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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 :)

9 1/2 stops...

Jannard said:
You certainly have the right to disagree with me, but we have found MANY trained professionals that were incorrectly grading RED footage. I have done this more times than I want to count (with Builds prior to and including 15). And just because you found people that couldn't do it doesn't mean it can't be done. Graeme has seen me do it, as has Jarred, Deanan, Rob and Ted. Actually, all of them can do it. But you telling me it can't be done just doesn't hold water. Now if you (and your pros) would like to learn how to do it... that is another topic.

The good news for all is that Build 16 makes it very simple to grade RED footage. We have done all the work for you (actually, Graeme and the team have)...

Jim
Click to expand...
Jim, this seems like a good time to make a suggestion for the RED team to do a video on exposing RED properly in Build 16. In fact, if you are only working out bugs right now with 16 and the build won't change dramatically from now until release, perhaps you could put this together before the beta is even released.

To me, it's of the upmost importance to have something that will show people the right way to approach this. Not a video that teaches people how to light and expose a digital image, but rather one that shows to approach your exposure when shooting with RED and a RAW workflow. I think this could really diffuse some of the speculation and "wrong" approaches people are taking.

You guys know the camera inside and out and should be the authority on showing people how to use it. Let's end this back and forth stuff going on, and have a video that leaves very little to the imagination and shows best practices with working with RED footage.

What do you think?
 
One of the problems with previous builds is that it was not easy to nail proper exposure. Then grade. Build 16 is "magic" in that it makes it MUCH easier to expose properly and grade more easily.

I'm preparing to start a new thread that shows how to grade RED Build 15 footage and then show that we do it for you in Build 16.

Jim
 
Thanks Jim.

B16 is going to be a great lecture to grade RED footage for all of us even for 'professionals'...
 
Jim, the texture in that B16 frame is stunning! I can't tell you what a relief that is. There was something about the first few builds that always struck me as more organic that those of 12 and higher. It looks like you've done those even better. The first thing I shot on Red, literally the second or third day after the first 25 shipped was a music video. (Silly latin piece remember) well I rated the camera at ISO 640 for that shoot and I was totally happy with what came out in the grade. It certainly had texture but it seemed granular and beautiful. Then, somewhere around build 12 it changed very subtlety and I stopped pushing the camera past ISO 400. Not because the noise was too much but because I felt something different, I'm not sure I even realized it till I looked at that frame at the top of the thread.
RC36 did help quite a bit too and now my standard shooting ISO in B15 is 400 ISO but beyond that it still seems to give me a more "Mosquito" pattern that you have mentioned before. Personally I easily and repeatably get 9 solid stops of DR out of B15 at ISO 320-400 and I never really notice the noise, at least not in any way that bothers me. But the example you have posted above means that ISO 640-800 may be a reasonable option again for those of us who are not afraid to trade organic texture for sensitivity and DR.
 
Concrete said:
Great example, Jim.

Tho' many here are nor understanding what you try to explain.
Click to expand...

Just posted a new thread with the "secrets"... although I posted the same thing about a year ago. :-)

Jim
 
Here is a frame from a short I shot and am beginning post on...
BrumbyHDR.jpg

The top frame here is properly graded, the bottom pic is what I saw when opening the R3D. I exposed this scene at ISO 500 knowing that those building in the background were 4+ stops hot and I wanted the chance to recover them. Experience told me I could do that and still light for the face at ISO 500. All I had was two 1200W HMI's bounced into foam core and a 200W Joker for an eye light. There is some noise in the lowest tones but it's not distracting at all once they are dropped into their proper range. I think this shot is gorgeous! and I can't wait for B16 so I can push it even farther.
 
looks fine. looks good. looks professional recorded.
 
Great example Evin... we are finding that way too many graders would NOT have recovered the detail in the building.

Jim
 
Thanks, Jim.
This has been one of the most rewarding shoots I've done on my Red so far. I feel I've really able to flex a creative muscle that has been hard to move on all the bread and butter commercials and music videos I shoot. Hopefully we'll have a cut and finish by mid summer, there is a lot of effects work too.
 
Looks like you are a "curve professional"!

Jim
 
Jannard said:
Looks like you are a "curve professional"!

Jim
Click to expand...

Thanks, again.
Most of that can be chalked up to 15 years of Photoshop. I started out in still photography. Curves and I have been close friends for quite a while now. That may be why some people seem to get it and other have a hard time understanding the grading process. Even though they are seasoned professionals they may have come from Film or HD video which both have their own completely different tool sets. Red's closest cousin is the DSLR and Adobe Camera Raw is the spitting image of Red Alert (or vice versa). I've been pushing the limits of curves and DR on DSLRs sine the Kodak DSC760c which I shot product photography with in 1998 right out of Brooks.

Here are some of the things curves can do in CS3...
318377489_78fe8268ac_o.jpg

317498708_8d67571938_o.jpg

317498784_bfa3d84a93_o.jpg

318196930_6746030cca_o.jpg
 
I see you have pet zebras in your back yard...

Great stuff.

Jim
 
This is one of the most educational threads I've seen up to now on Reduser!

Plus, Evin, you have confirmed my attitude to those who ask me what you can get out of a Red before deciding to order one. I keep telling them "Get a Canon D-SLR, shoot RAW and play with Photoshop" (well, I suppose others will do, I just love my 10D).

Talking about noise: I've seen catching documentaries shot under available light with 16mm 500 ASA pushed by two stops. Grainy as hell, but if the story is really touching you, you don't care. It just needs to be organic noise, and this build 16 noise looks very organic to me – I hope it won't do strange things in motion. And Graeme and his team are really pushing the envelope here, since 9.5 stops under plus pushing 3 stops is bringing us down into the limits of 12 bit digitization, we're getting into quantization noise here, aren't we?

When talking about DR, we have to keep in mind that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if it's film or electronics. Yes, film negative can take heaps of light, it just gets more and more flat in response getting ever closer to a flat line. Similar, but more critical due to grain in shadows, that's why you expose film to protect your shadows. But you decide at which point this curve becomes unusable when grading. For electronics, only saturation is clearly defined (so we expose for highlights), but when an image is lost in the mud of noise is again your decision, and the content dictates where you draw the line.

So, yes, that face woud be unacceptable for a cosmetics commercial. But if you shot her in a documentary, and you cought her when her face was telling the audience in this very moment what she went through, let's say in any kind of atrocity against her (or by her) humans are capable of? Wouldn't you use it as long as the noise isn't looking too synthetical?

Best regards,

Uli
 
Concrete said:
Great, great shot, Evin, but why are you opening the footage in REDalert! as ISO200 and no as ISO320?

AFAIK if you would open it as ISO500 you would loose highlight info but I thought at ISO 320 all the info was preserved...
Click to expand...

Graeme may correct me on this but I didn't think there was any difference between setting ISO 320 and using the exposure slider to bring back a highlight or using the ISO directly. Either way the scene was still clipping at 320.

I don't ever think of the ISOs in the RA or RC as needing to be correlated to anything specific. I exposed at ISO 500 (Camera setting), chose consecutively lower ISO's in RA until the right side of the histogram pulled behind the wall, then used the exposure slider to fine tune the highest value to what looked right.
I then applied the curve using the shoulder to roll the highlights up smoothly, the knee to keep the skin tone correct and the toe to deepen the shadows without crushing them too much. A little DRX to make all the channels in the top highlight line up and voilla!

A finely baked R3D.
 
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