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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 :)

5k S35 - Will S35 lenses work?

C.A.Alan said:
movie is strongly story driven with 2 star casts. planing to just rent 50mm master prime or buy one 50mm RPP or 50mm russian lens.

can the inconsistency issues in visible resolution and noise be corrected by color correction in fcp using plug in like colorista?

won't be rushing the post production because going to use 13" mac book pro for the whole project.
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I highly doubt you will be able to find someone who will rent you just a 50mm Master Prime for the length of your shoot. We have received this sort of request before and always refuse because it puts a hole in our set that makes them difficult if not impossible to rent otherwise. It just doesn't work like that.

RED may now be willing to sell individual focal lengths but last I looked the RPPs were still only sold as sets. I believe the same is true with the Luma Tech lenses but you can ask them. So then you are reduced to hunting down an individual used lens, which is no easy task either.

The industry is built around prime lens sets, not individual focal lengths.

And yes, there will be definite and obvious visual differences between different capture resolutions. Extracting 2K from the RED One is really using the camera at its weakest. I frankly see little value to shooting 2K on a Master Prime.

I suggest you take some of the offered suggestions and look at other ways to use your available funds. It is the learned opinion of many that this is not the best course of action.
 
C.A.Alan said:
movie is strongly story driven with 2 star casts. planing to just rent 50mm master prime or buy one 50mm RPP or 50mm russian lens.

can the inconsistency issues in visible resolution and noise be corrected by color correction in fcp using plug in like colorista?

won't be rushing the post production because going to use 13" mac book pro for the whole project.
Click to expand...

The short answer is: No.

From how I read your posts, it does not sound like the choice to shoot with one lens is story driven, but rather an attempt to save money. If it were story driven, then you would be shooting on the 50mm lens and not switching to different formats to get different field of views, or "lenses". They money you save will not be benefiting you when it comes time to edit. As mentioned by others, you will encounter a lot of head aches in post. Additionally, the optics in a 100mm lens are completely different then in a 50mm - the way they render out of focus areas, how compressed they render a scene, the depth of field, etc. these are all things that cannot be "fixed" or "created" in post.
 
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The old saying "penny-wise, pound-foolish" comes to mind. It's also rarely a good idea to push a ton of work onto the post side of things under the notion that it's more cost-effective.

Sure, with a lot of post work, you could muddy the whole movie down to the quality of 2K RAW, your weakest shots. That strikes me as a lot of effort to make a worse-looking product. Just to avoid getting two more lenses.

You'd be better off with three old Zeiss Super-Speeds at 4K than one Master Prime image being cropped in-camera to 2K RAW. In fact, you'd be better off spending the money on the basic 18-50mm Red zoom.

Not to mention, you can only get more telephoto with this technique, so what happens when you need a 25mm wide shot?
 
C.A.Alan said:
movie is strongly story driven with 2 star casts. planing to just rent 50mm master prime or buy one 50mm RPP or 50mm russian lens.

can the inconsistency issues in visible resolution and noise be corrected by color correction in fcp using plug in like colorista?

won't be rushing the post production because going to use 13" mac book pro for the whole project.
Click to expand...

This WILL NOT WORK. Period. You could use a single focal length, ala ozu, but you would need to physically move the camera for your different shots. Punching in/switching resolutions is truly a terrible terrible idea. The reasons are listed by others in this thread. Rent or buy a set of still nikon lenses. The quality difference between a nikon 100mm compared to say a master prime 50mm at 2k will be huge, in favor of the nikkor. Get a lens set. Even a cheap set - or use only one focal length and move the camera (this should be an artistic decision though, not one motivated by economics - it will effect the tone of your film.) But do not plan on shooting at different resolutions to approximate different focal lengths. Please. Please.
 
Wow, this thread went to hell in a handbasket...

Anyway, C.A.Alan, if you can only rent/buy a single lens, get a zoom. You will thank yourself later. The Cooke 18-100 and Angenieux 17-80 are industry workhorses and available everywhere for reasonable rates. Or buy the RED 18-50 -- used it goes for $4K or even a bit less.

If your entire post process is on a 13" Macbook, I wish you all the luck in the world...
 
Ditto what Jeff and David and Andrew and others have said. A single focal length lens can work but only if you have the great artistic chops (and reason) to pull it off -- and definitely shoot it all at 4K if you're using a Red 1. But as has been advised, there are zooms that can shoot an entire feature quite elegantly -- the Red 18-50, or better yet the 18-85 or a Cooke 18-100 -- or an even less expensive 20-100 could serve you well.

And I think you will need far more than luck to "process" (do the entire post, edit -- or even a rough cut ) of a film (don't know how long) on a Macbook. Actually puzzled why/how you would be shooting on a Red 1 with what appears to be such severe limitations.
 
C.A.Alan said:
movie is strongly story driven with 2 star casts. planing to just rent 50mm master prime or buy one 50mm RPP or 50mm russian lens.

can the inconsistency issues in visible resolution and noise be corrected by color correction in fcp using plug in like colorista?

won't be rushing the post production because going to use 13" mac book pro for the whole project.
Click to expand...

You might as well shoot everything 4k and then crop it in the post. It's a hack.

Llike David said, this is a very bad idea, unless you are doing it for the sake of experiment.

If it's a budget constrain, just rent a zoom.

My 2 dinars.
 
i'm going to take the advice and purchase a RED 18-50 for the movie.

but why would 2k RAW be the weakest shot on RED? D21,F23,F35 all have resolution less than 2k. and they look good on theater. Am i right to say that red 2k will be comparable to all those other D-cinema camera shots? and 4k is just overkill for 2k release?

planing to convert all the r3d to cineform raw and edit in MBP.
 
Not all 2K is the same. I can get a cellphone camera with more megapixels than a sweet Nikon or Canon DSLR, but that cellphone sure ain' gonna take sharper pictures. Not calling the R1 a cellphone, but you get the idea.
 
C.A.Alan said:
i'm going to take the advice and purchase a RED 18-50 for the movie.

but why would 2k RAW be the weakest shot on RED? D21,F23,F35 all have resolution less than 2k. and they look good on theater. Am i right to say that red 2k will be comparable to all those other D-cinema camera shots? and 4k is just overkill for 2k release?

planing to convert all the r3d to cineform raw and edit in MBP.
Click to expand...

The main thing to keep in mind is that 2K RAW is not 2K in resolution once converted to RGB color (RAW is not a color image). A RAW Bayer sensor has 50% of the photosites filtered green, 25% blue, and 25% red, and from that mosaic pattern, has to recreate 100% green, 100% red, and 100% blue. So there is some loss in final resolution.

A Sony F23 has three separate 2.2MP sensors, one each for red, green, and blue.

The D21 sensor is 2.8K Bayer, so it makes a good conversion to 2K RGB or 1080P HD.

The F35/Genesis uses essentially a 13MP sensor but a simpler RGB striped filter (not Bayer) to make downsamples to 1920 x 1080 each for red, green, and blue. So it is a very high-quality 1080P 4:4:4 (2K RGB more or less) image.

Basically if you have a single sensor and you want to end up with 2K RGB, ideally you'd start out at anywhere from 2.5K and higher for RAW.

Capturing in 4K or 3K RAW on the RED ONE for a 2K cinema release is better than capturing in 2K RAW. Basically the RED is comparable to the competition in resolution in its 3K or 4K RAW mode, but it's somewhat mediocre (I'm sorry to say) in 2K mode. It's fine for the occasional slo-mo shot because those types of shots tend to look unique-enough that your eye doesn't notice the softness.

Also, not all 2K sensors are alike. The Red sensor is optimized for 4K, that's all. By using only one-quarter of the sensor to get 2K (4K is twice as big both horizontally and vertically, so 4X larger overall) you are magnifying noise and softness. Whether or not you get away with it is shot dependent and how well you exposed the image, how much scene contrast it has, etc.

Cameras not only vary in the number of photosites in the sensor, but also in the Optical Low Pass Filter in front of the sensor that reduces aliasing. This filter basically softens or blurs high-frequency edge detail that would normally "twitter" and alias / moire. Two 2K cameras may not have the same design of OLPF and therefore may look different in terms of perceived sharpness.

But if you take one thing away from this, it's to stop confusing 2K RGB with 2K RAW. You can convert a 2K RAW file to 2K RGB (one file becomes three files at 2K, one each for red, green, and blue) but it won't measure at 2K resolution on a chart.

Also keep in mind that there are benefits to oversampling by capturing at 4K RAW and ending up at 2K RGB for cinema release. It's generally better to be scaling down than up.
 
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There needs to be a Bayer/Resolution FAQ here, written by someone impartial. David's post here is maybe a starting point for it?
 
Sorry to get back on this important topic (thank you David for those treasures of patience), but has anyone an idea if the 18-85 RED PRO Zoom will cover 5K on the Epic X??

I've tested it in 4.5K and it works just fine, but it's not present on the Duclos list so I do wonder if it will cover 5K.

Emmanuel
 
David Mullen ASC said:
... but it's somewhat mediocre (I'm sorry to say) in 2K mode. It's fine for the occasional slo-mo shot because those types of shots tend to look unique-enough that your eye doesn't notice the softness ...
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Agreed. There are people who have been happy with the 2k mode in general, but it has always felt a little soft to me.
 
To my findings you loose +- 30% after the de-bayer.
3K after de bayer gives me perfectly crisp 2K image

Considering all is sharp, Red 2k converted to 1080p looks close to 720p upscaled to 1080p.
 
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