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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 :)

Dragon and low light noise

I'm running into this same issue. How many times did you run the calibration before it took a good one? Out of the box it was pretty bad. With the cap on I had heavy magenta noise on the left side and streaks on the right. After the first calibration it was definitely better but not close to the images above!! At 800 i'm getting all kinds of noise everywhere.
 
Aaron Leong said:
I'm running into this same issue. How many times did you run the calibration before it took a good one? Out of the box it was pretty bad. With the cap on I had heavy magenta noise on the left side and streaks on the right. After the first calibration it was definitely better but not close to the images above!! At 800 i'm getting all kinds of noise everywhere.
Click to expand...


Wait for the camera to get up to running temperature for your given fan speed and exposure time before Black Shading. If you Black Shade immediately from a "cold start" that's not the correct procedure.
 
I dunno guys... I am get jaw dropping spectacular stuff off my dragon HLST. I consistently shoot 800


Add a touch of fill. Just a little. To activate the pixels, give the sensor and DSP/AD a value to process. Works like magic.
 
Phil Holland said:
Wait for the camera to get up to running temperature for your given fan speed and exposure time before Black Shading. If you Black Shade immediately from a "cold start" that's not the correct procedure.
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Yes, I let the camera warm up to a consistent temperature before black shade calibration.

Here is the 6KFF image.

screen-shot-2015-02-04-at-6-14-45-pm.png


Here is the 1:1 image

screen-shot-2015-02-04-at-6-14-29-pm.png


Is this acceptable? If so, I'll be content and continue to work... if not, I'm wondering what else I'm doing wrong. The gains are all at 1.000, Dragon Color / RedLogFilm, shutter 1/48, 23.98, 800 ISO...
 
that looks normal, can you post what your raw histogram looks like? Remember you are looking at log here, add some contrast, use DEB, and that noise goes away.

Also, if you need to shoot in a noisy situation, just download neat video for free and see what it can do, takes 5 minutes and really works. Remember, Red does NO noise reduction in-camera
 
Phil Holland said:
That looks in bounds for a REDlogFilm image. How's it look at REDgamma4 to you?
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It looks better but I'm still seeing the grain in the cups, especially that first one. The images I saw earlier with the welder were remarkably clean of any of that noise. Also the DEB in REDCINE-X is greyed out. I can't access it and I'm not exactly sure why. Thanks for the help!
 
Aaron Leong said:
It looks better but I'm still seeing the grain in the cups, especially that first one. The images I saw earlier with the welder were remarkably clean of any of that noise. Also the DEB in REDCINE-X is greyed out. I can't access it and I'm not exactly sure why. Thanks for the help!
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But the welder stuff was a completely different exposure (and composition) - you're comparing two very different types of image/content and exposure. There was a lot of light in the welding pics and hardly any light in your test pic... try throwing some more light in there and see what happens then.
 
Aaron Leong said:
It looks better but I'm still seeing the grain in the cups, especially that first one. The images I saw earlier with the welder were remarkably clean of any of that noise. Also the DEB in REDCINE-X is greyed out. I can't access it and I'm not exactly sure why. Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

If possible save out an .R3D Snapshot and upload it to Copy.com or something similar. I can know in 5 seconds if "life is good". Life looks good from what I'm seeing here, but I want to take a look at your file if possible.
 
R3D would help as phil states.

This, aside from the lens looking slightly soft, looks pretty normal under the conditions and when viewing a RAW file in RLF, no lighting, etc.



Battistella
 
Red store is sold out of the LLO OLPF.

I hope to get my hands on one soon, as my Dragon footage seems noticeably noisier in the shadows compared to Epic footage shot with the same exposure.
 
Phil, thanks for posting this test video. I found it very informative and I encourage everyone to take a look. Forget about looking at frame grabs, you really need to see things in motion to appreciate the difference in noise levels.

Do you notice any difference in sharpness between the STH and LLO OLPF?
 
Aaron Leong said:
Phil, thanks for taking a look. Here is a short 5 second trim of the original clip.

https://www.copy.com/browse/a:ab36703;z:copy;b:myfiles/A035_C001_0204VC_001.R3D
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For whatever reason that link isn't working for me. It just redirects me.


JP Perry said:
Phil, thanks for posting this test video. I found it very informative and I encourage everyone to take a look. Forget about looking at frame grabs, you really need to see things in motion to appreciate the difference in noise levels.

Do you notice any difference in sharpness between the STH and LLO OLPF?
Click to expand...

Correct. To get a feel for motion cadence and texture tolerance you need to watch the footage in motion. If possible from the specific viewing distances that are used as industry standard worldwide. Also if possible, ideally on a calibrated display. I often get angry face on when people are comparing DSLR still images to Red frame grabs mostly because the tolerance of noise between a still frame and a motion picture frame are different things. Wildly different things actually. The style of noise/texture/grain across these digital systems is actually something to look closely at as well.

Sharpness-wise you shouldn't be seeing anything major between the STH and LLO OLPF. The STH has more coatings and/or layers, but we're talking negligible differences here in resolving power.
 
Aaron Leong said:
I hope this works.

https://copy.com/DKLV3bcyKOpjFalO
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It did indeed. As others have pointed out, changing the gamma from REDlogFilm to one of the other gammas helps a lot. I find REDgamma4 to be a little too much for my tastes and usually go with REDgamma2 or 3 for general viewing. You also have to keep in mind that the noise will shrink somewhat when finishing for 4K and shrink more when finishing for 2K or 1080p.

As you said, it's still a little off the mark exposure-wise by 1 stop (depending on what you were exposing for) because your lens only opens up to a 1.4 and your meter read a 1.0. Still, this shot looks normal for the STH OLPF to me. I think it looks nice and organic. If loving the look of Dragon's texture is wrong, I don't want to be right.


As a point of comparison, here's a link to the trailer for The Age of Adaline. According to IMDb, it was shot on Dragon. At this stage, I don't know how much of it was shot on Dragon or which OLPF was used. With the nature of trailers, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain if you're looking at finished shots or if the images have been altered for effect.

At any rate, the texture in most of these images looks like STH Dragon to me and not film grain that was added in post (although, it may have). Who knows if the film will be released like this or if the release version will have had NR added to reduce or eliminate the texture altogether.


http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/theageofadaline
 
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