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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 :)

Arri D-21 vs. Red

M Most said:
Except that what he said about Arri is wrong.
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it's a rumor Mike. if you haven't heard it, well... no comment. time will tell. I think you are wrong.

FYI RED was founded in 1999 and had a prototype camera in a wooden box circa 2005. What sensor it had? No idea.

imho, this thread should be titled D20 vs R1 ... so lets save the D21 comparisons until the MX sensor ships.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
it's a rumor Mike. if you haven't heard it, well... no comment. time will tell. I think you are wrong.
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I'm not wrong. I stated that Arri has never used compression in any product, has not publicly revealed any details of a recording device other than to say that the forthcoming products will have one, and that the D21 is an uncompressed camera with uncompressed outputs, both HD video and RAW. Every one of those statements is absolutely true. You stated that they "are" using compression (and even a specific type) as if it were current fact, and you never even mentioned "future product," you were only talking about the D21. In that context, what you said was a fabrication. I like to deal with the here and now, the real, rather than the "I heard....." or the "I read on the Internet that.....". Of course, this being Red User, talking about here and now reality is sometimes kind of a lost cause.

imho, this thread should be titled D20 vs R1 ... so lets save the D21 comparisons until the MX sensor ships.
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I don't see any logic to that. The Red One has been around for a bit less than 3 years. The D21 has been around for almost 2 years. Red has announced future product. Arri has announced future product, to ship in about the same time frame, in fact. I don't see any reason to compare current products to future products, especially when the future products are due at roughly the same time.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
imho, this thread should be titled D20 vs R1 ... so lets save the D21 comparisons until the MX sensor ships.
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Hi,

The D21 will be obsolete in 2010, there is an upgrade path in place. Sure comparing a future RED product to an end of line product may make a few people happy. I have seen pictures from the new Arri sensor, rather impressive IMO.

Stephen
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Actually, it's very in-sensitive to blue light. And very sensitive to red light.

Graeme
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Thank you for joining this discussion and pointing out my mistake. I definitely don't want to be contributing to any false information out there.

I've made some statements about the color filtering of the sensor mask as being rather imperfect. Namely:

1) The combination prisms and dielectric filters used in three chips designs do a better job of separating wavelengths than do the absorption filters used in single chip mask designs like Bayer and striped (used in the F35).

2) The imperfection of absorption filters significantly degrades low light performance, esp. w/ the blue spectrum.

If you would care to comment on these statements, that would be great. I definitely don't want to make statements that are not true. I'm not an engineer but have been reading up on this topic and posing questions to people. I don't want to sound like an authority in something that I'm not or provide wrong information.

If you have the time to reply, that would be great; thanks ;).
 
There are always pros and cons as regards the prism approach and the color filter array approach. And I'm not the best guy to go into that, as that's not an aspect I'm an expert in. However, if you look at a color filter and if it has a narrow or wide spectral response, I could easily see that would give trade-offs in sensitivity, noise, and performance under spiky spectral response lights. But as for precisely how these differences would manifest themselves, I'm not sure enough to comment knowledgeably.

Graeme
 
I think its safe to say that both the currently available RedOne and the currently available Arri D21 are fairly early in the D-cinema development curve. Both cameras are a bit slow. Both companies have better models due out in the next 6 months.

All other factors (cost for example) being equal I would look at the primary deliverable, shooting environment and other particulars in choosing which rig to shoot with. With talent and a reasonable lighting package either camera can kick ass.

Cheers - #19
 
Can anyone link me to the new Arri sensor images? At least a webpage for their new release? all i can find is their D-21 stuff. Anyway, I will say something for them, so far they have bridged some sort of gap from film to digital that even the best of the best (I assume you all know of whom I speak) have yet to cross. Please don't assassinate me for saying so as I love Red and the difference is very slight (especially for, ya know, over 100k worth of dollar difference) but it is very very crucial. I'm anxious to see how the new Red footage and images will look and am already a prospective devotee and customer, however, as of now the winning image for aesthetic purposes only goes to Arri. But again, this is through my eyes and the filmic look is really in the eye of the beholder. I'll make this last comparison though just to make it clear. Right now I go with RED because the price to product ratio is incredibly affordable and ingenious, however, I will say that if Arri offered their stuff for those same prices or even a little higher, Arri would get my business. And, if they're smart, they'll start that trend. Again, just to be clear, I love Red stuff
 
ARRI is never going to sell their cameras as cheaply as the Red One; that's not their market strategy. And many rental houses are willing to purchase more expensive cameras IF they perceive them as being more durable and reliable over time (I'm not say those perceptions are true or not.) I think the EPIC, which is higher-priced than the Red One or Scarlet, is aimed at that deep-pockets pro market that is willing to pay more for certain features and level of craftsmanship/construction.

As I said, check out "Supernatural" on TV, preferably in HD -- the ARRI D21 and Red footage seems to intercut pretty well.
 
You're right, it really does. Again, I'm not saying it's an epic difference, but the difference is there. I just wonder how arri is pulling off that final "umph" from sensors that are sizably and scientifically comparable to the current or fastly approaching red sensors when red still has an element that seems digital. again, this may vanish with the new stuff so I'm not proclaiming judgement and am just as excited and hopeful as the next guy and as appreciative to Jim and the team for their incredibly inspirational and hard work with the RED's
 
Assuming that both the Mysterium-X sensor and ARRI's new Alexa sensors are competitive, it may just ultimately be like choosing between Kodak and Fuji for a "look", not really a technically right or wrong decision.

Even now, when I see movies on Blu-Ray shot on the Panavision Genesis, ARRI D21, or Red, what I mostly perceive is a difference in look, not so much a difference in quality. One person may describe the difference between two cameras as "creamy & smooth" versus "edgy & crispy", while another person may just say that one looks soft and the other looks sharp. It's a bit like the textural difference between Kodak and Fuji, or Zeiss and Cooke. And it's also content dependent: one movie (or face) may benefit from the crisp look of Kodak Vision-3 500T and Zeiss Master Primes, and another may benefit from the softer look of Fuji low-con 400T and Cooke S4's (or even Cooke Panchros.)

On the other hand, digital color-correction can do a lot to make an image look harsh, crispy, and sharp versus creamy, smooth, and soft.
 
i guess that's what I'm saying, the quality isn't better in the arri, by no means is it any better, but the look is there that I think a lot of digital cinema groups are going for so, the give and take here is really the price, but shouldn't there be some reevaluation from both sides? Again, both are doing great work, but to Arri I would say to do the totally unexpected and drop to near Red-rates (i think i'm going to coin that lol, i think red should trademark it) for their new stuff, and for Red to offer some alternative looks to the ultra crisp look that they seem to have now. there is definitely more of a filmic look to the RED than just about every other camera out there, but if they are looking for suggestsions (which this forum would seem to indicate) I would say add versatility in the "look" as well as the tech and spec progressions
 
I know that last little sentence is much easier said than done to the millionth degree btw, but you guys seem to be capable of achieving the impossible most of the time :)
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Both cameras use a Bayer CFA, so that doesn't explain why the blue noise looks different on the RED ONE camera. Like I said, the reasons might either be the debayering algorithm or the compression, I don't know. But the way that blue noise looks on the RED is unique to the RED, I get a different look to the noise with almost any other digital cine camera I've used or seen tests of. It's not a good or bad thing, it's just an characteristic.
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If I were a betting man I would almost certainly lay the cause at the feet of REDCode. You can only compress a noisy signal so much and underexposed RED Footage to me looks exactly like footage run through Furnace's wavelett noise reducer.
 
FWIW I think the color matrices Arri uses are beautifully designed and are particularly good at mimicing the subtle tonal nuances of film. A more interesting question for me is whether empirical accuracy or conditioned tastes have a bigger impact on the perceived quality of the viewing experience. What characteristics are most likely to impact your "suspension of disbelief"? Just sayin'

Cheers - #19
 
I see what you're saying but I can't help but think that it makes some sort of difference. I guess you could call me a purist, or maybe a neo-purist due to the fact that I'm talking about pure film look by means of a digital medium. I don't know, maybe this is too abstract but there just seems to be more of a "narrative" quality to film or "filmic" images
 
A lot of that is conditioning and tradition, so the transition from film to digital is as much a process of making digital more like film as it is in getting people to accept digital images. Now with most film-shot movies going through a D.I. and some being projected digitally as well, film has taken a step towards being a bit more digital in texture. Not to mention the amount of CGI in big movies.

So digital is getting more and more film-like but audiences are getting more and more used to digital. So they meet somewhere in the middle and it won't be necessary for digital to match film 100%. I want digital to get better in terms of dynamic range, resolution, and color depth, just because I think that makes for better images, whether or not that is more film-like.

Yes, there is a textural magic to film that is special too, though it can be simulated to some extent. I recently shot some 16mm film for projecting the 16mm print on a set during a scene (it was meant to look like an old educational short from the 1950's) and there was something magical about threading that 16mm print up and projecting it onto a screen.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
FWIW I think the color matrices Arri uses are beautifully designed and are particularly good at mimicing the subtle tonal nuances of film.
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I completely agree, and it is one of the primary reasons that D21 footage using the LogCFilm matrices works so well in a film targeted DI pipeline. These matrices are available in the dual link HD output, and they are also made available in Arri's Image Booster software that is used for debayering Arri Raw output, as well as in some third party software such as Glue Tools.
 
Mr. mullen you are quickly becoming my most appreciated poster with all your info. I definitely would agree that I guess what I'm gettin at is the color depth and dynamic range. I do understand audiences are getting used to the look of digital, but I don't feel like I'll be able to make a movie that I'm happy with as a critical audience member unless it is able to suck me into its visual aesthetic, and something about digital look (when it looks really digital, not filmic) immediately removes an element of effectiveness from it for me. Not because I'm stubborn, I'm really trying to adjust my standards but it just seems to happen naturally. HDR photography begins to broach that gap for me so if we can get a model of djigital cinema camera that uses instant read multiple "exposures" or multiple-to-one sensors that work at the rate of 24fps, then I think we'll be going in a good direction. I've worked a design for such camera but how practical it is, well, its not really. I guess all that to say that this post turned into my first suggestion for RED, which is to compete with arri on a color aesthetic level in addition to the other competions they're running
 
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