ALEXA | F65 | DRAGON | HELIUM | Holiday shootout!

[Christoph Tilley]

Holiday is testing time! So we shot different cameras in the studio:
- ARRI Alexa Mini (ARRIRAW, Open gate 3.8K)
- Sony F65 (F65RAW-SQ)
- RED Epic Dragon (6K, 5:1)
- RED Weapon Helium (8K, 5:1)


Everything was shot on a ZEISS LWZ.2 at 45mm. We measured T8 at our models face. All cameras were shot at following T-stops: 8, 11, 16, 22, 5.6, 4, 2.8
Every camera was set to ISO800, 5600K, 25FPS and 180-degree shutter.

In Davinci Resolve we applied following LUTs to the raw image data:
- Alexa LogC -> Arri Alexa LogC to Rec709.dat
- F65 SLog3/SGamut3.cine -> SLog3SGamut3.CineToLC-709TypeA.cube
- Dragon RedLogFilm/DragonColor2 -> RLF_2_RG4_64.cube
- Helium REDWideGamutRGB/Log3G10 -> IPP2 Preview.cube
- Helium REDWideGamutRGB/Log3G10 -> Antons_ARRI_Christmas_LUT_BETA_v1.cube

You can learn about Antons ARRI Christmas LUT here:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?153087-ARRI-Christmas-LUT

We are sharing in our dropbox:
- the resulting clip where everything is thrown together
- complete raw footage
- uncompressed dpx still frames straight out of resolve
- jpg still frames for reference
- all LUTs used in resolve

You can download everything here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1m8md5zirddrt2t/AACQqFhKPZN7WYtW0Gprzq3da?dl=0

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Happy holidays everyone!

 

[Nate Maydole]

Thanks for sharing! Cheers!

 

[Anton Shavlik]

A+!

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Wow. The Dragon looks as green as heck. Not good at all.

Stephen

 

[Anton Shavlik]

Any ideas on why the Dragon and Helium look so green?

 

[Christoph Tilley]

No, unfortunately no idea :-( You can check the R3Ds in the dropbox if I omitted something, but I don't think so. I am very curious myself - as I really would want to get rid of the green cast.

 

[Phil Holland]

Wow. The Dragon looks as green as heck. Not good at all.

Any ideas on why the Dragon and Helium look so green?

White Balance appears to not have been set.

The R3Ds aren't online yet, but it would be nice to see both Dragon and Helium using IPP2 and White Balanced.

 

[Christoph Tilley]

No, I intentionally shot every camera at 5600K to have a common base as starting point.
R3Ds should be up in a couple of hours. It is about 35GB in total.

 

[Anton Shavlik]

Of course you can white balance to remove the green, but it's curious why the other camera's weren't affected the same way.

 

[Brad Allen]

Might be a Tint balance problem rather than White balance? That'd be my guess. R3D's will reveal.

 

[Christoph Tilley]

I had the tint set to 0 on both REDs. The first Helium R3Ds are available now!

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Appreciate the test, but why did you shoot Dragon with DragonColor and RWG4? The RWG/LOG3G10 is working with all Red cameras so it would be nice to see how Dragon perform with Helium on the same color science.

 

[Christoph Tilley]

I shot the Dragon on DC2/RG4 because afaik with the Epic DSMC it is not possible to use IPP2 in camera. But you can download the R3Ds from Dropbox and apply the look from there. Upload should be done by now.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Wow my takeaway is that Alexa still beats helium for color, shadows and highlights... But the detail on helium is pretty amazing for 4K output, though at 2K output the difference seems isn't nearly as much.

Not quite what I was expecting. I was certain that helium would beat Alexa at least in shadow noise. The difference in detail and noise detail is bigger than expected as well, perhaps some noise reduction would quickly level the playing field?

 

[Brad Grimm]

It really goes to show how amazing the Alexa sensor was and is. I have a feeling they are having a hard time replacing it themselves

But with a quick white balance the green is gone and I think the images look really fantastic. There is a half of stop of highlight protection lost in Helium, but we knew that already. I am personally testing to see how shooting at higher ISO's effect this.

I am finding that 1000 iso to 1280 iso is the sweet spot with the Helium sensor.. The Images are very rich.

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

Yes, this is correct. The Alexa sensor is proving almost impossible to improve on except for resolution. The new Amazon and Netflix mandates about 4K is making them crazy and thus Alexa 65 is quite an enticement if one could find a camera to rent.

I am still trying to sell directors and client/agency on Weapon 6K versus Alexa and now it isn't post that is the issue it is what they have been told by former DPs. So we have some way to go boys and girls to help sell our tiny little bundles of joy whether Weapon or Helium.

I have been fighting this battle and even with the help of Fincher, Bay, Ridley etc it is hard.....

Get the word out, and I hope that we see better Spy Vs. Spy tests out there soon.

Happy New Year to all and Bula Bula to Jarred and family

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Just to chime in, after seeing a bit of well finished 4k material (from Billy Lynn shot on F65, to more recent Netflix UHD productions), it's really hard to see any good reason not to do 4k finishes anymore. The difference is kinda striking.

 

[Akin A]

Christoph, what is your conclusion from the test before compression?

 

[Justin McAleece]

This is awesome! Thank you for doing this!!

 

[Christoph Tilley]

Christoph, what is your conclusion from the test before compression?

Hard to say - I don't like shooting with the Alexa Mini due to bad ergonomics. The Weapon really shines here. But you can't ignore the color accuracy, highlight rolloff and the nearly perfect image without lots of adjustments in post. But you can get there with Helium, and the low noise enables shooting at ISO1600 and when you expose to the left you get really rich colors and smooth rolloffs. But you need to know what you are doing and expose right - Alexa is more easy to handle imo.

And if you shoot something VFX heavy with lots of keying and you need crazy sharp images for cropping in and stuff like that there is still only one champ: F65.