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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??? So after nearly 10months what do we think? NATIVE 2000ASA no 18stops no ..

Enjoying the constructive bits...Chris as usual lays it out from his personal shooting perspective...Jake form his post colorist technical savvy ... Phil well ive already said it and honestly who hasn't!


Hate to be greedy but what i summize from all this is just this yes V1 and V2 oplf's combined are what was originally thought to be the golden egg that was "DRAGON" Low light and high light rolloff including the new color science.

Im just saying it. Not angry, i still love all my dragons, Love all my Red peeps...just saying ...Hoping this is still the objective! Jim once said it was about Winning!!! thats all i want!! i dont want to shoot prores, because im not a videographer!!!
 
Elsie N said:
So did you? If you did, just admit it and everyone will admire your willingness to admit when you are wrong.
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I have no idea what you're talking about. If you trying to say something about Sony marketing F65 as a camera with an 8K sensor and you disagree, then please direct your ire toward them. I couldn't care less about it, as I don't care, if you think that Dragon produces true 6k images. Resolution is a funny thing, just like dynamic range. Even today there is still an outstanding question about film resolution. The same goes for any other camera, including F65 or Dragon. The answer to all those questions, it depends...
On the other hand, for starters, how about you apologize for lying and misrepresenting my posts about Resolve? I had never stated "I just paid x amount of dollars for the full version" for the reason already stated in my previous post.
 
Entering my 3rd year as an Epic owner, and, I believe, 7th year or more as a "red user". The Epic MX is the best camera I've operated and owned. PERIOD. Used Sony F35, F900 and other lower ended models. Nothing compared to the experience I have with Epic. It has helped me achieve some milestones in my career. So I AM upgrading, obviously, to Dragon. I trust this team. I had, however, a dilema into choosing OLPF 1 (old) or 2 (new). For my type of shooting, I believe 1 is the only option I can live with now. RED TEAM, can someone confirm that if my upgrade which is due now and I opt for OLD OLPF, I still get the other internal changes Red did for OLPF2 ? Will I need to send it in for the USER REPLACEABLE OLPF's if I go OLD OLPF? This is important information that I think current upgraders would really like to know! Thanks in advance!
 
If you need low light and thats your thing swap out the OLPF or shoot 4K on a F55 that camera will hold 5000ASA like a champ no noise, I've seen these files projected on a 50 foot screen looks amazing. Skin tones maybe a little yellow but thats the trade off with this new batch of technology. Just needs more post love to get the skin tones just right.

I'm still a firm believer in when shooting Red to stick with 250-INT & 500-EXT shoot it like film. You'll get the best image clean and pretty.

800ASA if it's an absolute must giving the scene or lighting package.
 
I haven't got my dragon yet. Looking forward to it . but Now looking at the charts, i seems the RED has now only caught up with alexa in terms of highlight range. But the roill of is not as smooth yet and the lower end of the curve before the shadows. Alexa wins. http://indiecinemaacademy.com/red-epic-dragon-vs-red-epic-mx-hype-real-part-01-video/
I was expecting RED come out with an ALEXA killer considering that this is later and new tech. It's not not bad, respectable. But nothing to shout about seriously. I will just quietly use this camera, learn about it limits and work with it. Actually understanding and sharing the limits of the camera is very very productive activity for the community, will REDuser allow this forum to grow in this way?
 
Well if you're counting, it really is 22 months old. Remember the clean room at NAB 2013? The sensor was supposedly ready back then.

"2000 ISO is the new 800" does sound a lot better than the reality of 250 is the new 800. Yes a lot of people are hung up about it because it was a major selling point of the camera upgrade that was trumpeted by the top folks at the company. How many people would be sending their cameras in knowing they'd be getting a 250 ISO camera back?

One thing that Phil/Red haven't mentioned is the flare shadow. The silence has me worried that this is something we just have to live with when shooting Dragon.
 
250ASA all the way!

250ASA all the way!

I'm shooting on Dragon daily at 250 ASA, I just add lights to make up the difference when needed. Just like I used to do when shooting commercials on fine grain 35mm film stock. I hated shooting on 500ASA stock and hated pushing it even more. Film grain is over rated.

Seems like a lot of people round here have expectations beyond physics! I am so tired of reading posts where people have shot footage in their kitchen at night with available light and winge about the noise. Start using real lighting units on real sets and show us the noise then.

The DRAGON is a motion picture camera of considerable pedigree. Not even my local Camera rental has theirs yet so I am suspicious of naysayers commenting too much before they have honestly come to know the Camera. This is a palatable step up from MX, it's not a slight difference at all.

I thought Phil's listed response at the top superb and very much to the point. Yet the thread trails on.........
 
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Can I just say, in the defence of both SONY and RED, that I think the marketing men and the engineering men are two very different people.

The F65 seems to have got a lot of flak on this thread and forum for their "8K" claims. I am just about to buy an F65, I would never call it any more than 4K. Excellent 4K, just as I am sure the DRAGON delivers.

Perhaps people have forgotten, but when the F35 came out (with a 5760 x 2160 sensor), it got bashed to all hell by the RED and general community for being "just shitty 1080P". Despite the fact it was down-sampled from a massively higher res sensor. Nobody cared.

People went with the RED because it was "4K", regardless of how "genuine" that 4K was (Not an argument I want to get in to here, and I am also talking about the original RED ONE). The people choosing camera formats were not always the people in the know - they saw one number and just went with it.

Can you really blame Sony's marketing department for selling the camera as "8K"? RED really pushed the "4K" thing, then the "5K" thing, then the "6K" thing. I am sure the engineers at Sony were just trying to create a great "4K" camera, which I think they did, but the marketing boys I think would not have been happy trying to sell an "inferior" 4K camera, so they wanted to one-up RED and make it an "8K" one. I don't agree with what they did, but I do understand it. Can't anyone else?
 
Michael Hastings said:
RE: your previous post, while I look for and appreciate Jeff Kilgroe's posts probably more than any other Reduser, to suggest (at least by proximity in your post) that Jake is a FUDDER I think is poor form. People like Jake and Mike Most that aren't invested in RED cameras - because they are post professionals that work with footage from a lot of different cameras, provide a very useful perspective.
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Jake is most definitely not a FUDDER and he has been here a long time. Much of this discussion has veered away from the OP's questions and into topics that lurk in murky waters, obscured by shady marketing tactics and weird smoke and mirror tricks played with technical numbers. Myself or others can be firm and vigilant in our efforts to combat misinformation, but we can't fault anyone for not having the numbers straight. There's enough here to make your head spin if you're not dealing with camera hardware and specs or even shooting these cameras regularly.

RED does a good job with much of their marketing in this regard, but they are not perfect. Trying to explain to most how they have a 6K camera, but it really only resolves about 5K of measured resolution never comes across very well. And then trying to point that out about all the other camera systems out there and how they work, it just seems that RED or those of us who also try to articulate that, just get accused of trying to downplay the competition. There really is no way to win at the honest resolution game. Best thing to do is to put on a helmet and advertise the directly identifiable numbers. Let everyone draw their own conclusions. Arri does the same thing. They advertise the Alexa for what it is -- 2880 pixels wide sensor. 3.4K on the Studio in open gate mode. Of course they don't make any comments about nominal resolution that is resolved from their Bayer pattern sensor. They do include a foot note by these resolution numbers, but it isn't there to make concessions or clarification about resolution. It's there to inform people that they need an external RAW recorder to see maximum image and resolution benefits from their camera.

As for resolution, it's important to many of us. It's an integral part of "image quality." It's going to come up and be compared and the recorded format out of the cameras is where we start. From there we can then begin addressing how much of that resolution is utilized or resolved. And that often has a number of determining factors such as lenses and other things in the optical path as well as data packaging, internal image processing or "enhancement", compression options and the camera operator's ability to focus.

We can all romanticize film too. But I see some people getting a bit carried away with that. Super35 film frames truly don't resolve more than about 4K in most situations. The absolute best film stocks, like the latest and greatest Kodak Vision series can probably pull off somewhere around a nominally resolved 5K+ within an S35 frame. (translates to about 8K on a 35mm FF film area of 36mm x 24mm) Like CMOS image sensors, film is capable of higher resolution or more detail if we remove the color components. But then what? The best film scanners for the S35 frame are 4K and none of those film scanners can actually resolve a full 4K worth of detail even from the best film stocks. The Arri 4K film scanners measure out at 3.2~3.6K max when scanning S35. Does it matter? I don't know if it does because duplication transfers and release prints are typically a copy of a copy of a copy and by the time we get to see a movie on film at the local cineplex, we're lucky to see more than 750 lines of nominal resolution there. And to top it off, the projectors aren't in perfect focus most of the time either. Film will always be film and is an art form and medium all to itself. While the odds of me ever shooting motion picture film again are slim, I hope it survives a good while longer.

And as Jake points out, even today there is still disagreement about film and related resolution numbers. The numbers I just stated above seem to be commonly accepted in some circles and match my experience. Others will disagree.
 
This thread is great. It's probably the only place in the world were you can get both sides of the argument with any bullshit called out. This is a great community, and I think this is invaluable. There is just no place else to get these kind of critical perspectives. Just paid for our Scarlet to Epic Dragon upgrade, and we also have a Sony F5. Everyone who chimes in is really contributing something here.. whether you agree with them or not. There are many perspectives to any argument.

Personally, I do think Red over sold it a tad wee bit. However it is a competitive market place.

I wonder if it would be possible for a group of unbiased professionals to define some parameters and set up a kind of test organisation that rates camera according to some agreed upon scientific criteria. I mean if you buy paracetamol, you know it is paracetamol rated by a pharmaceutical organisation given the responsibility to do this. I mean, it must be possible to apply a positivist approach to rating these cameras.

What do you guys think?
 
Phil, there is anything you don't like about the Dragon Sensor? I used to respect your comments but lately you have become really biased about having an unpartial opinion and had became sort of Dragon blind defender.




Phil Holland said:
Woosh. I've been responding via cell and now I'm back at the hut and had a good read through. I'm going to attempt to steer this crashing vehicle back onto the road.

First of all, thank you to the folks for the shout outs. My interests are the same as your interests in terms of a camera owner and shooter. Fortunately Red has trusted me a few times to test stuff thoroughly and I certainly appreciate that.


So, back to the original topic. I'm having a good think here. What is Dragon now that's it's landed?

First I find it interesting as some of the conversation is rather circular from the Mysterium-X days. But Dragon has made some fairly noticeable improvements over Mysterium-X. I'm going to list a few off the top of my head:


Color Science and Skin Tones
Perhaps the biggest monster to deal with. This in my mind is where Dragon has surprised me the most. The color straight out of camera is really, really good. DRAGONcolor and now REDgamma4 provides a damn nice "dense" image.

Dynamic Range and No More DRX
Perhaps the largest fingerprint of what I would describe as "not ideally" graded material was the unattractive magenta overexposure found in Mysterium-X footage. Utilizing DRX or tackling it in the color grade would eliminate this obviously and we all have had to do that. With Dragon that is a thing of the past. Which leads me to......

Improved Highlight Roll-Off and More Analog Looking Digital Imaging
This one took me a bit by surprise because it does look that much better when rolling-off to clip or top tier highlights. In fact I'd say it might look the best out of all current cameras on the market. This is something I think more film people would take notice of during camera tests and really would attract them to Dragon as it's a whole different experience in general shooting. It's not a hard clip like Mysterium-X. Red clearly has tuned Dragon to "ramp" a bit for a smoother more film-like roll-off.

Vastly Improved IR Performance
This is freaking massive to me because we all shoot with Neutral Density filters and in the past both on Mysterium-X and other cameras we've had to utilize various IR blocking/cutting/tinting filters. I know based on my experiments and footage in general that sometimes a few of these filters nuke certain colors. Colors I want to see in my footage. Colors I don't want to work hard to recover. With Dragon none of this chaos is necessary. And this is monumental from a practical shooting perspective. The color is good with a nice set of matched temperature regular ND filters. All the way to ND 3.0 even. Which is nuts. Seriously

Color Grading Latitude
I've been "fondling" my footage aggressively in dark rooms for a while out of Dragon. What I am enjoying from a colorist's perspective is having a bit more freedom in manipulating the images. Both in tonality and in the chromatic performance. It's really weird pulling a nicely exposed thick image down to ISO 50 and seeing what's in there. And often there are goodies to be found. Same for the shadows. This has influenced my way of shooting and even rating for particular shoots/scenes. I'm digging it as I get more comfortable with Dragon and the looks I'm hoping to achieve.

Color Temperature Performance and General Image Noise
Dragon certainly is better in the 3200K and lower arena compared to Mysterium-X. Also the general noise pattern isn't as "patchy" under some of those conditions compared to Mysterium-X. Where I was often shooting MX with a color filter under tungsten I don't find myself doing that with Dragon at all.

Format Size, Resolution, Format/Resolution Relevance
It's a pretty big deal that Red got 5K into the S35 3-perf format size in my mind. Dragon also has plenty of resolving power. And you can choose what to do with that. Lately I've been posting and finishing footage with a light tough of the Post:Look:Effects:Sharpening applied. I'm loving what I'm getting there and it looks great here on my 70" Sharp UHD4K screen. Digging that. Also, the format size of 6K FF is really rad. Obviously lens coverage is a concern with S35 lenses, but most do well at 6K HD and 6K WS. FF35 cinema-minded primes are now available by a few manufacturers and we have that option for 6K FF and 6K 2:1. Personally I'd love for a larger more VistaVision sized sensor personally, but Dragon 6K-5K just makes so much sense from film scanning and image scaling perspective. So kudos to Red on that one.

Newly Designed Lens Port/Sensor Box Thing
This allows for more of the tricky lenses to be used. Which was nice of Red :)

OLPF
Well we got two now and a Modular OLPF option coming the horizon. There's about a 1.3 stop difference between the two. V1 favors seeing into the dark, V2 favors midtones through highlight retention. Two different flavors of ice cream. V1 exhibits some of the things that aren't optimal in terms of highlight orbs, potential IR contamination in the shadows, shadow information being slightly lifted in some lighting situations creating more noise, the "red dot" patter at smaller apertures, etc... V2 solves literally all of those things at the expense less clean high ISO ratings. Though you gain improved highlight retention and better overall color performance, which is more important to some. Red's obviously still experimenting and developing more options on this front, but I stress that both of these are very much production ready. Also, the OLPFs so far are less aggressive than Mysterium-X by a "hair", which is nice for those who want more resolution. For those who are concerned mostly by cleaner high ISO performance the V1 OLPF is the choice for you. Though it comes with it's own "character" and concerns. V2 is for the folks who demand the best out of camera color and a more "film-like" camera in my mind.

4K Broadcast Module
This will be important to some people, but not all. However, Mysterium-X won't support it when it's released and for those who need this particular workflow Dragon is the thing that you're after. Something that should be noted is you can record the 4K raw stream via the module to a recorder pre-REDCODE RAW encoding. While this may lead to very large files, it will actually be some damn sexy resolution. And it handles up to 60p at 4K. The 6K, 5.5K, 5K, 4.5K, and 4K resolutions are scaled down to the 4X HD-SDI outs. We'll learn more about this soon, but this is an important tool as UHD Broadcast is slowly growing.


in the VFX industry we use a term "CBB" during dailies. This stands for "Could be better". Here's a couple things that need or are being improved:

Red Specks in Shadows, Darks, and Midtones
This bun is already in the oven and coming in the form of "DEB" or Dragon Enhanced Blacks. Though quickly we've learned that's it's not just correcting the red specks, but actually improving the color channel cleanliness and resolved detail through an adaptive debayer algorithm. Fairly cool stuff. And best of all it doesn't come at the expense of any sort of additional processing time. The Redcine-X Pro build I've been testing is likely soon to be released. And it will be just a matter of time to get it into the SDK for 3rd Party Tools.

CMOS Horizontal Smearing
This one is the tricky one and does indeed happen on other systems at varying degrees. It's more or less something that at the moment we as image makers need to be mindful. This artifact occurs when overexposure causes a magenta smear horizontally across a frame. Oddly the opposite of what happens with a CCD as that's vertical. The artifact is more apparent when shooting at higher ISO ratings which is digging more into those shadows. It's unknown at the moment if there's anything truly to do about this, but I imagine a few possible solutions and I know I've sent some files over to Red to inspect.


Current Final Thoughts?
So where does that lead me? I will say if you saw the mountain I had to climb to be able to afford my current gear you would understand exactly how seriously I take all of this. Right now Dragon's pros are far outweighing the cons and there are numerous improvements in regards to Mysterium-X. Improvements that put it on par or surpassing other systems depending on who you are. What I know is I can make images with Dragon at the moment that I can't with any other system. I am also into the whole modular concept behind this camera because I can work small and make it big when shooting conditions demand that. As for "not needing" 6K. Meh. I only work in 4K+ and haven't worked in HD for a while now. I have all sorts of personal and technical thoughts on high resolution capture and display for both stills and motion. I'm not really interested in having more than necessary as I can utilize the resolution as a tool and in this case a very interesting format. Red is clearly focused on developing Dragon into a more powerful too as well and we are seeing that both in hardware and software advancements. So I'm feeling fairly good about much of this.

Those are my very on topic thoughts about Dragon.
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Andy Corleone said:
Phil, there is anything you don't like about the Dragon Sensor? I used to respect your comments but lately you have become really biased about having an unpartial opinion and had became sort of Dragon blind defender.
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I put that in my CBB list and I do think the CMOS smearing is something to look out for. If I didn't like Dragon camera I would have sold it and bought something else, specifically if I thought something was better.

Considering the amount of image artifacts and stress testing I've done in the last calendar year between prototype and production Dragon bodies I can't fathom you'd think I'm after anything but image quality.

That's the entire reason I give feedback to Red because they actually do "something" about things when they arise. The V2 OLPF for instance is an example of that as nobody wanted to deal with the orbs or red dots anymore. DEB is another example of them taking action and listening to user feedback. No other company does this, not like this at least. I have a knack for breaking things. Certain other cameras mentioned in this thread I've been able to fry even. Like smoldering and smoking.

Calling me a blind defender is somewhat entertaining to me because I'm up at 4:40am looking harder than you'd imagine because I'm focused on creating high quality images.


What I will do though, is after a my phone meetings in the morning is post some footage. The biggest gripe I've been dealing with on and off the forums is noise related. Red's been clear about "cinema ready" ISO range of 250-2000. I feel that works when exposed properly and even in some cases when not. People need to really, really pay attention to Goal Posts as most of the footage I've been sent is terribly underexposed and in the noise floor. I had to explain recently to somebody why the A7s is noisy at ISO 2000 on screen. You can't imagine the nightmares that keep me up at night.
 
NOSA OBAYIUWANA said:
Has anyone seen this (sorry if I posted it on the wrong thread)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXQpQPvsaQw
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Take a look closely at the images posted here from the same video:
http://www.jdfnet.com/2014/08/01/sony-a7s-vs-red-epic-and-gh4-low-light/

While the A7s BI sensor impressively sees into the darkness, nobody here would consider that clean at 1080p or 4K. At ISO 1600 for example you can see texture everywhere. Much like you'd expect actually. What it does do is see into darkness fairly well, which is actually exciting. With some NR you can shoot in conditions you otherwise could not. At the cost of detail of course.
 
Jeff

A very well put point. I remember being told during my cinematography studies that according to Kodak a release print probably averaged about 1.4K of resolution, which may have been an optimistic guess.

It is an analogue medium, after all.

JM
 
Phil Holland said:
The V2 OLPF for instance is an example of that as nobody wanted to deal with the orbs or red dots anymore.
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What I dont get is why with all the technical problems and reduced color fidelity that the old OLPF has is why it is still even being talked about as an viable option?

There really is just 1 production ready OLPF available at present.

Looking forward to alternatives and I hope there is one of them that I can leave in my camera all the time.
 
jake blackstone said:
I have no idea what you're talking about. If you trying to say something about Sony marketing F65 as a camera with an 8K sensor and you disagree, then please direct your ire toward them. I couldn't care less about it, as I don't care, if you think that Dragon produces true 6k images. Resolution is a funny thing, just like dynamic range. Even today there is still an outstanding question about film resolution. The same goes for any other camera, including F65 or Dragon. The answer to all those questions, it depends...
On the other hand, for starters, how about you apologize for lying and misrepresenting my posts about Resolve? I had never stated "I just paid x amount of dollars for the full version" for the reason already stated in my previous post.
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No, I distinctly remember you posting that as though you were incensed at Black Magic for suddenly dropping the price just after you had paid dearly for a seat. Your admission that you were given the app and card as a beta tester just more or less confirms my suspicions that you may have been schilling. Your posts are forever archived but I don't think it is possible to easily retrieve them here so I won't try. Someone who is adept at that sort of thing can surely resurrect them if it's important to them.

Still, my main point is that you interjected yourself into the discussion about a camera with erroneous statements. Then, when your statements were disputed by someone who is unimpeachable as a source and in the past has stepped up and admitted to everyone here if they were wrong, you tried to act as though you said nothing incorrect.

It is important to set the record straight as this is the place where a lot of people come to absorb information that they then repeat all over the Internet. Just like you did. You probably heard what you posted somewhere and repeated it.

I just think it is important that you retract your misstatements so the misinformation doesn't get another "verification."
 
Is the upgrade worth $9.5K? What say you?

I have shot with a pair of Dragons (OLPF V2) on a recent production, and although I was impressed with the color rendition and highlights, I wasn't exactly blown away. The production had a real budget and scenes were lit properly, so noise was never an issue.

In Nov 2011, I blindly took the leap of faith and purchased a Scarlet, not knowing anything about how to work a RED, etc. I did that because I believed in the concept of "DSMC". The S in that acronym is STILLS, the world where I came from before cinematography (the S as in the side handle red knob that STILL doesn't work, pun intended). The DSMC concept has not come true in my RED experience. Sure, anyone can grab a still all day long and its great for fashion and children photography, but I still carry a DSLR whenever I need to do a serious photography or a timelapse of any complexity, or low light anything.

I upgraded to an Epic when that path was offered by RED and have since loved every minute of it. I mean I freaking LOVE my Epic!

I also love the RED ecosystem. I've shot some amazing things with my Scarlet and Epic cameras these few years. When RED announced the Dragon specs I was absolutely floored and signed up for the upgrade. Who wouldn't? A "2000 ISO is the new 800 ISO" camera with 16+ DR? Damn!! I was so looking forward to it! Well, last Friday I got my Dragon allocation email, but I have to say my bubble has burst a bit, and I have some some hesitations to upgrade. In part because I have yet to see a Dragon footage example (other than highlights) where I didn't think I could get close to that with my Epic with a little help in post, but also (and this is the part that bothers me a little) DEB and the OLPF swapping concept emerged directly because of real user issues, so please don't call them "features" or add-ons; they are what they are- reactions to issues.

But let's get back to my original question. From a business stand point, is the upgrade worth $9.5K? Dragon wouldn't double the rental rate of my Epic, so I cannot justify it like that. It's the images I produce with a camera that make me money and future referrals, not what I used to capture them with.

I will probably be pulling the trigger on the upgrade eventually, but I want to wait and see where this is all going first, especially the whole OLPF thing.
Am I demanding? Heck no, it's my hard earned $10k after all, but I am conflicted.
 
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