Dragon V2 Aerial Night Shoot Advice

[Christoffer Glans]

The dragon has a higher DR, why not shoot at 3200 and do some noise reduction, in that way you still retain the highlights from street lights and such.

 

[steve green]

I'm a bit surprised that you're surprised.

Aerials are victim to natural or available light, and some cities are significantly darker than others. The "learn how to light" argument that's been prominent on this board, doesn't apply to aerials.

For now, the V2 OLPF is too noisy for night time aerial shooting. Side by side, in my own testing, the MX has been better for low light results. It's not ideal, but it's better than the Dragon, IMO.

The DEB post-solution doesn't work for us, as we sell a lot of raw R3D's. We need footage to work out of the box, as best as possible. I can't provide the tech support to our customers and I can't expect them to sift through tens of thousands of threads on RU. So right now, it's unsellable.

While the multi-OLPF may solve some of these issues, for us it looks cumbersome and problematic. It already takes too much time to swap a lens with aerial gimbals, and adding the OLPF swap-out to that equation makes it worse. Landing zones are outdoors, which makes the camera prone to the elements. Lots of dust, rain, etc. When you're filming around the country, traveling great distances, you rarely have a hangar to overnight in. So anything we can do avoiding mount type swaps, we do.

Ultimately I may go back with V1, but I'm also looking into other cameras as well. Which is not a decision I've come to easily. I've been a Red customer from day 1 with #96. I sell a lot of Red footage to shows and films that are shot entirely on other cameras, our NYC footage was all over Red's booth at NAB and have been a sponsor of this forum. But if other cameras are better for lowlight, then I need to take them up for a spin.

Well said CJ……The V2 Dragon, IMO, in it's present form is flawed……Changing OLPF's is not like changing film stocks, film stocks can be changed anywhere in 30 seconds, not the case with OLPF's. DEB is a feature which may or may not be utilized depending on the post workflow for a particular project and leaves way to much to chance. Even it it is used, and used properly it only gets rid of the red noise not the noise itself. Just that there's even a hint of a discussion that the MX might be better in low light situations should tell you there is work to be done to make the Dragon the camera we thought it would be. Having said all that, I'm all in with the upgrade because of my confidence that Red will eventually get it right. But IMO we're a long way away from having one sensor/OLPF combination that works as advertised.

 

[David Battistella]

Fair points Steve,

From what I have seen from the first Dragon r3d's posted until now the noise pattern of the sensor has remained exactly the same. What changed in v2 was the red dot noise, but the "amount" of noise does not change.

I low light with dragon v2 I feel I can push those images much more than I could MX images. There's more information being stuffed into the photo sites and I feel the resulting compression is better as well. More pixels does help in low light.

This is is not taking anything away from CJs choice for very specific kind of night time helicopter filming situations. I think those types of shots are best at dusk and magic hour rather than deep into the night, like the poster frame image in the NYC vimeo link that CJ posted but that's just a taste thing.



Battistella

 

[Aaron McLane]

For night aerials the MX is still the best when using zooms. We have a gimbal rigged right now with a new Dragon V2 and it's a daytime only setup with our Optimo 28-340.

 

[PC Greene]

I'm a big fan of Red but find this a little frustrating as we just got our Dragon, went with v2 OLPF, but do a lot of low light shooting including night time aerials in the next couple weeks. Wondering if I should've stuck w/ v1 until removable OLPF becomes available?

Thank you,