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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 misconceptions and clarification...

"18+ stops", man, that's going to open up a few doors. And windows, and….
How are you going to spend yours? ( :
 
zak forrest said:
I sure would love to see a test where these peeps choose the Red footage out from the rest, I don't buy it..
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While some say they can (I am not one of them), that is not my point.

What I am saying is that the combination of sensor technology developed by RED and Graeme's magic mix of color science gives me the best palette to work from.
And it keeps getting better.
Simple as that.
 
David Battistella said:
One thing we can say looking at that is that the whole "skintones thing" has been utter bullshit from day one. :)

david
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it's actually somewhat ironic to contemplate -

it's the skintones of the Milk Girls imagery which sucked me down the RED rabbit hole in the first place. so gorgeous.

what a strange world we inhabit, where this same point became adopted as the focal point for the marketing noise of why NOT to shoot on RED....
 
All the skin tones issues I see are due to poor lighting, poor grading and post processing or all of that. In other words, the skin tones issue is and always has been complete BS. There is also this perception [misconception] out there, that the way the image looks coming out of the Alexa, in all it's 4:2:2 baked ProRes or DNx glory, is the way camera footage *should* look. That's great if people think they like that look, but they keep missing the point of it just being one of an infinite number of looks. Not just for that camera, but mostly for any other camera.

That said, RED footage does have a "look" when you get down to it and start peeping pixels. It happens to be a look that I love. It's the sort of thing we can associate from one camera system to the next, just as we see various attributes in different film stocks. Grain in the form of noise on a RED MX sensor is different than the noise structure on an F65, which is different than the Alexa and so on...

The one point that people seem to keep missing about RED is the power of the RAW image and the amount of control we have with processing it. I would say the biggest advantage to RED footage, possibly more so than compression and data sizes, is just how flexible it is. The footage I shoot with my EPIC is the most malleable image I've found to work with. I have so much control. Unlike ARRI and Sony, there are no potentially unwanted filters in the optical path or preferred recording modes with baked-in LUTs or processing. I can make my EPIC match pretty much any other camera, sensor or film stock, not just Alexa. Matching Alexa is easy because it mostly involves taking information AWAY.
 
The irony of the situation is that digital cinema cameras have exceeded the talents and capabilities of a majority of their users, while the accessibility of said cameras in the hands of the average user have gone up exponentially.

So, you get ridiculous situations where you get comparisons between cameras and one person might look at the result and come to a completely different conclusion than anyone else, and there is no way to talk them back from their opinion formed based on their limitations. Or people that latch onto one particular thing they can comprehend and beat it into the ground at the exclusion of all the other things.

The simple truth is that when digital sucked, there was reason to believe that the next camera that came out would make your footage look better automatically. Now that digital cameras are amazing, a lot of people aren't going to see a benefit without personal improvement to go along with the increased capability.

So there will be much gnashing of teeth, words wasted, nits picked, and people that are still sitting on the fence, waiting for that "one feature" that will "finally" let them do that one project they've been dreaming of.

For me, I look at the tools that are being placed in my hands, and I gotta say...I've got me a lot of work to do....
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
A There is also this perception [misconception] out there, that the way the image looks coming out of the Alexa, in all it's 4:2:2 baked ProRes or DNx glory, is the way camera footage *should* look.
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Alexa records 2K Prores 444 12 bit.
In a way, scanned film has that "baked in" look as well. There is no traditional metadata there:)
 
Mark Britton said:
The irony of the situation is that digital cinema cameras have exceeded the talents and capabilities of a majority of their users, while the accessibility of said cameras in the hands of the average user have gone up exponentially.

So, you get ridiculous situations where you get comparisons between cameras and one person might look at the result and come to a completely different conclusion than anyone else, and there is no way to talk them back from their opinion formed based on their limitations. Or people that latch onto one particular thing they can comprehend and beat it into the ground at the exclusion of all the other things.

The simple truth is that when digital sucked, there was reason to believe that the next camera that came out would make your footage look better automatically. Now that digital cameras are amazing, a lot of people aren't going to see a benefit without personal improvement to go along with the increased capability.

So there will be much gnashing of teeth, words wasted, nits picked, and people that are still sitting on the fence, waiting for that "one feature" that will "finally" let them do that one project they've been dreaming of.

For me, I look at the tools that are being placed in my hands, and I gotta say...I've got me a lot of work to do....
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Totally agree with you, Mark. I see stuff shot on DSLR's that i'm completely envious of in every way. Imagine a Pro camera in their hands? So much to learn...always.
 
Mark Toia said:
Question ... How can a 2.8k - 25.9 meg, 12 bit image from the Alexa and even worse, a HD or 2k PRORES with as little as 12meg per frame from the Alexa carry as much information as a 109meg 6k, 16bit image ?

Math always speaks the truth.
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Simple answer Mark.
Current shipping Alexa camera records 12 or 14 bits of intensity information in RAW mode, which is exactly the same as current shipping Red camera-Epic.
Additionally, I can just open those ARRI RAW files in Resolve, push play and it will play in full resolution in real time without a need for $5K hardware.
May be I will get banned now?:emote_happyhappy:
 
jake blackstone said:
Simple answer Mark.
Current shipping Alexa camera records 12 or 14 bits of intensity information in RAW mode, which is exactly the same as current shipping Red camera-Epic.
Additionally, I can just open those ARRI RAW files in Resolve, push play and it will play in full resolution in real time without a need for $5K hardware.
May be I will get banned now?:emote_happyhappy:
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Jake, everyone knows you don't own either camera and that as a colorist you take footage from whatever the job is... unless you turn down jobs with RED footage? '-)
 
Elsie N said:
Jake, everyone knows you don't own either camera and that as a colorist you take footage from whatever the job is... unless you turn down jobs with RED footage? '-)
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Are you crazy Elsie?
I love them all and I would never turn the job down because of the camera choice. However I would because of client's bad attitude:)
I'm completely camera agnostic and I pride myself in knowing the subject of camera image manipulation. Just because I don't own either camera, doesn't mean, that I don't know a thing or two about the subject. On the other hand there are many DPs, who think they know color grading:)
 
jake blackstone said:
Are you crazy Elsie?
I love them all and I would never turn the job down because of the camera choice. However I would because of client's bad attitude:)
I'm completely camera agnostic and I pride myself in knowing the subject of camera image manipulation. Just because I don't own either camera, doesn't mean, that I don't know a thing or two about the subject. On the other hand there are many DPs, who think they know color grading:)
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I thought that was the case but your defense of ARRI RAW files and how easily they played back sounded like you preferred working with ARRI files and were taking sides. Just wanted to clear that up for you so you might avoid getting banned... not by RED, but by productions who use RED cameras.

Glad to hear you are file type agnostic (it's o.k. to secretly prefer one or the other if you so choose '-) and hopefully wouldn't raise your prices for working in one over the other due to preference.
 
Elsie N said:
I thought that was the case but your defense of ARRI RAW files and how easily they played back sounded like you preferred working with ARRI files and were taking sides. Just wanted to clear that up for you so you might avoid getting banned... not by RED, but by productions who use RED cameras.

Glad to hear you are file type agnostic (it's o.k. to secretly prefer one or the other if you so choose '-) and hopefully wouldn't raise your prices for working in one over the other due to preference.
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OK, that does it! I'm raising my prices when I work with any cameras that use uncompressed recording and for cameras, that use less, than 10 bits and 4:2:2 to record. I'm looking at you Canon.
Although, this doesn't apply to the new DSLR Canon RAW recording :001_tongue:
 
jake blackstone said:
OK, that does it! I'm raising my prices when I work with any cameras that uses uncompressed recording:001_tongue:
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WHAT?! You are giving preference to the DSLR guys?

UNFAIR!

I'm gonna picket as soon as I find a picket fence!

'-)

(I know, I know... no camera that I am familiar with uses uncompressed recording '-)
 
Mark Toia said:
Been shooting my MX Epics madly the last 3 days, I have to tell you... that I really noticed the difference between the MX and the Dragon. I couldn't believe in 2 to 3 days of using the Dragon, that I would convert so quickly to it...

That said, the images we captured over the last 3 days are still amazing. MX is still a great sensor ! Oh... and I put on a low pass filter today for a bit of fun, That was interesting. Really flattened out the top end and looked quite nice, but really lost that sparkle and clarity... Really noticed it with sparkled water from a back lit jet ski scene we shot today.
I'm in two minds.
At least I can work backwards from a non filtered look. But I can see the attraction of both.
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What low pass filter did you use? Thx.

Footage looks great by the way - especially considering how much the sensor is being tested in some circumstances. This will certainly reignite Epic for Dp's.

+1 for optional LP filter on the Epic please to the Folks at Red.
 
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