4k R3D from 8k sensor? Full frame, no crop?

[Anthony Berenato Jr]

Hey Jarek, hope all is well over there. There was a bit of discussion before about pixel binning, which I believe is the proper term for having different groups of pixels count as one. The idea is that you would be able to use the full sensor, but only be recording from a portion of it by using groups of pixels instead of single pixels creating the frame.

Though, for now - we have debayers and REDCODE. It starting to seem like shooting 8K with a higher REDCODE (to maintain a similar data rate as Dragon 6K) still nets a better, cleaner result. Right now it's just about balance until tech catches up.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

It's not so much about problems, just options.

My point is that 4k raw, full frame, from an 8k Helium, in camera, no post conversion, hand off at end of day, as an option, would be awesome if possible. Can anyone seriously disagree with that statement?

I'll shoot 8k all day any day, I'm not the one that needs convincing.

Just talking hypothetically guys!

 

[Graeme Nattress]

It's not so much about problems, just options.

My point is that 4k raw, full frame, from an 8k Helium, in camera, no post conversion, hand off at end of day, as an option, would be awesome if possible. Can anyone seriously disagree with that statement?

I'll shoot 8k all day any day, I'm not the one that needs convincing.

Just talking hypothetically guys!

Well to me that's called recording 4k ProRes, which is downsampled from the full sensor.

Graeme

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

It's not so much about problems, just options.

My point is that 4k raw, full frame, from an 8k Helium, in camera, no post conversion, hand off at end of day, as an option, would be awesome if possible. Can anyone seriously disagree with that statement?

I'll shoot 8k all day any day, I'm not the one that needs convincing.

Just talking hypothetically guys!

I cannot comment on how what may seem to someone but that route defeats the purpose of shooting on 8K sensor and you would be throwing out a lot of image information with no benefit apart from file sizes and end up with resolution smaller than 4K after debayer, while not harvesting pixel size advantage from native 4K sensor.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

I cannot comment on how what may seem to someone but that route defeats the purpose of shooting on 8K sensor and you would be throwing out a lot of image information with no benefit apart from file sizes and end up with resolution smaller than 4K after debayer, while not harvesting pixel size advantage from native 4K sensor.

Fortunately, for producers who don't get the advantages of shooting 8k redraw, we always have Dragon tech at 4kHD which ain't so shabby either

 

[Alexander Thomson]

Jim, come back and say "line skipping not spoken here" like you declared in the early days. This client gets 4K ProRes. What they want and what they need is completely outta whack. It's fine to talk about hypothetically shooting a pixel binned/line skipped R3D so long as we're discussing how that runs completely counter to what RED has been working on for the past decade. 4K R3D full FOV will come if RED makes a Super35 sized 4096x2160 imager (with comparatively huge pixels) --- but RED's been firm about increasing resolution going forward.

 

[Robert Halliday]

Ok, so I know this was never possible with raw on Red cameras. But now since we've moved to an 8k sensor, wouldn't it be much easier to do now with some sort of line skipping etc?

I'm currently waiting for my Helium 8k upgrade, but I notice now how much I struggle sometimes with my 6k Weapon when I crop down to 4k, something I do pretty often when I don't need all the extra resolution. I'm thinking I might shoot more 4k prores with 8k Weapon, but the sweet spot would be to get full 4k r3d glory off the full sensor.

Thoughts?

Ive been meaning to check, but I accidentally chose 5k to record in protest 4k on my scarlet-w. So I guess my question is like yours. Does that mean that it downsampled the full 5k sensor in-camera to a 4k prores?! Because that would be awesome, and exactly the fix you need I think

 

[Dan Kanes]

This topic generally comes up about 2x a year, and generally many people come in and say “that’s a dumb idea.”

Actually , it’s not a dumb idea and Jarek is right.

Let’s take a look outside the box and think about what can be achieved in some DSMC3 bodies potentially.

It’s a fact. Many people don’t want 8K files. Yes, we can shoot a smaller part of the sensor- sorry - that’s not what we want, but it can be useful sometimes.

Some people say “shoot prores” - that’s nice too - but there is no Prores 4444 4K option.

So, to make it clear what many of us want : we want a color rich, smaller resolution file.

No one wants line skipping. No one wants pixel binning. In fact, we aren’t asking for that.

We are looking for a pixel multiplexing technique that could potentially give richer color data, which may not be dependent on a strict Bayer pattern math.

If we can generate 4K 16 bit tiff or similar downscaled 4K Files that look great and are color-rich in Post from r3d, I see no real reason DSMC3 could not do the same. (Except for time, budget, engineering - you know, real world stuff)

Take a look at canon MRAW and SRAW from like 10 years ago for an example of compressed, downscaled raw stills in camera, and tell me that a Jpeg is a better answer for “information density” (I’m referring to prores here)

Technical article here:

http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/articles/sRaw.pdf

I would not at all be shocked to find out this is what we may see in a future motion format from Canon - and may already be a part of their RawLite codec.

By the way, 4K prores 422HQ from 8K tends to seem to be acceptable for many clients who ain’t down with the 8K raw - but of course not all, and as camera people we often want more !