Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register 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 :)

Dragon HDRx footage?

B

Brennan Klensch

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 17, 2009
Messages
143
Reaction score
0
Points
0
I was just wondering if there was any Dragon HDRx footage? I thought it was included in a firmware update about a month or 2 ago?
 
It's kicking. Works like a charm.

We shot some cars in dark and had it on for fun on I think it was 4 stops under.... magic motion could bring out the details from the headlights of the car no problem, all while the A track was properly exposed. :)
 
oops , thanks Bjorn for the info... obviously someone with a Dragon will know better than someone without !

Any R3D frame to share ? Would love a HDRx Dragon clip to test with my apps if all works as expected....
 
Thanks guys! Bjorn, any chance you would mind posting the clip? or you Ketch? ALso Ketch, does the Motion Mount disable HDRx?
 
any one know if motion mount disables hdrx in dragon? also, any samples?
 
thanks justin? Now, anyone have any actual footage? haha
 
I was wondering about that should track A have prefect exposure or in blend will take care of that, I guess now i know.
 
I would be particularly interested in an architectural interior shot with bright windows.
 
I have been doing some HDRx shooting with DRAGON. The extended sensitivity of DRAGON offers the possibility of using HDRx less, which simplifies grading enormously. My experience is very limited, but from that limited experience, once I wander into HDRx territory, I open a whole new can of worms. I'm seeing that DRAGON saves me from needing to use HDRx, and that's its real feature. Also, I don't have a regular EPIC against which to compare it, so I cannot say whether DARGON HDRx is hugely better than MX HDRx.
 
Brennan Klensch said:
Thanks guys! Bjorn, any chance you would mind posting the clip? or you Ketch?...
Click to expand...

Sadly Brennan I have nothing I can show... On top of it all I have been so sick, and with the current cold weather prohibiting me form going outdoors it really sucks big time... Can't wait to be back to California.


Brennan Klensch said:
...ALso Ketch, does the Motion Mount disable HDRx?
Click to expand...

Justin O'Neill said:
Currently HDRx does not work with the Motion Mount on MX or Dragon. It sounded like there was a good chance it would work in the future, however.
Click to expand...

As Justin said Brennan, HDRx mode is not possible while using the Motion Mount... But all I can say is that "IF" and that is a BIG "IF" RED was to pull off a miracle and make it work on Motion mount, for me DRAGON+MM HDRx would surely allow to create some absolutely STUNNING Imagery of the kind you never seen before!!

So... There is always hope for a RED Miracle... ;)
 
Thanks Ketch and Michael! Hope you feel better Ketch!

And Michael, I totally understand that Dragon is going beyond what Epic could do even with HDRx (in most cases) without having to resort to HDRx, however, I would simply like to see what that kind of dynamic range looks like compared to it's base sensitivity and also pitted against Epic HDRx. I'm not saying you would need it, but, to me, HDRX is one of the most underutilized functions of RED. I get it, faster turnaround on this stuff kinda makes HDRx a novelty in most shoots rather than a necessity, however, i would love to see where all that room would go in the hands of a truly excellent colorist.

any way I can persuade you to post a clip?
 
I am preparing two HDRx clips that inform my perspective on its usefulness. First some caveats:

1. The RED EPIC DRAGON I've been testing has the old OLPF.

2. The architectural clip (Music HDRx) was shot with 5.1.35 firmware, not 5.1.38 firmware, so darks are more noisy.

3. The electronic clip (Buchla HDRx) does not quite have enough dynamic range to really clip the DRAGON. But the X frames at exposed at -6 do allow the DRAGON to stare deeply into LEDs which normally clip every other camera I point at them.

4. HDRx at 6K takes a lot of storage. The Buchla HDRx clips are 2.77GB (17 seconds) and the Music HDRx clips are 6.12GB (37 seconds). And it also means one cannot shoot as wide-open as when shooting normal footage, because the second frame and the integration time take time. If you only ever shoot with a 180 degree shutter, the HDRx step can be completely hidden in the downtime, but if you try to open up the shutter for more light, you'll find that you cannot.

With those caveats, here's what you will probably notice:

In the Music Room shot, I underexposed the interior by about 1 f-stops (shot at ISO 800 f1.4 180 degree shutter, should have been 360 degree shutter). You can see noise in the shadows as a result. I am quite sure that the 5.1.38 firmware has the reach needed to make the small noise problem that is visible completely invisible. When next I have the opportunity, I am curious to see whether it holds up when underexposed 2-3 stops, not just one stop. But this also points out that HDRx imposes some limits, and given my frame rate and lens aperture, there is simply no way to send more light to the sensor without adding more lights. And once one is in the business of adding more lights, why not add enough lights to really get a proper exposure of the interior vs. the exterior? Also, as the pan moves from interior-only to including exterior windows, a second set of problems becomes evident. The A-frame clips (of course), but also there are many secondary reflections (from walls, floors, other glass surfaces) that all highlight just how bright the exterior is. The X-frame was exposed at -5, where nothing clips--not even a white object illuminated by sunlight. Therefore it is possible to get perfect extraction of the scene outside the windows, but it's a real bear to balance the exterior lighting with its knock-on effects on the interior. Think about this: Ansel Adams taught the world that a great print has 10 stops of dynamic range, and while most negatives don't have fully that much dynamic range, if you work hard you can squuze that much out of your negatives. So lens designers have known for a long time that if they can control flare across 10 stops (meaning that a flare in the highlights won't infect an adjacent dark area too much), all is well. Except when you have an imaging platform that can "see" 20+ stops of dynamic range, the flare in the +20 part of the image (clipped in the A-frame but seen in the X-frame) is going to be well beyond the lens design parameters for the darker areas in the A frame. In this example, the flare around the windows in the A-frame makes it diffcult to simply drop in the scene from outside the windows--where is all that damn flare coming from?

Since running this test, I put up 06 ND film (2 f-stops) and I ordered some 09 ND film (3 f-stops). With 3 f-stops of mitigation, only bright white objects in sunlight clip, and that's a clip I can afford. With 3 f-stops of mitigation, the spill onto the floors and the flare from the window sills drops by 3 f-stops, which also happens to be directly proportional to the view outside, so the inside and the outside are magically consistent. If/when the camera is upgraded to the new OLPF, I suspect there will be much less flare, and so that might skin the cat a different way, but we cannot ignore the fact that lenses do flare, and however much people love lenses on their 12 or 13-stop imaging platform, a 20+ stop imagine platform is going to expose ghosts that are challenging to un-see.

Moving on to the Buchla shot, I will say that the BlackMagic Cinema Camera fails miserably in two ways compared to the DRAGON. Because of the fine silkscreening, it is a natural trigger for moire noise that the DRAGON simply does not have. Also, the BMCC color matrix does nasty things when chroma channels clip. Bright red, green, and blue LEDs are all rendered as basically white right up to f8 (shot at ISO 800, 180 degree shutter). With the BMCC, I don't get good color representation until f11, and f16 is better. In this shot, the DRAGON's A-frame is exposed at f1.4 (!) and the X-frame is at -6 stops. The result is that the X-frame can see color in these bright LEDs almost all the way in. But what is amazing is that at f1.4, it's still representing accurate colors even when the highlights are "blown". Again, flare makes these LEDs larger circular blobs in the A-frame than in the X-frame, and so some thought must be giving to how to bridge the divide between A and X frames. It's not just about choosing one exposure over another...it's about understanding how these secondary factors affect the overall plan.

Which all brings me back to my original point. Most tools in the toolbox have consequences. Add a light, and you have to deal with a new shadow. Open up the aperature, and you lose depth of field. Open up the shutter and deal with more (and not necessarily better) motion blur. Turn on HDRx and in addition to doubling the amount of data you have to offload and run through the system, (1) you cannot open the shutter to 360 degrees, (2) flares and reflections can appear N stops brighter for your N-stop HDR setting, and (3) you really have to think about your lighting from the perspective of two different setups, the A-frame and the X-frame. Meaning that if you really want to make it work, you have to do twice as much to properly capture this extraordinary amount of dynamic range which, ultimately, must be compressed down to whatever the final image can support. And that makes one realize that perhaps an extra light, or perhaps an extra gel, or perhaps a different approach to the shot will yield a better result than just turning on HDRx and forgetting everything one is supposed to know about the craft.

It is great to know that HDRx is there in the toolbox, but it is not a panacea. It does not mean you can think less about light and more about everything else. It means you have to think more about light than ever before. The NASA HDRx footage is a perfect example of where HDRx is a great way to solve the problem, because you cannot fly enough 24KW sources to sufficiently illuminate the body of a heavy-lift rocket system to balance the reflected light against the blazing illumination of the rocket's jets. But here on earth, we have many more choices. And we should use them wisely.

With those caveats, dropbox tells me that it will take another 7 hours to finish uploading the files. That should be plenty of time for moderators to tell me I should not post R3D files using obsolete or out-dated firmware/hardware.
 
Tarek salman said:
I was wondering about that should track A have prefect exposure or in blend will take care of that, I guess now i know.
Click to expand...

No your A track should have a good base. so no noise in blacks. So for instance if you open up so that the camera RGB overexpo ligthts goes on and then back down so they just turn off. So that you are right under the clipping point, then you open for example 2 stops more so that you clip A with two stops... Then you need 2 stops of HDRx to survive with a non clipped image. 4 stops burnt out you need 4 stops of DR. Your A track is your lowlight and your HDRx track is your highlight.
 
I look forward to seeing them Michael...

That said, SEVEN hours? Can you also upload just a couple of still frames or 3 second clips with smaller file sizes (a couple of hundred megs)... Sound like you're uploading gigs worth.
 
Can't watch just now because I'm at work but thank you thank you thank you in advance michael!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top