Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

A Dragon assesment...

Hey Phil, maybe I'm missing something then, perhaps you could explain why you are counting patches? Does what I'm saying make sense or are we talking about totally different things or something? Are you saying you are counting patches because you always count patches with other cameras so it is a fair comparison comparing how many patches have detail on Dragon's chart versus how many patches contain detail on other cameras? Perhaps I misunderstood and you aren't using the patches to measure stops of DR at all but rather use it as a proxy for DR? I suppose that could work as long as you accept the greater margin of error and always only compare patch counts of one camera to patch counts of another camera, never comparing patch counts of one camera to actual calculated DR of other cameras.
 
Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
Hey Phil, maybe I'm missing something then, perhaps you could explain why you are counting patches? Does what I'm saying make sense or are we talking about totally different things or something? Are you saying you are counting patches because you always count patches with other cameras so it is a fair comparison comparing how many patches have detail on Dragon's chart versus how many patches contain detail on other cameras? Perhaps I misunderstood and you aren't using the patches to measure stops of DR at all but rather use it as a proxy for DR? I suppose that could work as long as you accept the greater margin of error and always only compare patch counts of one camera to patch counts of another camera, never comparing patch counts of one camera to actual calculated DR of other cameras.
Click to expand...

The greater margin of error would come from going one full stop into clip or coming down from that as you might literally miss the vast majority of data that can be found in that transition. Patch measurements like what I'm doing here is what the industry "does". It's on every color chart even, though in broader steps. The actual calculated DR an action of measuring your sample target accurately and graphing the data. Same deal when using my old densitometer and film. The patch you are on is your "base".

If for whatever you feel that starting at 0 or 1 is more appropriate go ahead. I'm showing you the data. Up to you guys how you want to interpret it.

On thing though, in measured stops obviously on all of these systems as you get further down towards the noise floor abyss you start getting into areas of potential "I can see that tonality shift, but it's also mostly noise". That's something to be on the lookout for. Traditionally with all systems that's information placed in black and shadow areas.
 
Getting back to compression and the differences in REDCODE when comparing Dragon to the MX, I decided to use the trusty RED.com "tools" section to help shed some light on it since no-one seems to know/care, but it is clear that the data rate has an increase of 0.5MB/frame when shooting the same res/compression with Dragon. Does that mean that compression algorithms have changed? Or is it simply less compression per frame (.5mb to be specific)? Either way, it's great news since that means more info per frame, which I'm happy about.
 
Matthew Scott said:
Getting back to compression and the differences in REDCODE when comparing Dragon to the MX, I decided to use the trusty RED.com "tools" section to help shed some light on it since no-one seems to know/care, but it is clear that the data rate has an increase of 0.5MB/frame when shooting the same res/compression with Dragon. Does that mean that compression algorithms have changed? Or is it simply less compression per frame (.5mb to be specific)? Either way, it's great news since that means more info per frame, which I'm happy about.
Click to expand...

I don't have a solid answer as to "what" is going on, but it has been mentioned a few times that REDCODE was more or less optimized differently for Dragon. Which is understandable for a variety of reasons.
 
Hey Phil, yes you are indeed right! Optimized is such a fluffy word though, don't you think? Not very measurable. I feel like you keep telling me to shush and that I need to move on since you've told me what you know. Does my inquisitive nature bug you?
 
Matthew Scott said:
Hey Phil, yes you are indeed right! Optimized is such a fluffy word though, don't you think? Not very measurable. I feel like you keep telling me to shush and that I need to move on since you've told me what you know. Does my inquisitive nature bug you?
Click to expand...

No not really. That's the answer I was given when I asked what the differences were between MX's and Dragon's REDCODE. It has to do with optimizing it for the pixel size and the generally new lower noise floor. That's pretty much all I know about it. Red's fairly tight lipped regarding certain things because you know.... Competitors. I'm giving you the answer I know though.
 
[Dragon] Less luma noise (ie less High frequency junk) = better compression possible for the same image
[Dragon] Extra bits read in the ADC = more data to compress vs MX
['hilight OLPF] Probably worse S/N than low-light, but more usable values near sensor clipping, and less flare, and less detail for dark objects = probably less data to compress where finer details were dark in image.
[Hi frame rate] S/N rate means Dragon looks stellar vs MX.

My guesses.

AJ
 
A really helpful summary from all thanks - I'm about to jump into Dragon and its a learning curve (even though I have been shooting RAW for nearly 14years!)
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
I feel like folks are not giving enough credit to what the vastly improved highlight handling means in terms of setting a stop. On M and MX I was practically the clipping police, determined to give the colorist a clean top end. With Dragon (OLPF V2) I am comfortable with letting the top end burn a bit as long as I get the exposure I want on key elements (general rule, yes there are exceptions). From a practical perspective, this gives me more control over the exposure choice as I don't get stuck having to underexpose a key element trying to avoid the clip.

Available/low light shooting on Dragon vs MX isn't the degree of improvement many were hoping for, but as long as you have enough light it really does add 3 usable stops of DR. YMMV.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

Unfortunately my producers do not want to pay for more lighting so that we can shoot with Dragon vs any other camera out there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top