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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/Epic comparison

i just want to say i think it's a good idea to generally save r3d sharing until dragon color science is released... it's already kind of pushing it, the first images people see very much affect casual observers who may not check in often and just (in their mind or to their friends) say, 'well, dragon is like this...' even though they have no understanding of the beta process that red implements and the intensive upgrades that drastically adjust image improvements. it's better for everybody if we're looking at the best stuff - that's why red has been tight-lipped, i think...

y'all can be patient. and less demanding/complaining. remember when jim stopped posting... remember why?
yeah, i am still mad at y'all(ish) for being a buncha boobs about stupid stuff. silliness. absolutely unrealistic expectations.
and i'm sad that we're losing members of this community because large groups of people behave like a noisy beehive.
please if you're new get acclimated, there is history here... used to be much tighter. if you're old, keep the fire alive.
hint: if you have a few 100 posts or your join date says anything after 2010, you're likely 'new'
sry anyways, thanks again gg for contributing to the community so much all the time... carry on (:
 
i think before people get super wrapped up on the perceived noise, you all should step back and remember this is a beta camera build and not the final Dragon color and gamma science. I am sure once the release build of Dragon color and gamma is out things will once again inevitably change. its not accurate to form your opinion off these images at this time, give it a couple months and once the release build of color and gamma is out I am sure we all will need to once again do some testing. think of this as a good teaser of things to come is my own personal take on it, a good way to get some preliminary information. once dragon is finalized the pieces will fall where they may, but based on all the feedback from beta testers I can say with confidence the final release product will be worth any and all hype!
 
... whatever "Les" did and showed in the other thread is completely meaningless.

... and he somewhat acknowledged the wrongness .... somewhere. (i have no time to find the quotes.)

so, for the sake of a true representation of the dragons value .... i would just go on and delete that first thread of his .... ;-)

The only thing, that really matters is:

Get hold of a Dragon, shoot it in your preferred environment and judge your experience.
I predict, anyone will have a hard time to find any comparison or alternative for that matter.

It may be a religious experience.

I said so, in public and private .... the game has changed. Applying "old school" techniques, practice and measurement do nothing to find the new creative and artistic opportunities. Maybe many are not into art. who knows?

In this case, as seen by the statements of people that have never had an eye on the physical dragon and pushed that little red button .... ;-) .... the board discussions are really not helpful. only personal experience will move every one forward.

Dragon is AWESOME!

:-)

cheers,
Detlev


Dragon Fanman ... :-))


@Jarred: Please feel free to send one to RED BERLIN for me to borrow a few days ... so i can bring it to the Berlin underground dungeons and have it spit some fire! Imagery may be disruptive and need family clearance, though ... ;-)
thanks.
 
Brian Merlen said:
i think before people get super wrapped up on the perceived noise, you all should step back and remember this is a beta camera build and not the final Dragon color and gamma science. I am sure once the release build of Dragon color and gamma is out things will once again inevitably change. its not accurate to form your opinion off these images at this time, give it a couple months and once the release build of color and gamma is out I am sure we all will need to once again do some testing. think of this as a good teaser of things to come is my own personal take on it, a good way to get some preliminary information. once dragon is finalized the pieces will fall where they may, but based on all the feedback from beta testers I can say with confidence the final release product will be worth any and all hype!
Click to expand...

I understand where you're coming from, but just understand my perspective. I'm not rich, I worked hard at jobs I hated and scraped and saved to buy a Scarlet. I worked even harder, scraping and saving and working jobs that I hate and renting out my Scarlet to save up to buy an Epic Dragon. I have to be wrapped up in perceived noise or anything else that could make my investment less than I dreamed it would be. I hope those beta testers are seeing some amazing low light capability, but I can't just take their word for it. This is too large an investment to be lax about
 
you can cancel it at anytime, steve, if i'm not mistaken. it's an upgrade, not necessary to continue making beautiful work with what you've got. sounds like it may be a good investment, though. what producers/cinematographers are complaining about are very subtle things (based on anecdotes they've heard, usually), so they're going to be appeased by seeing the 'dragon' logo... and it's giving better images, that's clear. as far as noise, it's better as well - but red is never going to implement in-camera noise reduction/softening like every other major camera does... it's much better if that's done during processing/post. scaling from 6k to HD for quick turnaround stuff takes care of a lot of that, anyways. maybe dragon won't be the goto low-light camera, i dunno... there are other options (even at 4k) for projects/situations that really call for extreme low-light performance, although i've had decent results with my red and regular noise reduction.
 
Stephen Franchek said:
So the Dragon IS more sensitive than the MX? Another thread posted what was claimed to be a pixel to pixel comparison of the two sensors and both images were equally grainy and unusable
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Yes it is.

Anyhow.

I see where this is heading. And I consider to call in the mod-brigade...

I was trying to show off how cool it actually is, but test images have this effect.

My bad.

If wou look at "sweet", all the shots of the small girls are developed at 3200 ISO and shot under Tungsten.

If you look at the thread I post to from the video, you can also look at before/after stills.

The cama has gone through a lot of development and improvements since I shot sweet.

Link is in my signature.l
 
paulherrin said:
y'all can be patient. and less demanding/complaining. remember when jim stopped posting... remember why?
yeah, i am still mad at y'all(ish) for being a buncha boobs about stupid stuff. silliness. absolutely unrealistic expectations.
and i'm sad that we're losing members of this community because large groups of people behave like a noisy beehive.
please if you're new get acclimated, there is history here... used to be much tighter. if you're old, keep the fire alive.
hint: if you have a few 100 posts or your join date says anything after 2010, you're likely 'new'
sry anyways, thanks again gg for contributing to the community so much all the time... carry on (:
Click to expand...

+1 Paul. From what I can tell the professionals don't need to bitch about making the EPIC better in every way for $9500 is a lot. Pay for the upgrade, shoot beautiful images and make money. If you can't afford it, spend the effort to concentrate on becoming better at your craft instead of postulating about every pixel, then make more money and see how cheap the upgrade is.
 
Chris Henze said:
+1 Paul. From what I can tell the professionals don't need to bitch about making the EPIC better in every way for $9500 is a lot. Pay for the upgrade, shoot beautiful images and make money. If you can't afford it, spend the effort to concentrate on becoming better at your craft instead of postulating about every pixel, then make more money and see how cheap the upgrade is.
Click to expand...

It's not about affordability, but value. At $9500 it is affordable, but it is many many people waiting to make a business decision. The Dragon sensor is better, yes obviously, but I need to know if it is $9500 better. Or do I take that budget and put towards other things I would get more value out of. Just not enough people shooting with the Dragon yet to make the call.
 
i would say that if a couple weeks or a month is the crux of your major business decision... be careful
it should be a simple decision based on how you see your market in relation to your assets/finances. good luck
pretty sure they'll let you cancel your upgrade if you don't want it.

everybody else is in exactly the same position... calm down, mr. i have 3 posts and joined last month - read my previous post
you can either trust us or not, i don't care... maybe you should thank these guys for even giving you this to start looking at
:party:

glad you're here, but i hope you'll relax, you'll make better big decisions (:
 
paulherrin said:
i would say that if a couple weeks or a month is the crux of your major business decision... be careful
it should be a simple decision based on how you see your market in relation to your assets/finances. good luck
pretty sure they'll let you cancel your upgrade if you don't want it.

everybody else is in exactly the same position... calm down, mr. i have 3 posts and joined last month - read my previous post
you can either trust us or not, i don't care... maybe you should thank these guys for even giving you this to start looking at
:party:

glad you're here, but i hope you'll relax, you'll make better big decisions (:
Click to expand...
I know how to handle business, and it's all about ROI. It's not a giant decision, but I do not make a habit of buying things I do not need. If i'm not seeing a jump in quality that I can justify then I'm not going to purchase. I have yet to see that, but I am optimistic, as are many others which is why we want to see lots of testing badly. I don't care about jpegs or vimeo uploads. There are some r3ds out there, which is great but it is very limited. I want charts! RED had a dynamic range teaser way back when, I want to see more of that.. We have paper specs, lets see them in a controlled environment.

Gunleik has graciously taken his time to post these, thant I'm thankful for, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I'm not blown away by any of the results. I need to see why we NEED this upgrade. The 6K alone isn't doing it for me. For some it would be a big selling point but 5K>4K is good for my delivery formats.

Sure I have 3 posts. And having 2,000 posts doesn't qualify you anymore then myself to assure others about a camera you do not own yet.
 
I've shot Xyla charts on Dragon, but they're from the very early days so I won't be sharing them. I could see 16+ stops in them as advertised, but things have moved on and they're no longer representative IMHO.

When our Dragon comes back from its current job and / or our Carbon arrives I'll try and grab the 21 stop Xyla again to share the results.
 
One of the first Dragon clips I looked at was shot at night. I pumped the iso to 4000 in RedCinex- Damn. So much less noise.
Gunleik's clips clearly show a smoother rolloff in the highlights in some conditions, more dynamic range and better tonality.

All of the areas I had hoped to see improvements.

End of story for me. Can't wait for mine.
 
A couple of things to consider:
Dragon photo sites are smaller, and yet Red had managed to get the noise down slightly, that's a good thing!
You can do a bit of cropping on you shots and still get a real 4K result ! Genuine 4K is a reality with a camera that fits in a backpack in the overhead compartment.
'Color science' is very unlikely to change the noise levels, as it's more of a 3d lut type of thing to tune color response and gamma curves.
 
Jogg Cranston said:
Gunleik has graciously taken his time to post these, thant I'm thankful for, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I'm not blown away by any of the results. I need to see why we NEED this upgrade. The 6K alone isn't doing it for me. For some it would be a big selling point but 5K>4K is good for my delivery formats.
Click to expand...

then you probably won't be and you probably don't need this upgrade... i don't get your point or your attitude, you seem to think red owes you something because you may want to buy what they're putting to market, so they need to bend over backwards for each persons urgent need for charts, etc. when the thing isn't even finished yet. all that stuff will come, chill. please...

:willy_nilly:

:crazy:

:leaving:
 
The Madman's vision

The Madman's vision

Let's not compare processed images out of a camera like the FS100U with unprocessed RAW images out of Epic Dragon please.

From day 1 the RED philosophy has been to give us as much real image data to start with as possible, noise and all. Most manufacturers re-characterize the RAW data much more aggressively in camera by making assumptions about what a good looking image would be. FWIW, 90% of the time the image information they toss out is essentially the same as what you would kill in grading. Beyond that, as Mike Most and others have cogently pointed out, its much easier to ruin a RAW image with poor "development" choices than a more pre-processed RGB starting point. IMO, one of Jim's core philosophies from jump was to give us as much control as possible - something he stuck to, even after tons of people mangled development/grading operations so badly that their results besmirched the brand.

I bring this up in part, to support Gunleik's approach to this thread, which might be considered a corollary to the cliche "a little knowledge can be dangerous". RED took off the training wheels and too many people just want to gawk at the road kill created by people who simply lacked the understanding/skill to properly "develop" a RAW image. For people like Guneik, Phil, Evin, Mark, Probst, Peter, etc the access to all that image information opens up a delicious palette for creative expression inaccessible on most cameras. I tip my hat.

Cheers - #19
 
Filip Orlandic said:
You guys who don't see the difference between Dragon and Mysterium-X sensor should get a minepick and start digging the R3D files. R3D doesn't brake anymore!
Click to expand...

This is is an important and very true statement. Read it twice.


Battistella
 
David Battistella said:
This is is an important and very true statement. Read it twice.


Battistella
Click to expand...

True, that sample r3d that was taken by Peter Lyons Collister is a great exposure with so much info in the RAW. I think it's hard to see any of the benefit to the sensor in a jpeg, but once I opened that r3d I was very impressed, and leaves tons of room in the grade to take it where you want.
 
I think the best way can be R3ds, but I am a bit unsure.

First two examples updated with r3ds

12 frames from each cam...


G
 
Try to do this with the Epic MX:
DragonReduser.jpg


Full 6K version here (30mb): http://matthayslett.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Dragon.jpg
 
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