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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 OLPF in Epic?

I have asked about this a few times and everyone has been kinda mum.

only red knows, I think that this should be the OLPF in all their cameras going forward (if that is even possible). I think this would also dramatically improve the light pass through onto the sensor on EPIC and SCarlet as it is an optical piece of glass that filters certain wavelengths of light and aids significantly in limiting and eliminating moire and pattern noise.

That's the job of the OLPF (optical low pass filter) putting that in for people who don't know what it stands for. It filters light after it passes through the lens and before it hits the sensor and protects the sensor because it's made of glass, so it doesn't leave the sensor open to dust etc.

generally each OLPF is sensor specific and red has changed them a few times over the years for better image results, etc. so it is hard to gauge how specifically tuned this is to dragon, that it can not be used on epics.

If there is one REDuser who would try swapping them, I think it would be John Marchant, as I think the work he did with epic and bw photography actually led to some of the development of the EPIC monochrome.

My guess would be that RED is not even testing this with epic right now, just tuning it perfectly for Dragon.

Battistella
 
Something tells me even if they could, they wouldn't (it'd be a lot of hassle and it'd breathe more life into MX)… It'd likely be cheaper to get a new OLPF (which could possibly give better highlight performance [phil said 1.3 stops on Dragon?!] or at the very least some alexa-OLPF-like mojo) than the cost of IRNDs over Regular NDs… added benefit being its behind the lens so it'd be equal across all lenses.

Are OLPFs user serviceable? Maybe someone with a dragon could pop it in an MX and see what it does to the image.
 
Mike,

how fast can you say, "void your dragon warranty", three times. :)

Jim once spoke about user interchangeable OLPF, but any OLPF change requires a clean room. Even if the part itself might be inexpensive, the whole thought of doing an OLPF change out service on Epic could probably never come at a user serviceable price.

like I don't think many people would pay 5000$ for an OLPF upgrade, it would have to be worth REDs while.

with more and more red one MX cameras out of warranty and relatively cheap, I think you might see those kinds of user mods happening and maybe even some hackinred's, we might see them in new epic and scarlet cameras but probably not an upgrade.

again, just speculation but me, which is probably 100% incorrect or unlikely.

battistella
 
I think the new OLPF has been placed deeper inside the sensorbox, making it incompatible with the current epic... they would need to design one for Epic MX. probably not gonna happen. @David The F55 OLPF can be changed by users themselves. No clean room required.
 
The OLPF on Dragon is in fact user replaceable. I have no ideas what Red has planned, but this new Dragon OLPF is purely designed for Dragon. Also Red HQ required calibration is necessary no matter what as there's some under the hood stuff that needs to get updated.

One thing that is interesting that I recently learned is that part of the reason the OLPF has some distance between it and the sensor is to minimize the appearance of potential dust/particles that can get inside the sensor box.

As for the future of Mysterium-X getting a new OLPF, tuned color science, and calibration I have no idea. The sensor itself is part of this equation.
 
I just like the fact the new one is green. :)

phil. I think at this point you would know better than anyone else. I guess the sizes are different and this OLPF would have to be made to fit and tested for MX. If it could improve the thousands of epics and Scarlets that will remain "undragonized" then that would be cool, but I doubt that is a priority at this moment.

Battistella
 
An important job for the OLPF - really it's primary job - is to attenuate the high frequencies that cause moire. To do that effectively takes a different design for each pixel density. Since MX and Dragon have different pixel densities, swapping the two would have less-than-optimal results. So what you are really talking about here is designing a completely new OLPF for MX.

Would that be worth it? I don't know, but that's a different question than this thread has been asking.
 
David,

Great at point about pixel densities because it's all about light dispersion and these sensors are very different.

It might be worth it if the R&D in dragon OLPF can somehow carry over to the epic scarlet line (which I'm sure they will still sell) so maybe it only makes sense for any new camera in that line. But how much can really be developed for last generation technology.

I find a 1/8 dig icon on the EPIC MX really does the trick in most shooting scenarios if you want to flatten things out a bit and roll off the highlights a bit.

Battistella
 
Good point David.

I was kind of thinking, if they could develop the new properties in to an OLPF for MX that increases highlight roll-off by a stop and gets rid of IR contamination issues, I think everyone would get it… more so than the Fan2.0 upgrade. I was merely thinking of trying the Dragon OLPF in an MX camera to see if it still functions the same (albeit likely with moire/aliasing issues)… I'm more interested in the soft shoulder and IR contamination benefits.
 
David Battistella said:
David,

Great at point about pixel densities because it's all about light dispersion and these sensors are very different.

It might be worth it if the R&D in dragon OLPF can somehow carry over to the epic scarlet line (which I'm sure they will still sell) so maybe it only makes sense for any new camera in that line. But how much can really be developed for last generation technology.

I find a 1/8 dig icon on the EPIC MX really does the trick in most shooting scenarios if you want to flatten things out a bit and roll off the highlights a bit.

Battistella
Click to expand...


I am not so sure if they would want to continue selling MX once they have significant dragon yields and updated all of our cameras... maybe liquidate the MX sensors entirely would be the goal and just keep some for servicing others? red doesn't seem like one of the companies that repackages their sensors into super over developed camera lines. i think they would eventually just phase MX out, most people would just buy MX used at this point or go straight to Dragon would be my guess
 
Mike P. said:
Good point David.

I was kind of thinking, if they could develop the new properties in to an OLPF for MX that increases highlight roll-off by a stop and gets rid of IR contamination issues, I think everyone would get it… more so than the Fan2.0 upgrade. I was merely thinking of trying the Dragon OLPF in an MX camera to see if it still functions the same (albeit likely with moire/aliasing issues)… I'm more interested in the soft shoulder and IR contamination benefits.
Click to expand...


you can put the new OLPF in MX...it only costs $9,500 and comes with a free sensor lmfao!
 
Brian Merlen said:
you can put the new OLPF in MX...it only costs $9,500 and comes with a free sensor lmfao!
Click to expand...


True that. LOL!


If the sensor technology were locked in place for some reason, and the only improvements to be made to the cameras had to be through other avenues, it would make a lot of sense to develop a new OLPF for the MX, and the color science that goes with it. But that's not the case.

Looking at the bigger picture, I can't see how it would make any sense at all for Red to devote resources to that effort. A year ago in April, Red was putting Dragon sensors in Epic bodies on the NAB floor. It's ten months later, and Dragon color science is still beta. I think that tells us that developing new color science is very much a non-trivial task. Graeme is brilliant, but he's only got so much capacity, and I suspect that we're seeing how much that capacity is being stretched by the Dragon program. Let them get the Dragon program finished, then if Graeme is casting around for something to do, reworking the MX OLPF and color science might make sense for Red. But that effort will come at the expense of the Red Projector, and Red Ray, and whatever we don't know about that is under development. And given the Dragon time lines, it would be lucky if this new MX OLPF would release sometime in the beginning of 2015.

And then, how much would it have to cost? They'd have to price it high enough to recoup the R&D costs, as well as the cost of manufacturing and installation (remember, the new color science for the new Dragon OLPF is not a user-installable item). Would it cost $1000? $2000? $4000? I have no idea. But how much would people be willing to spend before it became crystal clear that the money would be better spent on a Dragon upgrade?

Not to be a wet blanket, but once you really look at it, this whole idea seems like a non-starter to me. But what do I know?
 
Like any company that wants to grow, they need to expand their product portafolio. They need to diversify, that means they need to sell more than one or two kind of cameras. As of right now, they have 3 camerAs, all of them with a diferent price range, and that is good business practice. Don't think it is healthy only staying with 2 ( epic and scarlet dragon ). It would be great for them to also expand in the 3k dollAr catagory. Imagine a red pocket camera! All mayor companies, no matter the industry, does this practice.
 
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