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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 :)

After DRAGON what is developing at RED....????

I wouldn't describe the Epic body as being a heavy studio camera...

Similar to the issues of building a camera with too many pixels on the sensor is also making it too physically small, and thus have trouble managing heat when you start to shoot at high frame rates.
 
A FF 4:3 35mm camera based on Dragon or next-gen Dragon-sensor.

I think Panasonic may have hit a few nails by making "two native ISOs" (whichever way they did that).

If it's a question of two "optimised voltages" to the sensor, and the images really work, a 320/6400 camera seems to be the "common" desire here :)
I sure could use both, if I had them :)

But a 4:3 FF35 mm cam seems like a logical next step. (so RED will probably think far ahead of that)
Personally I wouldn't mind it having 2x XLR's with physical gain-knobs, sync, 2 red monitor outputs, proxy-recording and 4k SDI out of the box, but then again I would probably not be able to afford it... :)
I would love it to accept different 3D LUTs on the different outputs, and be able to have focus-assist and different exposure tools assigned to individual outputs as well.

Blackshading-free would also rank high on the convenience list. No real biggie for me, just to avoid "fuzz on town".

Now. Start saving... :)
 
No idea what the market will be, but my next camera will be for motion/still/VR (i.e. the raw image would be usable as single frame still, motion film, and VR). Currently the VR camera's are way to small with limited functionality (i.e. array of go pro's), or way huge/expensive (i.e. dragon/epic 360 rigs). My preference is i'd have a medium format camera back, then put on a high end lenses to that go get a nice "flat" 180 degree field of view. I want the VR lens to be PL mount of a master prime quality. For that type of wrap around i'd like the camera to be 12k (FF ratio). I like the epic/dragon size, but having 4 tied together isn't going to work for me.
 
Enrique Blein said:
I finally shot with a rented Dragon yesterday and I have to say, that although it was better in lalititude, I felt at the end of the day thinking I hade made the right decision not to upgrade my Epic. My Epic is good enough for my business until a new sensor arrives.
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MX is solid, and I can still edit R3Ds in my amortized copy of CS 5.5 without transcoding or being forced to subscribe to Adobe CC. I also think that 64GB cards on Dragon are not enough for 6K unless you have half a dozen.

Being on the bleeding edge is great, but costly when you add up the fringe costs or the hours spent re-working your set-up to avoid said fringe costs.
 
Kemalettin Sert said:
Compete with GH5? If you need GH5-like camera why not buying one?
I hope RED abandones consumer market and go big with rental systems.
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there is no gh5 yet but I'm imagining it will do 60fps when it does arrive. I've done numerous experiments with the gh4 and I'm rather satisfied surprisingly even though it is 8 bits.
I believe red will only make larger Studio cameras in the future because they can't possibly compete against those massive companies on the consumer or semi-pro small camera level. Especially when they make very similar image quality which is what I'm finding with the GH4.
For now I'm missing the high speed and excellent user interface and the feature set of the red, but I'm willing to sacrifice for the ultra lightweight ,one second boot up time as well as all day battery life.
The run and gun shooting style I do really demands lighter cameras allowing 3-axis gimbal to be mounted all the time, and my bad back demands it as well :-)
 
Les Dittert said:
there is no gh5 yet but I'm imagining it will do 60fps when it does arrive. I've done numerous experiments with the gh4 and I'm rather satisfied surprisingly even though it is 8 bits.
I believe red will only make larger Studio cameras in the future because they can't possibly compete against those massive companies on the consumer or semi-pro small camera level. Especially when they make very similar image quality which is what I'm finding with the GH4.
For now I'm missing the high speed and excellent user interface and the feature set of the red, but I'm willing to sacrifice for the ultra lightweight ,one second boot up time as well as all day battery life.
The run and gun shooting style I do really demands lighter cameras allowing 3-axis gimbal to be mounted all the time, and my bad back demands it as well :-)
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I know gh5 not out yet , sure its gonna be same like gh4 which i worked 2 days non stop on interviews back in this summer.Its nice compact video camera :) thats all.by all means no way its a cinema camera.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I'd prefer that future sensors not try to cram so many pixels into them that there are sensitivity issues.
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Sustained...Common sense, too. I've said that myself about Dragon sensitivity problems, remember ? I have not upgraded, and I just hope that people that have not upgraded because they did not need 6 K and felt that Dragon (and its price) did not meet their requirements regarding sensivity will not be deprived of a path towards a new sensor.
 
I'd rather have a 5K S35 sized sensor with a true 20 stops of usable Dynamic range,
than a 8K large sensor with a usable 14 stops of Dynamic range.
 
Making dragon live up to its hype and also making the red one dragon.
 
Ed David said:
Making dragon live up to its hype and also making the red one dragon.
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Hm... Dragon pretty much lives up to its "hype". If 3 stops more than MX, better colours in the full exposure range and 6k image sampling is what was the hype.
To me it was.

I think even with the LLO option, main problem is that people somehow seem to think that the extra sensitivity between 800 -> 2000 "should mean" something in the range of 5-6 stops extra sensitivity, while it really is "just" 1,25 stops.

To me, the colours, noise- and image-carracteristics is the reason to go Dragon. Others may have other values. but I find it hard to not say that Dragon delivers what I expected. And then some.

Dragon for Red One was never even a suggested option, and I wouldn't really hold my breath.
 
No more "mysteries of blackshading" would be a good thing. It's not really an issue when you know about it, but has some destructive potential...
 
I don't think any one camera design is going to satisfy everyone.

It's clear that the current approach, ever since the Epic MX camera, was to make something small enough to use as a still camera as well as a cinema camera, but with that comes some design challenges, like heat management in a small body and getting enough pixel resolution to satisfy still photographers used to working with 20+ megapixel cameras, not to mention losing physical space on the body for all the connectors that many motion shooters desire.

But it also means that the current Epic body design is popular with some fashion and commercial photographers who now have to shoot 4K motion as well. And it's popular for any motion shooter who needs a small body for things like 3D work, aerials, underwater, etc.

So you can't really satisfy everyone -- go smaller towards the size of a still camera, and some problems get worse, and go larger to solve those problems, and the people who wanted something smaller are unhappy.

In theory, the modular design of the Epic should have solved those problems but I think that one issue was that the modules weren't designed in advance with the main unit, they were done after the fact. Probably the Epic should have been introduced as a two-part camera design from the beginning so that it could be quickly stripped down to the still camera size that some people need but also easily expanded to have all of the cinema controls that other people want. I think people are confused by the current module system; I know I am.

On the other hand, the Epic differentiates itself from other cinema cameras by its size and its resolution, and maybe that's a marketing advantage that would be lost should it attempt to mimic either something like a GH4 or A7S in one direction or an F55 in the other direction. But my gut tells me that it would be pointless to compete with the big still camera manufacturers. They are better off addressing the competition from digital cinema and video camera manufacturers and their products.
 
I agree with David. I don't need or want resolution above 5K - it's just a data clog of zero utility to our work. 5K was just enough, just perfect, to help post without wasting data, and to be able to use very low compression, while retaining a wide field of view on the lens.

But… I do want better color, freedom from any gotcha issues (pink blobs, whatever, etc.) and better-than-MX sensitivity. Really very important is no gotcha's. My sets are very expensive, and a ruined shot can mean a lawsuit, a lost client, or both. I'll admit that IR can be a bit of a gotcha on MX, but other than that it is 100% solid. I am not interested in being "on the forefront" at the cost of potential problems. On an expensive set, 100% surprise free-reliability and predictability is really the actual top of the list. The rest is gravy. Actors can be temperamental enough, as can the weather. I hoep whatever Red releases next will be without any negative surprises. Just a solid, solid piece of kit like my Epic is.

As for sensitivity, it saves a lot of money (you still light, just using lower watt sources), and more importantly, means lower, more actor friendly light levels. It also permits not lighting distant city backgrounds at night. Some people romanticize 35 mm film, and sure it was sometimes wonderful, but many urban night shots were not possible on 35, not without hugely expensive set-ups that floodlit background buildings with huge sources, and soft-lighting large spaces often required gigantic numbers of watts and amps in a truck-sized genny.

With my MX Epic, I can use a Joker 800 to light quite a large building, and the distant skyline needs no help at all. In the next gen sensor, I'd hope to use a 400 to do the same. I can light entire large rooms (that have windows blacked to fully control light) by just plugging into the wall sockets in many locations. Next gen sensor? Give me the ability to do this even in locations with less than perfect electricity.

I would happily take all that in a larger, Red One like camera body. Red One was perfect weight and shape for Steadicam. I don't need to carry my camera in a backpack, I have a crew, and Epic is a bit too small and light much of the time.

Of course, many will disagree with my requests - for example doco guys often need something fast and light, more than anything- which is why I hope Red starts offering different models of camera for different styles of shooting. No camera is perfect for everybody.
 
I think what Arri did with the Alexa has been pretty smart: Re-packaging it for different uses is not "only" a good business model, but has greatly helped it in market penetration.
Whether that model is an open road for RED though... I wouldn't know! :)
 
I personally don't believe in an 8K finish, I am happy with 4K, I thinks its the sweet spot. So at this point I don't care about cameras going beyond 6K for a 4K finish. Now FF would be cool if it stayed 6K but used larger photo sites to achieve better sensitivity and DR. And medium or 65mm-ish (Hasselblad) format would be cool too for the characteristics of that format.

The future will just get better, tech will advance, sensors will get better. Very soon there will be no compelling argument to shy away from digital and stay with film. Global shutters will come, high frame rates, scalable sensors, imaging shooting vertically with out rotating the camera because the sensor is square and you simply activate the vertical area of the sensor, animorphic will get easier, etc.

These are just MHOs we do know that things will only get better.
 
I'd say that increasing the pixel count would be the least beneficial thing to do at this point.
Even with FF sensor route.
 
Denis Buhot said:
Sustained...Common sense, too. I've said that myself about Dragon sensitivity problems, remember ? I have not upgraded, and I just hope that people that have not upgraded because they did not need 6 K and felt that Dragon (and its price) did not meet their requirements regarding sensivity will not be deprived of a path towards a new sensor.
Click to expand...

THIS (like Gunleik says)
 
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