is full of light you can only see with your camera. The only way to know the lights are on, without looking at the camera, is you can feel they are getting warm.


Here's a thread about the OLPF I'm using: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?127724-4-New-OLPF-s-for-Dragon!


You can get the OLPF here: http://kippertie.com/?product=full-spectrum-zero-lowpass-filter-for-dragon


I really have to thank John Marchant for dealing with all my questions when I was figuring out what to do with this custom lighting. Much appreciated, John!


If anyone wants some they will be available in the next group buy.


Very cool stuff!

I also shot some cool exterior day stuff with this OLPF recently that I will share soon.

This OLPF is a must buy in my opinion...

 

[Johnny Friday]

Brandon: What lighting are you using?

 

[Tim Sessler]

For clarity, the monochrome OLPF Red supply is a regular filter in terms of spectral transmission, but with sharpness characteristics tuned to match the monochrome sensor's design.

Hi John - just to clarify: the RED Monochrome OLPF is for the Monochrome senor only and couldn't be used with the color Dragon sensor? I originally naively assumed that it would optimize a B/W look for the Dragon color sensor...

Thanks,
Tim

 

[John Marchant]

The Red Monochrome OLPF, as I understand it, is the standard item from the Monochrome sensor.

It should theoretically yield a sharper, but moire free, image for post-converted monochrome images on a colour sensor, but we are in an impossibly fine area of differentiation...

I've not thrown a mono olpf on my test rig to measure how much it spreads the image... I'll do that asap.

 

[John Marchant]

Price drop time

We've just received a new batch of Full Spectrum Zero Lowpass components.

As we've surpassed our planned volume we've been able to lower our unit costs. The straight up thing to do is to pass that on, so that's what we're doing.

Effective immediately the Full Spectrum Zero Lowpass will drop from £220 to £185

If you've ordered inside the last week we'll credit the difference automatically.

Existing Full Spectrum owners can also get a further £25 one-off discount when buying a second unit. That's now just £160 to have a spare on hand.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

Looks like we have another option in the OPLF game. The TrueBlue OPLF is promising cleaner blues without the tendency to Magenta. I am looking forward to some tests.

http://tinyurl.com/ozjlbyx

With a weapon on order and the 8K option paid for I am personally holding off on these alternate OPLF as uncertain if the CF Weapon will use the same OPLF caddy and the 8K upgrade will require new larger OPLFs

 

[John Marchant]

8k will require new alternate OLPFs for sure, but 6k weapon will use identical dimensions of glass to the current Dragon

My intention on that basis is to offer a trade-in process to swap existing OLPFs into the weapon OLPF caddy when that becomes available.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

8k will require new alternate OLPFs for sure, but 6k weapon will use identical dimensions of glass to the current Dragon

My intention on that basis is to offer a trade-in process to swap existing OLPFs into the weapon OLPF caddy when that becomes available.

But doesn't the new Weapon incorporate some sort of electronic and automatic ID of the OPLF? Does this need a new tray design?

 

[John Marchant]

Yes the tray design is new, but the glass is compatible. Registration of the tray with the camera is electromechanical - a little like the notches on a super 8 cartridge.

 

[Jamon Lewis]

Yes the tray design is new, but the glass is compatible. Registration of the tray with the camera is electromechanical - a little like the notches on a super 8 cartridge.

Please check your PM

 

[Lee Kelly]

Super exciting.
Has anyone tested various lenses to see which respond to the various spectrum options?
Lens coatings have a lot to do with which contamination makes it to your sensor. Be nice to open this discussion.

 

[Ces Peynetti]

Someone should start an IR Cinematography thread in the Cinematography section. It's all so fascinating. I just received my Full Spectrum OLPF a few days ago and have been messing around with it. I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's pushing out some beautiful and bizarre imagery

This is something I shot this morning.

And a frame I grabbed yesterday:

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

This is something I shot this morning.

Nice Ces! Which lenses did you use for this?

 

[Tim Sessler]

Someone should start an IR Cinematography thread in the Cinematography section. It's all so fascinating. I just received my Full Spectrum OLPF a few days ago and have been messing around with it. I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's pushing out some beautiful and bizarre imager

Have you had any moire issues with your full spectrum? I tested it a few weeks ago and had some major issues in about half of my shots - I love the look though!

PW: olpf

Also RE: IR cinematography. Here is a piece that I recently shot with the Monochrome Dragon and REDs IR pass OLPF:

Cheers!

 

[Ces Peynetti]

Nice Ces! Which lenses did you use for this?

For the video I think I mostly used a Canon 35mm L except for the opening shots where I used a Canon 100mm L Macro. For the photo I used the Sigma Art 50mm

Have you had any moire issues with your full spectrum? I tested it a few weeks ago and had some major issues in about half of my shots - I love the look though!

I haven't really run into moire issues (or I haven't noticed them yet), though I've only tested it for a couple of hours with a couple of lenses and rushed the edit, so I may have not noticed it. Really beautiful shots throughout your monochrome video by the way.

 

[John Marchant]

Tim, I'd be intrigued to see some R3D grabs with moiré - although it can happen its quite rare, so I'm just interested to see the scenarios where it cropped up.

We can also produce a Full Spectrum with intact OLPF if anyone needs it - I'll get that on the store soon.

Also, FWIW, Weapon's design means that moiré can't happen with third party glass, as the optical elements are laid out differently.

 

[Tim Sessler]

Tim, I'd be intrigued to see some R3D grabs with moiré - although it can happen its quite rare, so I'm just interested to see the scenarios where it cropped up.

John - you're absolutely right. I just looked at the R3D files again and also re-rendered my proxies with a better scaling/debayer and it all looks a lot better now. Will have to do some more testings but I think all the moiree was due to the extremely sharp edges and my rendering settings. My bad!

 

[John Marchant]

Thanks for letting us know Tim.

In a similar way I've seen people make erroneous judgements of noise on Red, specifically on Monochrome, as the scaling and debayer setting can be quite critical and are not done to full effect in the RCX display.

Final quality export (even just a frame as a TIFF) helps make the judgement

 

[John Marchant]

Our first Weapon products are ready for prime time now.

We've been working hard behind the scenes, and we're still on track for the start of November to roll out both Epic and Weapon diffusion OLPFs in better volumes.

Around the same time we'll also be launching a final version of our 'Nylon' OLPF, incorporating genuine Nylon stocking net diffusion inside the OLPF glass.