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Audio quality on Raven vs. DSMC1 cameras?

william howell

william howell

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I'm currently at a crossroads at work..

Purchase another Dragon/dsmc1 camera to dedicate for our travel/documentary rig.. or purchase a Raven kit to dedicate for this work.

I'll be traveling alot over the next year, and would like to have a decent "all in one" red solution. We currently have a ton of DSMC1 accessories, but.. the audio capturing capabilities on the dragon bodies are limited at best. We rely on the wooden camera A/B XLR-1/8th inch box to capture in camera audio but the lack of onboard limiting is truly a no-no in our world. We even have a Pro I/O module that we have never truly used due to it's size.

I'll primarily be shooting monopod/tripod on my travels with a boom mic attached for run and gun, and a shotgun on a stand for sit down interviews.. so having a decent in camera audio solution that I can just plug xlr cables into would be amazing.

If we don't go with a raven kit, we'll get another dsmc1 camera and utilize a sound devices as an off board audio solution. It would just be nice to hear about the quality of onboard audio in the dsmc2 world.
 
Not sure about the audio quality, but from a travel perspective wouldn't DSMC2 be better merely because of 3.5 vs 5lbs? Also built-in prores/dnxhd would likely come in mighty handy.

Conversely, wouldn't pretty much any other manufacture offer even better options (because Canon, Sony, and Panny are all <5lbs *shootable* with built-in XLRs and they run for 2.5-4hours on a battery that weigh less than any required RED accessory... Also cheap, easily available media too)?
 
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Mike P. said:
Not sure about the audio quality, but from a travel perspective wouldn't DSMC2 better merely because of 3.5 vs 5lbs? Also built-in prores/dnxhd would likely come in mighty handy.

Conversely, wouldn't pretty much any other manufacture offer even better options (because Canon, Sony, and Panny are all <5lbs *shootable* with built-in XLRs and they run for 2.5-4hours on a battery that weigh less than any required RED accessory... Also cheap, easily available media too)?
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Honestly, I've been working with digital video for two decades, and have used every prosumer camera on the market including all those mentioned. We have worked with every codec imaginable, and .r3d (in our experience) is by far the best bang for our buck. We have to pull publication worthy printable stills from our videos on an extremely regular basis, so having the ability to utilize RedCineX to grab still images is absolutely priceless to us.

Unlike most of the people on this forum, we shoot everything at 6k 22:1 (however we do shoot 6:1 green screen)... so file size (vs. other cameras 4K 10+ bit files) isn't really an issue. The dragon I normally travel with is pretty bare bones.. and doesn't weigh too much for a monopod at all, no matter what shooting config I use. We utilize blueshape 140 watt batteries, so i'm not too worried about our battery life vs the stock Sony/Canon batteries, although... for the weight of the sony/canon cinema batteries, you can't beat them.. They cameras can make one battery last forever compared to Red's insatiable appetite for power.

Luckily, I'm a pretty large fellow so the "weight" of our red's doesn't bother me at all (unless it's on a shoulder rig for some reason)... In any case... just wanted to answer your questions as to why we're so dead set on sticking with Red cameras.. actually.. r3d's to be exact.
 
Depends on use case. To me, any RED, except Red One, will beat Raven. Lack of interchangable mounts, lack of normal compression ratios, weird sensor size. In any non run-n-gun situation Raven cripples your abilities compared to other Red Cameras. But, if you're shooting 99% run'n'gun, use only EF lenses, don't do plenty of post work - then Raven is a no-brainer.
 
I shoot a bunch of stuff run and gun for tourism bc with scarlet w, senheiser lavs right into the camera and it sounds pretty good. One thing if you want to run a shotgun there is no phantom power on dsmc2. Dsmc1 has phantom power. I had a scarlet mx for 4 years and am much happier with the scarlet-w overall, but both are great once you get either one dialled in.
 
Oh, you didn't mention that you rip a lot of stills...

In that case, I probably wouldn't bother with Raven; 6k is 19mp and ~APS-H (a little smaller when cropped to 3:2), whereas Raven is only 9mp and smaller than APS-C (substantially so when cropped to 3:2)... you'll likely be forced towards the wide-end of lenses, which means deeper DOF, which means 22:1 will likely look like crap (maybe test 22:1 at 4k/4.5kWS on you current Dragon; I'm guessing it's a far cry from 6k 22:1).
 
Mike P. said:
Oh, you didn't mention that you rip a lot of stills...

In that case, I probably wouldn't bother with Raven; 6k is 19mp and ~APS-H (a little smaller when cropped to 3:2), whereas Raven is only 9mp and smaller than APS-C (substantially so when cropped to 3:2)... you'll likely be forced towards the wide-end of lenses, which means deeper DOF, which means 22:1 will likely look like crap (maybe test 22:1 at 4k/4.5kWS on you current Dragon; I'm guessing it's a far cry from 6k 22:1).
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Yeah.. I guess the pulling stills aspect, along with the lack of phantom power settles it. Everything we've done so far with our DSMC1 cameras seems to have turned out amazing, and we figure if any of the shots looks like crap.. it's definitely not the cameras fault.

Focus is a tad bit tricky on the 4.7 red screens, but I think that's just because i'm getting old.
 
william howell said:
Yeah.. I guess the pulling stills aspect, along with the lack of phantom power settles it. Everything we've done so far with our DSMC1 cameras seems to have turned out amazing, and we figure if any of the shots looks like crap.. it's definitely not the cameras fault.

Focus is a tad bit tricky on the 4.7 red screens, but I think that's just because i'm getting old.
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If the focus assists aren’t helping enough, I know a few people that use separate monitors with built-in 1:1 (like a smallHD or similar). That way it (the second, 3rd party screen) can be left at 1:1 while recording. Seems to work a treat!
 
Alot of what we do is single shooter stuff... but.. we do have a small hd monitor which we may incorporate for 1:1 monitoring...

We shoot in quite alot of low light situations, and since we're using some fast glass try to shoot wide open and as low iso as possible to give us beautiful clean dark areas. Sometimes we just bump up the iso so we can close the iris and increase the focal plane to be more forgiving, but... in all cases we utilize focus assist (i never turn it off), but... "nailing focus" is a bit trickier than it has been on other cameras for us.
 
Mic position matters so much, and having a dedicated person focused to the important role of half of the film which is sound is also important.

So sound on the camera is nothing but a scratch reference.

But if you must go down the hell hole of OMB single system sound, then why not just hook up a small MixPre3 to the camera? With the HDMI input, you can even record a copy on the recorder with exact TC and files with the same starts/stops. Plus from the mix you can feed a high quality source into your RED.
 
In my experience, using the MX epic style front fan on Epic-D, the onboard audio is super clean - completely usable w/ cam mounted shotgun for doc style interview w/ subjects 4-6 ft away and/or via handheld shure sm57 mics plugged into cam.

Try setting the gain to the lowest setting, and boost in post. I also use the WC mini-XLR to Full XLR box

The audio I get is way cleaner then H4n and comparable/cutable w/ F4/H6 recorders.
 
To add about ISO - never ever trust what you "see" on a monitor.

I (almost) always shoot at 250 ASA - adjust ASA in post, not in cam.

Use seconics to WB and meter, DVF for initial lens choice.

Adjust light first. Even a small z96 LED can make a huge difference!

Then use GIO to confirm/tweak. Make sure to get faces in the "green" zones 10-11 (maybe 9 if very dark pigment)

Adjust/change lenses for angle/DOF/compression wants and only exposure fixes when no option is left.

Some claim for extremely bight scenes to raise ASA in cam - but haven't seen that work in practise
 
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