Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Camera shootout 2011

Status
Not open for further replies.
Timothy Eaton said:
Francesco, I don't think anyone in this thread has suggested that Bob Primes or anyone else intentionally skewed the results. However, the fact that the video claims "it's not about 'winning' and 'losing,' doesn't make sense when in the same video they post a bar chart showing the Alexa a clear "winner" in the DR test, besting Red MX by 2.2 stops. Dynamic range is very important to DPs. So they did, in fact, pick a winner in the DR portion of the test. But Peter has already explained the cause for frustration. A portion of his post:
Click to expand...

Timothy, I totally understand the frustration and Peter's post, even though I don't own any camera, and I do also understand how even the most "innocent" bit of information can be used in totally different ways for marketing purposes. I apologize if my post sounded too much as a rant, I guess not having money (and lots of it, I guess) invested in one system does probably change my point of view.

Steve Dent said:
That's true, but dynamic range is an important marketing number for a camera, and is thrown about particularly often by Arri as a benefit or advantage of its product. I think people here just want to be sure it's absolutely fair, because the test chart seems to differ from the test shoot, particularly in the area of highlights, at least according to the images they showed in the video. It almost seems like the people in the video, who saw the tests in a theatre, saw something else, judging by their comments.
Click to expand...

I understand what you're saying, Steve, but I personally don't know any DP who would pick a camera system by only looking at charts, clips or even the whole SCCE test. And even though the quality of the images is probably the number one factor in choosing one system over another (and "quality" is based so much on personal opinion and perception that I doubt we'll ever find an absolute "chart" for that, that's why many of these test must rely on numbers), other things come into play (workflow, for instance) when it comes to choosing one camera for one specific project. But again, I guess my opinion is such also because I don't have any money invested in a camera system (yet? :-) ), so you could say I'm less "defensive" than others.
 
Francesco Bonomo said:
I understand what you're saying, Steve, but I personally don't know any DP who would pick a camera system by only looking at charts, clips or even the whole SCCE test.
Click to expand...

That's probably true, but I do know some DP's that would definitely choose (all else being roughly equal) a camera that has significantly higher dynamic range. And 2.2 stops more for the Arri is lots more than has previously ever been discussed.
 
Steve Dent said:
That's probably true, but I do know some DP's that would definitely choose (all else being roughly equal) a camera that has significantly higher dynamic range. And 2.2 stops more for the Arri is lots more than has previously ever been discussed.
Click to expand...

That's true, Steve, and if I remember correctly, even JJ said Alexa had a slight advantage in native DR over Red One (and Epic "sans HDRx"), though it wasn't 2 stops but more like half to one stop.
So, in theory, with Epic becoming more and more available, there should be no contest, so to speak. Funnily enough, some people will still pick Alexa, others will pick Sony cameras, others will stick to DSLR, others will choose Epic, and other - gosh!!!! - will still pick film, and that's because there's other reasons for picking a camera system other than DR, numbers, charts, clips and tests posted by other people.

Personally, I'd be more interested in these big players coming together and committing to a standard workflow for digital captured images rather than hearing about 1 stop difference in DR, especially when a year from now we'll have new cameras and new tools, but that's me (happily working on a tv series shot on S16) ;-)
 
Benoît-Joan Clariana-Roig said:
That test confirms me that DSLRs have very low resolution & can't handle highlights...
Click to expand...

You must have had your eye's closed during the AF-100 and F3 segments then. This test just confirmed for me that I'm keeping my 7D until Scarlet ships.

Also, did you see the film segments? The resolution or sharpness looked like it was no more than 720-800p like the DSLRs. Does anybody have an answer for this? Everyone's always raving about film being 4-6k... How did Red, Alexa, and the F3 (almost everything in this test) manage to stomp all over it in detail then?
 
Timothy, I totally understand the frustration and Peter's post, even though I don't own any camera, and I do also understand how even the most "innocent" bit of information can be used in totally different ways for marketing purposes. I apologize if my post sounded too much as a rant, I guess not having money (and lots of it, I guess) invested in one system does probably change my point of view.
Click to expand...

No worries Francesco. Everyone is just trying to figure out this new wrinkle.
 
Deanan said:
Anyone know what format the film was shot in?
Click to expand...

ARRIFLEX-435.jpg
 
Damn, this is starting to get embarrassing!

How can a group of professionals allow this much slack in their big time tests?

To err is human. :)
 
Kind of predictable really, RED MX doesn't come out on top and everyone starts destroying the test. This kind of attitude turns me off the whole RED culture. Does it really matter? Do your own tests, focus on the great posts and footage about the EPIC. No reason why folks should feel so threatened.
 
Ash Worth said:
Kind of predictable really, RED MX doesn't come out on top and everyone starts destroying the test. This kind of attitude turns me off the whole RED culture. Does it really matter? Do your own tests, focus on the great posts and footage about the EPIC. No reason why folks should feel so threatened.
Click to expand...

Donny, you're out of your element.

They spent like $40,000 (I think this is what I heard), employed 140+ volunteers, and borrowed $2 million in equipment. That should dictate maybe keeping things somewhat respectable. It doesn't have to do with RED culture at all. Zacuto did a GREAT job on the 2010 shootout. This time they dropped the ball a bit, IMO.
 
Bryce O said:
You must have had your eye's closed during the AF-100 and F3 segments then. This test just confirmed for me that I'm keeping my 7D until Scarlet ships.
Click to expand...

When I said DSLR I was thinking also about the AF-100 & F3. They use DSLR sensors.
 
It was still enjoyable. Though I am hoping a few of the more important factors will be clarified. I wouldn't be surprised if Weiss popped in and quenched our curiosity regarding Red's processing. I hope so. I am sure he will read this soon.

Ash, a few/several people responding in a similar tone can't qualify "Red culture". That is but a brush stroke of the complex and varied group that are Redusers. Wether you understand people's reactions or not, you must understand that you just insulted me and my friends. Shmo, Lequeux, Land, Fincher, and a long list of other wildly talented artists I admire resent being accused of something we didn't do. But thank you for posting.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Well, they gotta correct that slide... the ARRI 435 isn't a VistaVision camera so there's no way to expose a 36mm x 24mm frame.
Click to expand...

Technically speaking isn't the camera itself irrelevant in this situation? Would the results have been any different if it had been an XL2? Or an Arricam studio? I'm no expert here but I don't think it would be.
 
Ash, look - they even screw up M-X resolution claiming 3.8k which is not right. For a 4k shooting on a RED M-X I've measured around 3.2k, maybe more, but not as much more as to make it 3.8k. It's not about RED not coming out on top - it's a about professionals spending a lot of time and effort to conduct a test and getting an awful lot wrong in the process. The Alexa and Flex resolutions numbers were later revealed to be "preliminary", but they showed those preliminary (ie wrong) numbers to people at NAB and where's the correction or retraction. Unless you're a proper camera geek and follow every blog you'd never know that the numbers you saw at NAB for resolution were utterly wrong. The SCCE people haven't exactly gone out of their way to tell anyone, and Adam Wilt pointed out the errors he saw and nope, no page on their website with updated and corrected numbers or anything. That's not the way responsible people conduct tests.

"Do your own tests, focus on the great posts and footage about the EPIC." - correct - I fully advocate you testing yourself.

"No reason why folks should feel so threatened." - correct - none at all. Even with the mistakes in the test, the M-X looks and measures superb.

Graeme
 
There's no doubt in my mind that Epic (and Scarlet) will blow them all away (next time they do the 'shootout'), but what surprised me was that Nikon D7k looked sharper and actually better than Canons. No one mentioned that in the vid, but if you watch it again, you'll see the details on the dress (1st vid) and the side texture of the table (vid2) is much better on Nikon. Compressed or not, I didn't expect that to see. I'm not sure if others agree
 
Carsten Fenstermacher said:
On the shot with the two blonde girls, some cameras seem to have more DOF, especially Alexa. Did they change stops that much between camera?
The Alexa also looks to be sharpened slightly. It has some edge halos you'd get from sharpening. Was sharpening an option for processing?
Click to expand...

Yes if you look at the fake "sun" that is outside of the window, on the Alexa there is halation around it (if you look closely you'll see) whereas on the other cameras there isn't.
 
"many times during the clip it's stated that 1) it's not about "winning" and "losing", or "finding the best camera", "
​

It's ALWAYS about "winning and losing and finding the best camera," that you can afford to shoot with.

So they were testing for mediocrity? These are performance tests designed to show which systems perform better than others. If the tests weren't fairly shot, then they're not so valuable.
 
Peter Dmitriyev said:
Yes if you look at the fake "sun" that is outside of the window, on the Alexa there is halation around it (if you look closely you'll see) whereas on the other cameras there isn't.
Click to expand...

There is a low-con OLPF (optical low-pass filter) on the Alexa we are told.

And most likely if you added a low-con lens filter to the Red-MX it would look roughly the same
and also increase DR (Dynamic Range) a bit.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top