All the Epic/Dragon Vs. Alexa/Sony threads are belong to us...

[Matt Ryan]

RED Epic Dragon scores highest score ever and first to break the 100 point mark on DXO Mark sensor score test! My guess is this was done with the old olpf? Pretty damn impressive either way from a motion camera.

http://www.dxomark.com/Reviews/RED-Epic-Dragon-review-First-camera-to-break-the-100-point-DxOMark-sensor-score-barrier

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

$29000 for Epic Dragon?

$29000 for Epic Dragon?

When do you guys think the Epic dragon will actually be available for $29000?
And I don't mean order now and see it in what- a year? two?
What will BM offer in two years? Sony, Canon, Panasonic?

 

[Mike P.]

I wonder how Alexa would fair at the DXO tests (particularly in colour and dynamic range... as noise and resolution it probably wouldn't fair too well.)

@jacek: I think they're supposed to be $24.5k standalone. Availability? I have no idea. I'm more interested in the standalone Scarlet-Dragon price... Something tells me the trade-in ($9500, but only end up with one camera) won't seem so lucrative after finding out Scarlet-Dragon's standalone price.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

When do you guys think the Epic dragon will actually be available for $29000?
And I don't mean order now and see it in what- a year? two?
What will BM offer in two years? Sony, Canon, Panasonic?

Well I can rent one driving 4 stops with the bus here in Lausanne.

Pat

 

[Mark Wuerthner]

Thanks Mark,

As I posted a little later - http://bit.ly/1eWFgxd - I realized I was confusing the Gamma & Density charts (which do have whole stop increments) with the DSC charts and erroneously concluded the gray steps were showing the same thing.

As for the Xyla chart, John Marchant posted this a little while ago but I guess some people have a hard time believing its efficacy:

I might have seen this shot at one point but it really has no context in which I can judge anything. John should put up a shot similar to what Adrien Jebeff did, which shows everything clearly and is very easy to understand. I think people would value something like that a lot more than a stand alone shot. Or, show something like this:
http://provideocoalition.com/aadams/story/next_stop_the_last_stop_red_mx_latitude_tests/P2
This makes things very easy to see.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

Regardless of the price the day when motion camera surpasses still camera in IQ is the day we all should rejoice- congrats RED!!!!!

 

[Björn Benckert]

Regardless of the price the day when motion camera surpasses still camera in IQ is the day we all should rejoice- congrats RED!!!!!

Agree, this is crazy. Even though the Phase one captures far more pixels and have a bigger sensor. To me it would make more sense if top range still cameras rated twice as good as the best motion camera... but yes we live in a very interesting time does any one even know what the fattest phase one actually cost?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

42,5k$ according to the test and this image:

 

[geoffboyle]

I wish people who shoot these tests would include the Gamma and Density chart as it consists of whole stop increments. Then they could shoot the over/under exposure tests in half stops and we could then accurately and easily see the camera's latitude to within a half stop.

I always used to use the G&D charts but people then complained that I wasn't using the DSC ones...

I have measured the charts that we used for the UWE tests, I mean like right now with a Pentax digital spot, the white chip reads 5 stops brighter than the black one, 5 stops overall on that chart in practice. I think that's what Gunleik said.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

That is how I understood it, and that we (at hallf-stop increements) looked at when the two top chips went white and the two bottom chips became undistinguishable.

 

[Mark Wuerthner]

I always used to use the G&D charts but people then complained that I wasn't using the DSC ones...

I have measured the charts that we used for the UWE tests, I mean like right now with a Pentax digital spot, the white chip reads 5 stops brighter than the black one, 5 stops overall on that chart in practice. I think that's what Gunleik said.

Geoff I don't mean to second guess you as this test and the other ones you have created over on CML are very informative and interesting. Shooting these tests are a pain in the ass with all the iterations that have kept track of. I recently shot a test for a friend for his F5 (1 camera!) and that was tricky so I definitely appreciate what you go through shooting 6-7 cameras at a time! The reason I suggest the Gamma and Density chart over the Chrome du Monde is that the chips are set at 1 stop intervals which I think makes things easier to understand. They are also bigger which makes them easier to see. In regards to seeing clipping the middle chip on the Chrome du Monde (the one above and below the center black chip) is 18% middle gray, so if you do enough stops overexposures (which Geoff did) when that chip merges with the one next to it that is your clipping point and overexposure latitude above mid gray. In the case of Dragon in Geoff's test that happened between 6 and 6.5 stops over mid gray. That's a lot of latitude up there thus all the comments about smooth, nice highlight rolloff.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

http://blog.gunleik.com/2014/03/07/finally-having-some-time-to-look-into-the-bristol-files/

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Dragon and Alexa - Resolutiom:

http://blog.gunleik.com/?p=987

 

[geoffboyle]

Great stuff Gunleik!

Thanks for the work.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Resolution, does it matter?

http://blog.gunleik.com/?p=1034

 

[luigivaltulini]

veryy informative Gunleik..
thanks so much

 

[Andreas Mendritzki]

Great work as always Gunleik. Thanks for the time you put into this stuff

 

[Gunleik Groven]

thanks guys.

as time allows i will keep on filling that place up...

hopefully it is a "site" by july...

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

For me it's about transparency. Both the ALEXA and the F65 are transparent cameras. What I see on-set I also see in Post. The R1 was as opaque as you can get. The DRAGON looks more and more promising every month. A waveform and a decently-calibrated display won't ever lie to you. Everything else can be misleading. When users shoot RED and end up with clipped highlights or noisy blacks is it because they haven't learned how to use the camera or is it because they couldn't actually see what they were capturing in the first place?

It is absolutely because they do not know how to use the camera and are trying to pretend it is a 5D or a Betacam. WIth non-RAW cameras, what you see is all you will ever get, with Red, there are more goodies waiting for you in post than what you can see on a monitor.

Wavefomrs from the video feed are ludicrous when shooting RAW. They are only "informing" you about the metadata settings.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Great work as always Gunleik. Thanks for the time you put into this stuff

Agreed. Gunleik has contributed so much to our collective understanding of Dragon. Deserves much gratitude and appreciation!