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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 in the UK

John Marchant said:
Red's official spec is 16.5+ stops. Thats a safe description IMHO, and of course it depends how you measure and interpret results... but I'd currently say its a very big '+'.

I will reserve judgement on a final figure til I have more time with a chart, but an aesthetic point of note when shooting DR charts was that the final brightest stop, and the stops past it that was fully burnt did not look wrong or ugly. Quite the opposite.
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John we all know that the number 16.5 or 13.5 are verry much subjective and are dependend on the individual cinematographers perspective and way of rating and useablity, usualy the difference in dr between two cameras is the only thing that can be measured accurately and is usualy the same and constant for everybody. My main question is do you think that dragon has more dynamic range than films like kodak vision 3 or fuji eterna vivic, is dragon truly the first digital cinema camera that beats film in terms of dr??? pls reply
Would be great to know your thoughts on the matter......
 
My answer isn't ever going to satisfy you I'm afraid, as I don't have the depth of experience with S35 film to be forthright - I only know 35mm stills to that degree, and digital of course.

What I can share is the methodology i use to establish whether a stop on a chart is workable or not. The 20 stop range Xyla-21 has a hard shutter you can slide across the stops, blocking the brighter stops progressively until only the darkest remains.

Rating the camera based on an optimally exposed still is unfair IMHO - you need to do something the Xyla allows for, which is to reveal and obscure the stops one by one, and judge from motion footage whether the stop is visible to you (preferably viewing in a log space). What's hard to see and too noisy in a still image, springs into clear life when in motion, and when moved or animated on screen. Your eye finds value in motion that it won't in a single frame. On that basis Red's claims stand up in my book.

The unarguable end is the clipping point and the basic noise level. Its clearly apparent that the overall noise is lower. Everyone would agree, and everyone would equally allow a certain amount of dynamic range improvement - how much is opinion, but definitely 'some'. The clipping point is simple to see - on the exposure chart I have Dragon can accommodate easily 1.5 stops more at the highlight end.

The anecdotal is actually more powerful than the scientific answer - at Reducation this week I helped some of the students shoot HDRx tests, in a setup where the MX needed at least +3, better +4 stops of HDRx to hold highlights. Dragon ate the image up in one exposure. In the real world I believe our choices about where to draw the line on shadow detail are more forgiving than on a chart.
 
John Marchant said:
Dave, these images are cropped to the area of interest- the daylight versions if any would have shown UV, but there was just nothing of significance there, so I cropped above the deep violet :)
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Good to know, thanks,

Dave
 
I agree with you John, charts are all fine and good, but its in the field that counts and how it looks to the eye and how it comes out in the edit, and the all important
client raised eye brow, how did you manage that! there so used to looking at HD hehehehe.

The Epic is very good more than good, can handle most things comfortably, but that extra margin with Dragon will be amazing.

Filming in Montenegro for the next few days, had everything thrown at me today, bright beaches, old towns bright sunshine with dark shady alleys
up in the mountains from sun to dense fog and that all important dark comfy restaurant shot with food, Yup Epic eat it all, but the Dragon will
just add all that extra goodness, can't wait.

Best to you John.
 
Looks fantastic!
 
I think there are a few things that does not translate too well into numbers, is the smoothness and stretchyness of the Dragon.

Of course it CAN in measured DR and bit depth, but it still have an extreme comfort zone on set and in post, which is not easily measured.

Preview is a lot better, too.
Now how to measure that?
It does a few security tricks...
Now

get it?

It is just a very well balanced package to work with.

And there are a few new and very nice surprises in there.

Which just makes daily operation more comfy.

Dragon is basically a lot more of... "fill in stuff you like here"
 
https://vimeo.com/74857457

A little more of the same, but I'm sure none of you object too much. This with a little grade rather than straight off camera. No secondaries or intricate stuff.

More stuff I can share coming soon :)
 
We've been busy outside the UK too.

We recently had a fantastic experience shooting with Cortina Productions for a very interesting Revolutionary War project for the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. I can't talk much about the specifics of production, but our Dragon was pressed into service for its full 6K image size.

The camera acquitted itself brilliantly over the course of a solid week of day and night location production. Some very wide lenses were used, so pairing them with the Motion Mount made life much more straightforward. The final film should look fantastic and is targeted for an amazing bespoke presentation.

Here’s a couple of BTS shots of my colleague Fernando at work. I just finished cleaning dust out of the heatsink and fan (!)





 
Shooting on Dragon with Fernando at Kippertie

Shooting on Dragon with Fernando at Kippertie

I was the producer on this shoot, and I Just wanted to say that it was an absolute pleasure working Kippertie and shooting on the Dragon.

John was very knowledgeable and professional, and getting everything set up was a breeze. We brought the Dragon over to the U.S to shoot, and it was a smooth process getting everything together.

Fernando came over with the Dragon, and was a class act all the way. Great operator, Great attitude. I'd work with these guys any day, any time.

On the Dragon: It is pretty difficult to fathom just how much of an improvement the Dragon sensor makes until you get your hands on one. What we recorded is absolutely stunning. We also did some shooting with a multi-camera rig built using Scarlets on this shoot, and as I skip from Dragon to Scarlet while reviewing footage, the difference is night and day.


Brent Feito
 
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absolutely stunning ...

absolutely stunning ...

Brent Feito said:
I was the producer on this shoot, and I Just wanted to say that it was an absolute pleasure working Kippertie and shooting on the Dragon.

John was very knowledgeable and professional, and getting everything set up was a breeze. We brought the Dragon over to the U.S to shoot, and it was a smooth process getting everything together.

Fernando came over with the Dragon, and was a class act all the way. Great operator, Great attitude. I'd work with these guys any day, any time.

On the Dragon: It is pretty difficult to fathom just how much of an improvement the Dragon sensor makes until you get your hands on one. What we recorded is absolutely stunning. We also did some shooting with a multi-camera rig built using Scarlets to this shoot, and as I skip from Dragon to Scarlet while reviewing footage, the difference is night and day.


Brent Feito
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Agree wholeheartedly with your observation, Bent ... DRAGON is a totally different beast to the EPIC ... it's not just about the extra Dynamic Range and Resolution - there is something fundamentally different and better about the new sensor and the images it produces.

BTW, we have a Red Rocket-X card which is also pretty amazing and I see as being an integral part of the DRAGON 6K workflow ... if you're based anywhere near LA come over to our lab and I'll show the RR-X in action with DRAGON footage.

If you need any help with the post on your DRAGON shoot, give us a bell ... we're always happy to help out in any ways we can.

Good luck with your project ... show us some footage as soon as you can.

Cheers,
Neil
 
Hi John is that the pro I/O on the camera? I can't see the module adapter but maybe that's just the angle of the photo. Also is that the OLED EVF? if so how much of an improvement is it over the LCOS?
 
I appreciate the offer - We have some unique workflow challenges on this one, and I will keep you offer in mind.

Would like to show footage as soon as possible, though I think it will be a good long while. We are under some strict non-disclosures, which is a huge bummer.
 
6K workflow ...

6K workflow ...

Brent Feito said:
I appreciate the offer - We have some unique workflow challenges on this one, and I will keep you offer in mind.

Would like to show footage as soon as possible, though I think it will be a good long while. We are under some strict non-disclosures, which is a huge bummer.
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Anytime Brent ... we've been working with RED footage since Day #1 with every version of the camera and now with DRAGON ... more than happy to help out .... as I say we have the RR-X card and know the 6K .r3d workflow pretty well.

Which NLE are you using?

Neil
 
Beautiful sir, all of the still appear very soft to me, all of them, i thought colse up shots would be extremly sharp, but they are also very soft, is this normal or we must scale down 6k to 1080p to get that sharp details? Please letme know, thank you.
 
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