Dragon Update

[Randall Weatherington]

- someone being famous does not make them experts.

Someone once told me a humorous(?) definition of "expert."
"Ex" is a has been.
"Spert" is a drip under pressure.

 

[Les Dittert]

So here are some stills. The framing is not the same, but if you just look at the edges and the detail you can crearly see that the edge transitions on the film scan take many more pixels than the Red image.
In other words, the film is fuzzier as even on a sharp edge it takes 2 or 3 pixels to define an edge when the Red takes about half that.

I purposely did not post the full 4K images for the whole frame, but the crops are 1:1 sized.
If anyone has a 4K film frame from a color neg that has snappier edges, please post a tiny crop from it. I still can't fully believe how lousy the film looks, but I am jaded by shooting the Red now, I guess.
Oh, the Red's out in the field will be closer to film sharpness because of the OLPF, but still would be sharper than the film IMO.
Any I shot this at 4K not the Epic's 5K.

FILM ( Kodak 5203 superspeed at f4.6 or f8 ) :

FILM 1:1 CROP:

AND THE SCARLET E

AND SCARLET E 1:1 crop

 

[Les Dittert]

Right click the above pictures to open in new window to see bigger images.

 

[Kyle Dones]

Whoa. What where the settings on the Scarlet, Les? Hopefully Phil can get those other images soon!

 

[Peter Moretti]

Peter and Sanjin, with all due respect to you and RF - someone being famous does not make them experts. ...

Peter, my comments come from watching on a 4K projector "Baraka" right after two shorts shot with the C500 and F55. And I talked with two people who worked on posting the film. Also, did you watch the interview that was linked to? It's not some mawkish ode to film. If anything, it's the interviewer who continues to bring up the subject of film vs digital.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

So yes - 65mm is visually stunning due to its optical path and resolution - but not due to its DR...
:sifone: Peter

Larger film = more photons. More photons = less grain. Less grain = more DR.

 

[Eryc Tramonn]

I'll poison the pot a bit here, for both Red and film it's sometimes also about what you can do with the images once you have them captured.

I could not agree more. To yield the very best results, every aspect of the production process is pretty important. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the difficulty of taking all the engineering and physics, and applying it to the service of telling intriguing stories with those moving images.

RDC has given us the means, but we still have to figure out how to produce the best results with that tool. But lucky for us, at no point in history have individuals on a mass scale had this much power, and control, over moving imagery. Edward Bernays would likely be terrified. Haha.

 

[Eryc Tramonn]

Larger film = more photons. More photons = less grain. Less grain = more DR.

I often think of my camera as a photon hungry beast. :001_wub:

 

[Dennis Guskov]

The framing is not the same

Framing aside, were these shot using the same lens, Les?
So this stock is ISO 50, and MX was set to 320?
Thanks for posting these. Very revealing indeed.
Also, what's a Scarlet E???

 

[Les Dittert]

I call my Scarlet an 'E' because I shoot with no OLPF to gain more sharpness, akin to the Nikon 800 E version.
Not an official name by any means.

The scarlet was at 320, and shooting either a Sigma 35mm 1.4 ( the new one ) or a Zeiss 50mm 1.4 . The Arri was shooting a Zeiss superspeed.
Both cameras were apertured down to avoid lens softness issues from entering the test.

Framing aside, were these shot using the same lens, Les?
So this stock is ISO 50, and MX was set to 320?
Thanks for posting these. Very revealing indeed.
Also, what's a Scarlet E???

 

[Les Dittert]

I have asked Phil to see if he can dig something up.

I would like to repeat the test sometime soon. I will ask for some "witness's" to attend and maybe bring a 2nd camera as well.
Anyone have a 65mm ?
More attention to framing, and even racking focus on the film camera to make triple sure we get perfect frame.
We did shoot some grass and bush's with objects in various placement in the depth of field, and none of it looked sharper than what I just posted.
In summary: I have a easily portable camera made by Red that can shoot about as well as a fricking ( pun intended ) 65mm panavision whose body alone weighs 40lbs without the mag or lens attatched!

Whoa. What where the settings on the Scarlet, Les? Hopefully Phil can get those other images soon!

 

[Charles_Z]

Les, is there a reason you couldn't shoot both the film and Scarlet shots with the same lens?

 

[Les Dittert]

My Scarlet is Canon mount is the reason. But the lens' were stopped down enough to negate the lens issue, I would have thought.

Am I the first person to post frames from such a test : shooting the same subject at the same time with Red vs Film and posting the results ?

Les, is there a reason you couldn't shoot both the film and Scarlet shots with the same lens?

 

[Les Dittert]

Phil,
Thanks , that's great. Even if you can only post a crop of an eyeball as a 512x512 image crop from the 4K , that would show the difference.
I kinda want to do the test again with a 65mm camera.
Let's go for the gusto... all the way baby, bring it on!
Epic E at 5K vs 65mm visionIII ISO 50 scanned at 6K.
I feel I can blow away the 65 with what I'm doing. And Dragon on top of that..... Can you imagine!

FYI Les, I'm working on getting the clearance on the same test using a well cared for set of Master Primes I shot back in 2011 for you under controlled conditions. They are the property of a studio, but I should be able to wrestle away some images. I have them here in my vault, just waiting on the okay.

I'm on the side that film being dead, there is a very specific reason I am a Red owner and more or less a Red advocate, which can be read here. Why I shoot on Red and love the idea of Dragon 6K

I think between the 4K and 5K (5K in particular) that we have now we have kind of topped film in regards to resolution. And you of course are shooting with your modified camera, which will provide technically more detail anyways. Dragon will likely conquer the dynamic range ceiling we can read on the film response curve today. In many ways we have matched or bettered film. However, it's where we go from here that is the true new medium.

I'll poison the pot a bit here, for both Red and film it's sometimes also about what you can do with the images once you have them captured.

 

[Andy Roberts]

I wonder if there will be any late Friday night Dragon footage posts?

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil,
Thanks , that's great. Even if you can only post a crop of an eyeball as a 512x512 image crop from the 4K , that would show the difference.
I kinda want to do the test again with a 65mm camera.
Let's go for the gusto... all the way baby, bring it on!
Epic E at 5K vs 65mm visionIII ISO 50 scanned at 6K.
I feel I can blow away the 65 with what I'm doing. And Dragon on top of that..... Can you imagine!

Heh. I can't simply post a cropped frame of studio material without a release. It's taken me years to develop and maintain that trust and I wouldn't trade that millions of pickles, but I'll see what I can do. At a minimum our resolution chart can probably be seen. Again, though, doesn't matter what's on the image. It's just simply not public domain.

Out-resolving 65mm? Depends on what format of 65mm you're referring to, but I don't think it's likely in terms of the math.

If you're talking 70mm 5-perf and if it was shot really well and scanned extremely properly you'd be hitting approximately 8.6K, which is partially the reason that the UHD 8K format was defined that way.

In terms of 35mm formats, VistaVision if properly scanned and shot can resolve around 6.2K and that's really why I'm excited about Dragon. It's close to that particular format in size and the resolution on top of that is killer for me. I've got a real weird spot inside of me that wants a camera that shoots 6K and is close to VV. There's history there for me. The resolution and format means several things to others out there who are bigger hitters than I am.

Back onto larger formats though, IMAX 15-perf can resolve in the world of 11.5K.

The key to all of this film resolution though is how it's shot, what it's shot on, and how it's scanned. If anything is out of whack inside the camera it can effect your image. If you are over sampling during scanning it solves some of the fun things that adding additional optics and a sensor of some to capture the projected film image. This actually is one of the reasons Red is on the right page in my book. They ended up making a very "filmy" digital cinema camera in reality and it's actually fun to demonstrate to people why that works and makes sense.


Removing the OLPF will yield more pure resolution out of your 4K and 5K material, but in terms of using it for production work it can yield several not so desirable artifacts. Specifically aliasing and moire. Complicated fabric patterns, high frequency detail, and things like hard diagonals will start showing edges. While I think if you're end goal is to get the most resolution out of the camera (or any system that uses an OLPF or AA of some sort) it's a great option, but for "most types of work" it can put things in your images you're aren't going to want to deal with in post.

There are some interesting methods though to squeek out more detail. The super resolution concept is one. Also complicated resizing methods can assist in gaining perceived detail too.

I'll see if I can shoot a test for you this weekend real quick. I have a set of lenses that resolves 200lp/mm here.

 

[Les Dittert]

Phil,
We should put this film vs digital topic in a new thread.
Let me know if you are shooting in the LA area, I can bring by my Scarlet E for the test as well.
Might be revealing ...

65mm super panavision is 2 inches across . Super 35 is 1 inch. So in theory 65 will resolve twice what 35 will, disregarding optics.
I believe I have twice the resolving power of 35mm from my test shoot. And I shot 4K.
You can see where I'm going with this

 

[Peter Majtan]

Peter, my comments come from watching on a 4K projector "Baraka" right after two shorts shot with the C500 and F55. And I talked with two people who worked on posting the film. Also, did you watch the interview that was linked to? It's not some mawkish ode to film. If anything, it's the interviewer who continues to bring up the subject of film vs digital.

Pete, I do not doubt that watching it the way you did would make Baraka look stunning - but is it a fair comparison? Also you mention C500 and F55 - non of which actually resolve 4K. The whole point we were discussing is the DR of the 65mm when compared to DR of Dragon (MX for now). The only way to judge this properly would be watching the same scene shot by both 65mm and Epic. You keep to ignore the research results I have worked on for several years consulting directly with some of top "film brains" in the world at the George Eastman House. The best commercially available motion picture film stock had (excuse my use of past tense here) 13 stops DR. Ask Kodak yourself if you do not believe me. I have seen an experimental stock that pushed it to 14. That is it. Current Epic MX has 13.5 and it is much easier to expose correctly (to take a full advantage of the DR range) then any analog film. We have all seen the initial DR chart of the Dragon that showed over 18 stops DR (some even saw 20+ in that chart), but RED has (IMHO in order to under-promise / over-deliver) revised this to 16 stops DR. Even at 16 it will greatly exceed the DR of any motion picture film that you can still get your hands on, or was ever made. And you talking with the guys who did the post only doubles up on a subjectiveness of the "result". I am sure they were blown away by the imagery itself - just as I was when I finally saw it. But that has nothing to do with actual DR...

And yes - I have watched the interview and I have never said that RF was flaming digital. But the interview is again irrelevant to the fact the 65mm might have about the same DR as properly exposed Epic MX, but will fall short (in terms of DR) when it will be compared to Dragon...

:sifone: Peter

 

[Peter Majtan]

Larger film = more photons. More photons = less grain. Less grain = more DR.

What you are forgetting to add to that equation is the inherit grain of the film stock itself... :reddevil:

PS: Have you actually seen Baraka or Samsara (or any other 65mm film) projected at 4K and watch the actual "film grain" in some of the low-key shots?

 

[Peter Moretti]

Peter, honestly, I have no idea if film still leads in the DR department. I think the way film blows out gives the illusion of more DR than it actually has. I certainly didn't see a comparison of "Baraka" to Dragon, LOL!

The best I can describe the difference between "Baraka" and the other two films is that the colors in "Baraka" looked fuller, richer... like they had more depth. The other two films' colors looked thin by comparison.

So I talked to one of the guys who posted "Baraka" and asked him, "Is it me or does the image from that 65mm scan look better than anything you've seen on digital so far?" He looked at me like "No shit!" And he said that there were things that he could do with that scan that he couldn't do with Red MX or Alexa footage.

He wasn't talking about DR or resolution per se, nor am I.