Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 ..

Robert Ruffo New said:
I see lots of black crush in the bottom image (the guy's shirt), and the middle image (under the bridge) and noise in the sky, and these images are very small, which hides noise. Sorry, I'm not saying Dragon is crap, I'm saying in some ways, ways very important to me and the ways I shoot and perhaps others here, MX is, all things considered, and conceding that Dragon also has some advantages as well of course, a better choice than Dragon.

Dragon will for sure improve in the future, at which time I will revise this opinion.

Meanwhile I continue to love my MX
Click to expand...

you can check my night shots, too (you must download them to have finer quality)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/15zh1xh93m29b65/AAD7qJv4SUZ7Qr3K431ZbjFka
 
Elsie N said:
I have no problem with anyone being critical of RED's sensor if it is justified. But take a look at the snaps David Battistella just posted, or what Jan Rieff has posted, or what others have posted with the Dragon.
Any one who doesn't see how that beats the MX is someone I can't take seriously, no matter how smart they say they are.
Click to expand...
Stop that stupid war, Mx camera is still a good tool to capture the world. ;)
Peace
B.
 
Brice Ansel said:
Stop that stupid war, Mx camera is still a good tool to capture the world. ;)
Peace
B.
Click to expand...

of course it is. House of cards. Social Network ...
saying this, the "noise" of dragon, especially with DEB, is much better to handle in post, no chroma issues, very stable colors. it´s easier, to get better results. it is not a low light wonder, but it is enough to shoot available light situations like David´s samples. Add some NR (a very standard process for many cameras) and you are fine. for the most luxury treatment use ADD for special low lights - and you go to another level of what you can dig out of the Dragon Raw. much more tools and possibilities you can use them, you can use them not. the whole package now with dragon is stronger, i wish i had this already last year for some projects ...
 
i blame RED on this one.People want more because they know RED Digital Cinema listening them.its not ARRI/SONY :) Last time i had chat with ASC member he was so tired of seeing ARRI in ASC clubhouse all the time.They were like living in there.Do you think Arri gives a shit about problems reported on message boards?
Even there is no reply from Jarred or Jannard on this thread believe me they are reading all these negative and positive comments about Dragon.Thats why i love RED...
 
Jan Reiff said:
of course it is. House of cards. Social Network ...
saying this, the "noise" of dragon, especially with DEB, is much better to handle in post, no chroma issues, very stable colors. it´s easier, to get better results. it is not a low light wonder, but it is enough to shoot available light situations like David´s samples. Add some NR (a very standard process for many cameras) and you are fine. for the most luxury treatment use ADD for special low lights - and you go to another level of what you can dig out of the Dragon Raw. much more tools and possibilities you can use them, you can use them not. the whole package now with dragon is stronger, i wish i had this already last year for some projects ...
Click to expand...


On those three shots.

DEB, dragon color, Redlogfilm, slight curve, the rest is flat. Nothing special. I resize to 1000pixel to make it easier for people to see on all devices, to keep file sizes down to make sure thread pages still load up quickly, I put the curve where it felt right, don't need to see the sole of anyone's shoe or anything like that. It's the mood of that corner at that time.

Battistella
 
Two UHD4K H264 files. Both utilizing DEB just to show it as well. Both the V2 OLPF. Both 6K HD 5:1.

First, This shot is exposed for ISO 320 (and graded for the first example). Subject, me, lit. Background tailing off into shadow. Single source nothing diving totally into the noise floor. 10 second snips of ISO 250-2000 with DRAGONcolor/REDgamma4. Things to note, texture increasing as ISO increases. Also notice what is being revealed in the shadow pockets on my face.

http://www.artbyphil.com/temp/reduser/phfx_redDragon_faceClips02.zip


Second, an underexposed image of my hand. Same deal in terms of ISO 250-2000 with DRAGONcolor/REDgamma4. Proper exposure would be ISO 5000. Subject is receiving light. Texture increase is visble across frame as ISO values increase.

http://www.artbyphil.com/temp/reduser/phfx_redDragon_handClips.zip

If you compare this "texture" at equivalent ISO ratings against other camera systems I don't think there's anything to be upset about. Like not at all.
 
Phil Holland said:
phfx_redDragon_faceClips02.jpg
Click to expand...
This is what an endless, selfless quest to help fellow RED users looks like.
 
sergio arguello said:
Why does RED do this? claim so much to only flail later and beg for the brilliant engineers to stop pushing forward, but waste valueable time by going backward to make algorithmic fixes so this sensors works just close to what was promised.Now from what
i read 250asa seems to be the pitch spot for this sensor. great highlight rolloff with a fragile noise floor tradeoff, depending on oplf version.
Click to expand...

Red is not a big sensor company like Sony that does the most, and can budget for a lot of technology and licensing agreements on new technologies. This budget and licensing is very significant, as a lot of the best technology can be from lots of other companies I. buts and prices. It is remarkable a company like red can get a sensor within shot of Alexa, but I wouldn't mind knowing their license pool, but even though they gave their word to reveal their sensor manufacturer, I've never been able to get it out if them. Maybe it is aptina, maybe it used to Kodak, maybe the off shoot from Thompson, I don't know. If we sat and compared specs and images from top sensor tech from those other manufacturers we might be able to pick it.

Of manufacturing itself, a few things might explain what happens. You do a nice prototype engineered to work right off a prototyping line. It works one way, you redesign the construction for production (a production prototype) and go to production and things are slightly different for some reason (it might not have anything to do with the pixel architecture either). You also have to change supplies of materials and parts over the life cycle of the product. Now on a normal product it might not make a big difference, but in a high performance sensors things are on a knifes edge and little differences look bigger. But what we usually see in sensors, is a regretful variance over production runs chip to chip, I've had to return an other camera for this reason, and believe me the issues discussed here appear a lot better. So in the end firmware adjustments help.

Now, when Dragon, which is old technology now, was shown I was grateful that finally we were getting a sensor of this quality. But the reality is that the pictures shown were similar to those from upmarket consumer still cameras with Sony sensors released about the same time. Now Sony is extending that. We can expect sensors with ten times better low light performance within years, after which I suspect the sensor performance increases might level off for a while. This also includes other technologies in that time, like rumoured layered color projects. So, ten times is only adequate for maybe 20k, which puts you near the bottom of the holographic sensor tree. Maybe things will be better in holographic and you can go to higher resolution with 'good' results. So anybody locked out of licensing such sensor technologies may have a hard time. Sony is likely to have good access o. its budget, which as we have seen, has helped it over time. I've listed groups with major technology pools elsewhere before.
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
I see lots of black crush in the bottom image (the guy's shirt), and the middle image (under the bridge) and noise in the sky, and these images are very small, which hides noise.
Click to expand...

You could do that all day long with movies shot on S35 film because it just isn't as sensitive in low light as digital is. But does not being able to see detail in that guy's black shirt or under the bridge take away from the image as a whole? If you go looking for the flaws, you'll find them in most images, methinks.

I mean, there's a woman on that bridge. Is she distraught? Is she getting ready to jump? Does her forehead itch? Isn't that where the story is?

If she were about to be attacked by a sea serpent coming from under the bridge, that might be a problem. Of course, knowing that was the case, you'd add more light down there. Problem solved.

As a musician in a band that self-produces, there's a song we released called "Lucid" (shameless plug: which can be heard in the SoundCloud link in my signature) that contains an acoustic guitar part that didn't turn out like I wanted. It's not horrible but I couldn't get it to sound quite right.

On the other hand, I think the song as a whole is the best song we've ever done, both compositionally and sonically.

I get it. Dragon isn't doing it for you. I've been saying for weeks that not upgrading is a totally valid option. But I also think people are blowing some things way out of proportion. The hyperbole is getting out of control.

Some people don't realize you can be critical of the brand while also protecting it. If we're not careful, that's going to come back and bite everybody in the ass.
 
Last edited:
For those that aren't on CML, a discussion was started on Dragon noise and a lot of professional shooters and Dragon owners agree that majority of the time you need to expose for 320ISO for now. This isn't just a conversation happening only on Reduser...
 
Just going to briefly tiptoe in here to say that when I said "most real DPs aren't on REDUser" I didn't mean that if you post to REDUser you aren't a real DP, just that you're in the minority. Which shouldn't be surprising since for every David Mullen there are 100 DPs shooting blockbusters who have never posted. And for every other working DP shooting everything else there are another 1,000 who never have written a post.

There are only 5,000 active users on REDUser you're not even seeing every RED owner on these forums.

As to Dragon I would say it's as bad as its detractors say it is and it's as good as its supporters have shown it to be. ;)
 
So the sweet spot is moving ............ 320 is this the new G spot ?

What happened to 250 and does it make that much difference?
 
Brian Boyer said:
I get it. Dragon isn't doing it for you. I've been saying for weeks that not upgrading is a totally valid option. But I also think people are blowing some things way out of proportion. The hyperbole is getting out of control.

Some people don't realize you can be critical of the brand while also protecting it. If we're not careful, that's going to come back and bite everybody in the ass.
Click to expand...
What I don't understand about this whole thing is why this has to be turned into a philosophical discussion about how much noise and what kind of noise and how downscaling helps this and that....maybe I was crazy to expect the upgrade to MX being just that....the same but a little better in every aspect....10k is quite a chunk, especially these days and who knows what 10k will buy in 6 months....so the fact that there is a discussion about this ( and most people don't even take the price into consideration) shows that not all is well....
i have no clue how being critical of a product I own can come back to bite me in the ass....why because I might not be able to find an idiot to sell it to a year from now? I am way more interested in getting the product I was promised....
 
Marcos Montenegro said:
Phil-

How much difference did DEB make? Can you take a snapshot of before and after? Thanks and I agree with Bob- impressive!
Click to expand...

Sounds like everybody can check it out tomorrow, but I don't mind showing and explaining what it can do. But you'll need to see it under a lot of conditions to get the full breath of what it's all about.

DEB is an adaptive debayer algorithm.

A small list of things you'll genrally notice:

- No more "red specks" in the shadows through midtones
- Generally speaking a slightly more detailed RGB image.
- Slightly better Color Temperature performance.
- Cleaner and more detailed Red and Blue Color Channels.
- Slightly "truer" color image-wide and down into the noise floor.
- A very slight drop in image noise.
- No "hit" on processing time.

So with that in mind you can image the variety of shooting situations I'd have to show to show you "everything". However, you can see a lot in any image as everything benefits from it.

Click any of these images to open in a new window or tab as they are scaled to fit the forums formatting.

RGB:



Red:



Green:



Blue:




If you look above closely the two channels that have the most added benefits are Red and Blue, with Blue showing the most dramatic effect for this particular image. Look frame right and you literally weren't resolving some of those strands of hair. This actually tends to really help out when pulling keys for blue or green screen shoots.

Looking back at the RGB image, specifically the shadow pocket between my nose and eye, you can see the essential removal of some of that chromatic noise. This shot was captured at 5600K with a 5600K source, but you'll be seeing improvements across the board in comparison to not using DEB.

Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me.
 
Makes me wonder what MX would look like with DEB (or would it be MEB?)...

Is it a slider or an enable/disable, Phil? Also, what's the difference between DEB and selective noise reduction? OH, and how much of a render hit is there?
 
Mike Garrick said:
So the sweet spot is moving ............ 320 is this the new G spot ?

What happened to 250 and does it make that much difference?
Click to expand...

Sweet spot is "whatever". I like for clean shooting ISO 250-500. A bit of texture ISO 640-1280. Pretty much how I've been working.


Mike P. said:
Makes me wonder what MX would look like with DEB (or would it be MEB?)...

Is it a slider or an enable/disable, Phil? Also, what's the difference between DEB and selective noise reduction? OH, and how much of a render hit is there?
Click to expand...


It's a check box. No slider, it's an on or off sort of thing. Selective noise reduction is going to remove captured detail, which is becoming a bigger and bigger deal when dealing with a 4K finish for theater or screen display. As for a render hit, nothing truly noticeable. You guys can test that out for yourselves, but it's not screwing around with my render times on any of my boxes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top