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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 ..

David Battistella said:
sometimes I like being an old fart and have a chuckle at these things. Just speaking with a friend about this the other day.

His first lesson to some students he teaches is beautiful. He points out where the sensor is the tells his students, "Everything that happens 1mm in front of this thing has never changed since the beginning of photography, light, emotion, composition, the story you want to tell." Then he tells them everything that happens from that 1mm in front of the sensor/film plane backward has and always will constantly change and evolve.

He stresses that the technology and image capture will change but the focus needs to be on the craft, because those principles and the foundation to any image making are far more important.

i was shaking my head realizing that I was about to buy an HVX 200 after owning that other revolutionary DVX100a. I held out for RED.

Just seven years later, everything I capture is about 17times larger than that frame and I have pulled stills that have been on display on the sides of buildings.

Yet someone still finds a reason to complain. So if people wonder why appreciate my dragon camera so much, well, you get the point, not long ago, the world was a very different place.

Battistella
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Remember 35mm adapters? hahaha. I got burned many times by dead batteries and the ground glass not spinning so you get that static grain looking footage. Ugh..

Those were big at film school until the RED One came around. Shooting on film was an "exciting" experience but that died after half of my short was lost due to a tear in the film that resulted in a major loss of footage at the lab. Not to mention the many cases of some ac flashing my film or scratching it or film coming unspooled, jamming, not advancing, etc.. When RED came around we all stood around in awe. That was my first memory of RED.
 
Hahahah. I remember using those ages ago. 35mm adapters, loading/lacing the camera, checking the gate... praying until the lab guy gets back to you. I don't miss it. Love film... but it was a hassle.
 
I shot an Indy film on 16mm on 100 foot loads. I loved that experience. It gave me a kind of discipline I still have today. With 3.5 minutes of recording time, that cost about 60 bucks of my own money to buy and that much more to process, I got pretty serious with shot selection, composition, picking the right time of day and I actually practiced moves and pulling focus once or twice before running the camera.

Even now I prefer the 64gb mags for this reason and sort of trick myself into that kind of way of keeping shooting ratios down and being efficient.

When I was editing full time I would tell ever cinematographer that to me their rushes were their demo reel.  When I started directing it was easy to find a the right DP.

I still try to instill that in my own work when I am behind the camera.

ok. Enough nostalgia. I'm out the door for a shoot on my dragon!

Battistella
 
Mark L. Pederson; THE BEST LOOKING MOVIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD were shot without a video tap or a histogram or goal posts. Simply because ... the people that shot them ... knew how to light said:
Thank you Mark, one of the best messages ever!

I don't know what we've done at CML tihs time, I haven't read the previous messages yet as I was referred directly to your post.

I really don't know where the odd ideas come from, I just shot a move with 2 Epics, a few overheating problems but nothing serious. Great looking pictures.

Would I have ad more latitude in the highlights with another camera, it doesn't matter, I shot with the cameras I had.
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Red is expensive, but still very cheap, so cheap that people without basic photography knowledge can get one thinking they will be masters of cinematography because of the tool, not themselves. When it then performs as any other camera, meaning that it need lights, they feel "tricked by the specs".

There are too many dreamers in film making. People who aren't really cut for the job, people who think there are shortcuts. It's the same people who think that if you read every book there is on screenwriting, you will master the art of screenwriting. Mastering an art is hard work, nothing else. It takes a life of dedication to be a master of something. Give me a hammer and I will make a weird looking bench out of planks, give a master carpenter a hammer and he will build a house that stands for a hundred years.

More people than ever have access to high end cameras today, but the basic knowledge seem to get lost in all the technical noise. Just because you bought a camera doesn't mean you know how to be a cinematographer. It takes years, it takes dedication and it take more than a singular camera.
 
Matt Ryan said:
Remember 35mm adapters? hahaha. I got burned many times by dead batteries and the ground glass not spinning so you get that static grain looking footage. Ugh..

Those were big at film school until the RED One came around. Shooting on film was an "exciting" experience but that died after half of my short was lost due to a tear in the film that resulted in a major loss of footage at the lab. Not to mention the many cases of some ac flashing my film or scratching it or film coming unspooled, jamming, not advancing, etc.. When RED came around we all stood around in awe. That was my first memory of RED.
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How could you compare a good lens adaptor to a Red One, it is like night and day in favor of the lens adaptor. Still some of best non contrasty non colorful mages I have seen were shot on the old homemade film adaptors, without proper lighting, silky smooth and three dimensions. Better than Dragon. That is what I liked about the 5d II, it had some of that look. Admittedly if you picked the right camcorder it made a big difference, and it was very grainy and low res.

Red One, original, was just 4k popular, I've never seen any Red One footage I've liked, or that compared to the original photographs that Jim posted claiming that it was what the camera would do (probably MX or Dragon).

Now it is a matter, that the next generation of sensor is likely to be the cream we always dreamt of. If only they could give us a cheaper 4k fixed version with it, with guaranteed maximum $200 main board repair replacements.
 
We need a sensor that produces as seen images raw off the camera without adjustments.

A comparison. I saw an interview from Canberra yesterday on the national news channel. It looked horrible, the woman on the other end looked anemic. It looks like somebody got a new raw Bayer camera like the BMD, or other, and tried it uncorrected on a live feed. That is why good color science should be in camera, like my sub $100 camera.
 
Mark L. Pederson said:
And SWAPPABLE OLPFs is FANTASTIC. Let the CML poster kids scream all they want - you just watch - all the other camera companies will follow.
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I gave up on CML a long time ago. Too bad, as they really could have been a great resource. Couldn't agree more with your post in its entirety. Swappable OLPFs and eventually, IMO, swappable Sensor+OLPF combos are coming. No stopping the desire to control the 'interpretation' of everything that is happening in front of the sensor.
 
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Nikhil Kamkolkar said:
I gave up on CML a long time ago. Too bad, as they really could have been a great resource. Couldn't agree more with your post in its entirety. Swappable OLPFs and eventually, IMO, swappable Sensor+OLPF combos are coming. No stopping the desire to control the 'interpretation' of everything that is happening in front of the sensor.
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Doesn't the f55 already have swappable OLPF's?
 
To be honest, threads like these wouldn't exist if RED just released a finished product. As in: all advertised features included.
Dragon is a great camera, no doubt. It's just a shame that its reputation is being dragged down by issues like these.
 
I think if red cand do it the way sony did would be way better, by having differnt relogfilm for both highlights and shadows like slog 2 and 3 each allocates more data to either shadows or highlights that IMO would be way better than a hardware solution
 
sergio arguello said:
Phil, with all due respect i have a graph somewhere that illistrated 20stops actually, but thats said i wasnt nitpicking. I just want to know from shootr to shooter are we indeed satisfied? I can make solid images with 4 lights and an iPhone so thats not my issue, but more a rabid red lover and was hoping this upgrade was the one that silenced all the naysayers once and for all.This is hardly the case! actually Alexa still seems to be slammed down my throat by productions as the camera of choice, whether i like it or not.
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Thatss an engineering test bench image. It never winds up with the full range after colorscience and basic calibrations are applied.
 
Dunkan Wolf said:
To be honest, threads like these wouldn't exist if RED just released a finished product. As in: all advertised features included.
Dragon is a great camera, no doubt. It's just a shame that its reputation is being dragged down by issues like these.
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I completely agree.
 
andy patch said:
I completely agree.
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Lets be fair here. RED has always been a different company. And RED owners are fully aware that their cameras are never finished products. You simply choose to be part of it when you feel it's good enough for what you need.
 
I think RED takes a lot of flak over unfinished features because they do telegraph more of their plans. And they are always visibly working on updates and implementing things. It is different, but I'm preferring it to the alternative. An alternative that expects me to just buy a whole new camera to obtain newer features, even if only firmware based, and/ or an alternative where I have to buy individual licenses to use various features that are already a part of the system.

I don't think there's been a firmware build yet for a RED camera that I didn't consider as beta. Perhaps now for the RED One, but even the "release" builds for the EPIC/SCARLET seem to only be labeled as such just because a good number of people won't use a "beta." I suppose they go through some more rigorous testing to ensure stability to some extent, but I think I've pretty much rocked the latest builds (beta or not, but usually beta) on all my RED's since day 1. Even had various obscure internal builds or "alphas" in the early days of EPIC. Using them on real productions. I'm fine with how this works, I'm comfortable with it and I've been a supporter since I could first pre-order the RED One. This approach is not ideal for everyone. People just need to decide what's best for their own needs. There are no perfect cameras or camera companies.
 
Bob Gundu said:
Lets be fair here. RED has always been a different company. And RED owners are fully aware that their cameras are never finished products. You simply choose to be part of it when you feel it's good enough for what you need.
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Perhaps in 2008. Red is supposed to be a 'Pro' company now.
IMO they should include atleast the low-light OLPF module for free.
 
Dunkan Wolf said:
Perhaps in 2008. Red is supposed to be a 'Pro' company now.
IMO they should include atleast the low-light OLPF module for free.
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It's all relative right? Some consider a system thats constantly evolving more "pro". As far as including something for free is an entirely different topic. We have no idea what it's going to cost anyway. My guess is that its going to remain an option, because not everything is going to want one. Remember, RED is already offering an upgrade path for the camera. In my books they're already saving me money. Again, it's all relative.
 
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