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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 :)

Boot up time

In your scenario Isaac, the Red may not be the right camera choice...yet. I believe you will see improvement in this area. If not Red One, then Red Two. They have already improved it from its original boot time. So they figured something out that got them to the current state.

Jim is their number one customer. If he is shooting on the fly, which he seems to do quite a bit with the camera, then he is experiencing the same boot up issues, so rest assured, he will push for it to get better.

Steve
 
stevesherrick said:
In your scenario Isaac, the Red may not be the right camera choice...yet. I believe you will see improvement in this area. If not Red One, then Red Two. They have already improved it from its original boot time. So they figured something out that got them to the current state.

Jim is their number one customer. If he is shooting on the fly, which he seems to do quite a bit with the camera, then he is experiencing the same boot up issues, so rest assured, he will push for it to get better.

Steve
Click to expand...
Yeap, figure out Jim gets up in the morning, looks out to the window and sees a young Bald Eagle looking toward him, "Morning, if you wanna get a picture, I have to go in 10 seconds, so harry up."
 
If you need to run continuously on battery power you might try this IDX Dual Battery plate. It allows you to run off two batteries. I believe you can also run off one battery until it gets low and then put a fresh battery on the empty slot and then remove the flat battery. You can also run off two batteries for extended run times and then swap batteries one at a time. Ether way you should be able to run continuously without powering down the camera.

Disclaimer, I have not tried this on a Red camera. I don't know if the Red batteries will communicate properly with the camera using this plate.
 
Anders Holck said:
Actually according to Dpreview the 5D starts up in less than 0.2 sec from power off to first shot.

One minute can feel like a very long time, especially if you are the steadi operator with the whole crew staring at you :-) Plan ahead, that must be the way to get around it currently.
Click to expand...

Well I'm glad the Dpreview people are getting that kind of performance. I'm not, but I still like the camera. Like I said before, still cameras aren't really what we're talking about here though.

There aren't any digital video OR "digital cinema" cameras that start up in less than one second, that's all I was saying in my original reply post.
 
major issue in the natural wildlife world...

major issue in the natural wildlife world...

...as Isaac says ! the leopard scenario is no mere fancy. It happens every time a wild animal is at rest or on the lookout... You'll probably get no warning at all that the real action you've been waiting is coming...until too late. The real problem is not that you might be as unlucky as to swap batteries that very moment...rather that you'd have to take extra loads of batteries. Real wildlife shooting happens to occur very much off the mainroad, at times and who can afford extra burden ! A standby mode + a booting time reduced to 30" would make the Red one the perfect tool any wildlife cinematographer has ever dreamt of...So pleeaaase, you people across the Atlantic, don't get us stuck right on that ...
Besides, I'd like to be in contact with people considering Red for specific wildlife shooting purpose. Any volunteer ? DB


isaacbabcock said:
60 seconds??? That's going to be quite a crux at times in the natural world. Sure, we can try to be smart about power-up/power-down timing... but it is not all that predictable out here.

Imagine the BBC/Planet Earth and their stunning snow leapord chase. 3-5 years looking for the cats, finally find a female and kitten. One morning the female leopord is sleeping, for hours. The camera is pointed at her, but off, you have limited batteries back there, she has done nothing for 3 hours, your not going to leave the camera on....

She hears something and perks up, you're lucky that you saw her, and turn on the power. She waits ten seconds, moves into a stalk, and the chase is on...you've seen it if you saw this episode of planet earth....it was a very long chase, remarkably filmed, the only ever witnessed of a snow leapord, and yet, the chase would've have been nearly over before the camera was ready to start recording. Ouch.

Of course, the above account is fictitious, I wasn't there. But I have been present for numerous similar occaisions, mountain lions, wolves... freaky-people...whatever your passion. It's a once in a lifetime, twice if your lucky, we often don't get a 60 second warning.

RED - I know you've got your hands full. I know there are a whole plethora of intended genres for the camera, and for many of them the 60 second boot-up is an inconvenience, but not a crucial factor. But in Natural History, if I may submit a plea on behalf of many wildlife shooters - this was the primary RED concern I heard talked around at the Jackson Hole Film Festival -

Please, please find someway to integrate a sleep/stanby mode. Something that takes less than 5 seconds to wake up and record. This is almost as important as the cold weather issue - which you put to rest nicely, thank you.
Click to expand...
 
ozcam said:
It takes my new MacBook Pro roughly 50secs to boot from cold and nearly 90sec to go from cold to an Application (eg FCP or AE) start and ready to work.
Click to expand...

Much of that boot time depends on the limitations of its HDD.
With the introduction of standby mode boot up time shouldn't be an issue.

Dominic Cochran said:
There aren't any digital video OR "digital cinema" cameras that start up in less than one second...
Click to expand...

I'd be happy if 1-3 sec from sleep to recording would be possible...eventually...
 
Unfortunately the confluence of limited battery life and boot up time can reek havoc on a documentary show.

I shot a doc using the Firestore drive, which takes maybe 30 seconds to boot. Unfortunately the batteries also die quickly, so I couldn't keep the drive on all day. I ended up getting more P2 cards shipped out to me, because I kept missing important things.

I foresee a similar issue with Red. Especially for people who are out in the wild, waiting for things to happen, or doing long timelapse shots. You're going to need serious battery life to shoot on Red.

It's also occasionally an issue in controlled environments. But as you get used to the camera, you learn to adapt to it.

Ian
 
Jens Jakob Thorsen said:
Its not fast but then again its not a DVcamera. Its Digital Cinema. Even my best AC cant get a 435 up and running in 60secs after he gets the rawstock handet to him. The fastest reload I ever saw was my norwegian AC Eirik who could thread a 435 in 17 secs from rollout to ready to shoot....
JJ
DP
Denmark
Click to expand...

Give me a call. 17 seconds is way too slow.
 
Is there an adapter from 4pin XLR to the 5pin lemo connection that the Red receives? If so, perhaps a block or belt battery would last longer.
 
stevesherrick said:
In your scenario Isaac, the Red may not be the right camera choice...yet. I believe you will see improvement in this area. If not Red One, then Red Two....
Steve
Click to expand...

I fear this response, and for the time being, will choose not to believe it. I have a couple months before delivery and I'll keep my fingers crossed for something to come through. Just a few weeks ago, Red would not have been the right camera choice due to cold weather...a week later it is fixed. I really hope for something similar here - a firmware update with a standby mode. I know, this probably isn't an easy request, else it would be there already.

Stuart seemed to imply in Jackson that it wouldn't be that difficult, simply firmware programming and it would likely be coming soon in a future build - that was October. Sorry if I'm mis-quoting you Stuart, but thats what I remembered...maybe cause I wanted to...

OK, I'll shut-up now and quit asking...but I'll still be hoping...
 
Stay tuned, all is subject to change. We could wake up tomorrow and see they have a boot time of 10 seconds. You never know. They don't seem to sleep at Red, so you never know what they may come up with in the middle of the night. Like I said, Jim is shooting with this camera, so he is probably one of the people most anxious to see the boot time shortened. I have to imagine that he will push for this. I don't want to speak for him, but that's my assumption.

Steve
 
I thought I read a post from Jim saying 'boot up issue solved' or something.
 
isaacbabcock said:
I fear this response, and for the time being, will choose not to believe it. I have a couple months before delivery and I'll keep my fingers crossed for something to come through. Just a few weeks ago, Red would not have been the right camera choice due to cold weather...a week later it is fixed. I really hope for something similar here - a firmware update with a standby mode. I know, this probably isn't an easy request, else it would be there already.

Stuart seemed to imply in Jackson that it wouldn't be that difficult, simply firmware programming and it would likely be coming soon in a future build - that was October. Sorry if I'm mis-quoting you Stuart, but thats what I remembered...maybe cause I wanted to...

OK, I'll shut-up now and quit asking...but I'll still be hoping...
Click to expand...


I understand that as RED is really a computer it will take some time to boot from off, but I'm not convinced that it is impossible for the RED team to design a sleep function, like any computer.. That's what I am holding out for here.. 60 secs to boot, getting hot waiting around switched on in the sun, running down the few batteries we were able to take on an aeroplane too quickly.. There is a strong case for integrating a sleep function.. :-) I'm sure RED are on it, because otherwise they would have told us already why it is impossible...
 
Reducing boot times / sleep mode

Reducing boot times / sleep mode

Yes, there are techniques that can be applied to reduce the boot time further, so as we have the opportunity to do that we'll see how low we can get it.
 
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