DRAGON STILL FRAMES

[Ken Butti]

I am loving the dragon! Bought it second hand from a guy locally here in Australia and have just spent the past few weeks getting all the accessories i need.
I wanted to test the stills side of things shooting natural light in a studio environment and see how sharp and how much detail i could get from a still frame vs a Nikon D4 DSLR.
I am very impressed so far but not every frame is sharp.. is that due to global shutter? all footage was shot at 5k 2.1 at 50fps 15:1 compression. (for some reason i wasnt able to increase compression to a more desirable 8:1
Any other tips for stills?


https://www.dropbox.com/s/w8k1b2yq1fkeeof/A001_C022_11300L_001.R3D.01_14_48_11.Still001.jpg?dl=0

 

[Graeme Nattress]

It's most likely the compress that's leading to some softness. For stills work, going to as low a compression as you can get is valuable. If you're doing a locked-off shot (like product work) you can even engage frame averaging mode to produce absolutely noiseless stills. I've been doing this myself and the results are spectacular.

It's also worth remembering there's no sharpening in the raw files, and no default sharpening on the raw development.

Graeme

 

[Bob Gundu]

Check out these tips.

http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/video-still-frame-capture

 

[Paul Russell]

Why shoot 50fps for stills? At 180 degree shutter your shutter speed is only 100fps so there will be a lot of motion blur.
Better off shooting 5-10 fps at a 1/250th sec shutter at 3:1 compression

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Shoot stills like you would shoot stills.

Short shutter (at least short enough to avoid motion blur) and low compression 8-12 fps)

And you'll see something else.

G

 

[Timur Civan]

I've had great results shooting 24P @5:1 6KHD ( as 6K FF is too tall for portrait mode) then using ADD to extract stills.

This is just a simple headshot for my wife.

 

[TheBied]

In 5.3.x you can use the burst recording mode to capture low compression images (2:1 Dragon, 3:1 Mx) at maximum frame-rate.

 

[Will Keir]

Like a still camera mode basically?

In 5.3.x you can use the burst recording mode to capture low compression images (2:1 Dragon, 3:1 Mx) at maximum frame-rate.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Can you combine burst with pre-record? Also what's the 6k maximum burst duration?

 

[Trevor Meier]

Graeme and others—can anyone recommend an optimal starting point for sharpening? I plan to do my own testing, but since the possibilities are endless, knowing what a good base to get the sharpest images for stills would be immensely helpful.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

That's such a hard question as so much of sharpening is taste. With Unsharp-mask I'll generally be looking in the range 0.5 through 2 for radius, and maybe 50%-100% for amount. I will sometimes use the threshold, but normally I'll leave it zero and just adjust the amount of the sharpening instead.

Graeme

 

[Bobby Farokhzad]

Graeme, will there be a day where the sharpening tool is actually part of the raw metadata? I know currently, in the latest beta it affects only the monitor output (a great move if you ask me, most producers have no clue what post sharpening is) but to me having sharpening as part of the R3D would be a welcome editon.

 

[Dominik Muench]

Hey Grandmaster Graeme, could you elaborate eon this frame averaging technique and how to use it ? sounds like a lot of fun.
I shoot most of my stills at 4-8fps and 2:1 compression.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Graeme, will there be a day where the sharpening tool is actually part of the raw metadata? I know currently, in the latest beta it affects only the monitor output (a great move if you ask me, most producers have no clue what post sharpening is) but to me having sharpening as part of the R3D would be a welcome editon.

I'm not sure how that is even possible. Sharpening is post processing.

 

[Bobby Farokhzad]

I'm not sure how that is even possible. Sharpening is post processing.

Who would have thought that ISO and white balance adjustments in post would one day be possible not too long ago, but they are.