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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 Noise Confirmation

Zeb B said:
That's a point that is missed because it is not marketed that way. I mean . . . what's up with "Scarlet" and running adverts in Videomaker Mag etc if not to suggest this is a one man crew camera?? RED at its core are serious movie cameras made for professional movie crews that have a high level of control over the shooting environment and lighting budgets to go with. If that does not describe your mission then you might be in for a bumpy ride using a RED (or Alexa / F65 if you say so).

That's why my next bit of gear is a wider selection of LED lighting and even faster lenses. Dragon is always hungry for more 5600K balanced light. If you don't feed it - it can get ornery
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Exactly. I've shot docu esque pieces on Epic before, but even for the docu eng stuff I've done we always light either with litepanels on camera or litepanels off of camera. I've never shot a professional job without some kind of lighting, even on non RED shoots. Even good ENG cameras don't handle underexposure well. That's one of the reasons the c300 became so popular because of its in camera processing for clean footage right out of camera.

But it's crazy what you can do with RED footage and noise reduction. Because of its insane resolution you get better results and less softening of the image. I know no one wants to do extra steps in post, but it is a solution and it does work. The final noise reduced image is far superior to the softened c300 image by far. If you want, send me a low light R3D in motion, like 10 seconds or so and I'll see how much comes out with noise reduction and post the final. Always remember RED is a RAW camera so footage will never be pre processed with noise reduction like the c300.
 
Haven't you seen enough of my noisy problem footage for one lifetime ;-)

You're a great RED resource Matt
 
Zeb B said:
Haven't you seen enough of my noisy problem footage for one lifetime ;-)
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haha I actually ran it through NR and it cleaned up perfectly. Noise reduction works better on moving footage so I'm curious to see how well it holds up exported as an .mov. I just have your R3D grabs and jpeg compression sucks ;)
 
Matt Ryan said:
Always remember RED is a RAW camera so footage will never be pre processed with noise reduction like the c300.
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Like Zeb, love your contributions to Redlandia, Matt! And totally agree. By shooting RAW, RED is best taken advantage of with a commitment to POST. Ie if you are willing to grade and really WORK your footage in post, I think RED footage really starts to sing. Without this commitment, RED's advantages slowly begin to nuetralize. But once you make this commitment (gotta grade my work!)...I find it hard to go back. I'm enjoying grading, and the post side the RED ecosystem, more and more every day...!
 
Ok, I'm late to the party but I was wondering...

The OP images don't hit the goal posts when viewing them at full res. The noise bar jumps up a bit when looking at it @ 1/2 res. I noticed that it jumps when changing the resolution on other images before, but I was always believing the one at full res. They are clearly exposed to the left, but I always relied on the goal posts for last confirmation about the noise level. With dragon it seems very hard to hit the posts at all!?

Also, what about the sharpness of the images? The 5K image feels sharper than the 6K but both seem a tad soft to my eye. Is it the glass or focus or motion or do you think it's noise that reduces the sharpness in these images. Or is it nothing out of the ordinary and I'm being pixel peeping too much again? Not that all my images are razor sharp all the time. Just want to know :)
 
Ran a little bit of pushed Dragon footy through several NR plugins, some chroma denoise worked the best in my experience (on MX not so much, but F65 and Dragon really impressed me). Noise then looked more monochromatic and grain-like. Since getting glossy clean results out of severely underexposed shots wasn't my goal, I happily settled with that tactile texture, way more pleasing to me than noise straight out of the camera. Of course for run-n-gun, no-time-for-post cases, internal NR of Canons and some other guys will suit better. They better hurry up with that crazy starlight sensor prototype you can light with fireflies and full moon. Doc and low light crowd will be in heaven that day :)
 
Patrick Grossien said:
Ok, I'm late to the party but I was wondering...

The OP images don't hit the goal posts when viewing them at full res. The noise bar jumps up a bit when looking at it @ 1/2 res. I noticed that it jumps when changing the resolution on other images before, but I was always believing the one at full res. They are clearly exposed to the left, but I always relied on the goal posts for last confirmation about the noise level. With dragon it seems very hard to hit the posts at all!?
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There's a world of difference between hitting or missing the goalposts and correctly exposing an image. I shoot in an environment that fades to black all over the place. I fill the goalposts regularly. But I also strive to properly expose what is not black in the image, and by so doing, have all the tools I need to handle whatever noise needs to be handled.

IMHO, the OP underexposed their image by at least 1.5 stops. As such, we cannot really judge the performance of the camera at ISO 800. We could judge it at ISO 2500 or ISO 3200. But are we expecting DRAGON to be noise-free there? I don't. To reiterate, dialing in ISO 800 and shooting a scene without regard to proper exposure does not guarantee a noise-free image. Dialing in ISO 800 and properly exposing a scene gives very nice results.
 
Michael Tiemann said:
There's a world of difference between hitting or missing the goalposts and correctly exposing an image. I shoot in an environment that fades to black all over the place. I fill the goalposts regularly. But I also strive to properly expose what is not black in the image, and by so doing, have all the tools I need to handle whatever noise needs to be handled.

IMHO, the OP underexposed their image by at least 1.5 stops. As such, we cannot really judge the performance of the camera at ISO 800. We could judge it at ISO 2500 or ISO 3200. But are we expecting DRAGON to be noise-free there? I don't. To reiterate, dialing in ISO 800 and shooting a scene without regard to proper exposure does not guarantee a noise-free image. Dialing in ISO 800 and properly exposing a scene gives very nice results.
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Very well said. If you don't properly expose at 800ISO, you will get noise. It's just common sense.
 
Michael Tiemann said:
There's a world of difference between hitting or missing the goalposts and correctly exposing an image. I shoot in an environment that fades to black all over the place. I fill the goalposts regularly. But I also strive to properly expose what is not black in the image, and by so doing, have all the tools I need to handle whatever noise needs to be handled.

IMHO, the OP underexposed their image by at least 1.5 stops. As such, we cannot really judge the performance of the camera at ISO 800. We could judge it at ISO 2500 or ISO 3200. But are we expecting DRAGON to be noise-free there? I don't. To reiterate, dialing in ISO 800 and shooting a scene without regard to proper exposure does not guarantee a noise-free image. Dialing in ISO 800 and properly exposing a scene gives very nice results.
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Me too, I always try to expose with as fat a negative as I can get. My point mainly was that I was surprised that I didn't get to trigger the posts at all. Which is A LOT easier with the MX it seems. And the shift of the goal posts when changing resolution, which frankly doesn't make much sense to me :) But of course this has nothing to do with Dragon, it's just how REDcine reacts.
 
Matt Ryan said:
Very well said. If you don't properly expose at 800ISO, you will get noise. It's just common sense.
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If 800 ISO is supposed to be relatively clean across the board, and you don't boost the image at all, why would exposure play a roll in how much noise you see? Shouldn't the shadows be relatively quiet, regardless of how much of the frame is actually shadow?
 
Niko Pueringer said:
If 800 ISO is supposed to be relatively clean across the board, and you don't boost the image at all, why would exposure play a roll in how much noise you see? Shouldn't the shadows be relatively quiet, regardless of how much of the frame is actually shadow?
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They are... We're talking about typical scenarios where some boost exposure in post. But shooting 3200k vs. 5000k has a huge impact on when you see noise or not. I don't have any issues with Epic mx at 800iso, but I don't push exposure in post.
 
Matt Ryan said:
They are... We're talking about typical scenarios where some boost exposure in post. But shooting 3200k vs. 5000k has a huge impact on when you see noise or not. I don't have any issues with Epic mx at 800iso, but I don't push exposure in post.
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Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
 
My personal theory is what you see at 800ISO on set is what you get in post. You can bring levels down, but not up unless you want to use noise reduction. So my advice for if you don't want to use noise reduction is, what you see in camera is your final image. Do not push it and all is good. So if it's underexposed in your monitor, you need to take care of it on set. That's how I think of it. If you want to be able to push the image in post without noise reduction, capture and monitor at 320ISO, which forces you to open up your exposure and give the sensor more light. Also a good practice in low light.

To expand further I believe with the increased DR we are actually seeing more levels of blacks than we would have on MX. This could cause an apparent increase in visible noise when in fact it's actually less noisy than MX if that makes sense. Something to consider in the final grade.
 
Matt Ryan said:
But in all fairness RED cameras are Digital Cinema Cameras, not ENG, docu cameras. You don't see low light/available light footage shot on Alexa or F65 online do you? RED owners tend to always want to push it beyond its limits which is cool, but it also freaks a lot of people out when they see noisy low light footage. We don't see this kind of stuff with the other big boys. Were used to seeing C300 footage in low light which is much better at handling it. RED has never claimed to be a low light camera. You can shoot in low light but don't expect to get clean results like a pre processed, noise reduced, c300 file directly out of Dragon.
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But it si very easy to replicate that same reduction in post (with more control and less artifacts)
 
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