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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 vs Alexa color accuracy?

Mike Nagel said:
Re F65 8K "resolution": In my understanding F65 square pixel raster is rotated 45° off kilter, so in a traditional horizontal assessment u come to something like 5.7K horizontally. Not 8K, not 7K.

U come to "8K" if u count two staggered rows (45° angled) together ;-)
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Yes, pixel count is slightly below that of the Dragon 6K sensor, so to call it 8k is rather a stretch of both math and language.....

Graeme
 
I definitely love the sharpness of Red, but have had a MUCH easier time grading alexa footage and have noticed a distinct difference highlight rolloff when comparing LogC to RedlogFilm from weapon, i had a few clients notice as well.

I will continue using Red for shoots which demand the specs, like anamorphic high speed, or visual effects driven.

Red has come a LONG way thats for sure, but still Arri seems to maintain a distinct natural look.

Im sure someone with much more grading experience than I could make them match very well.
 
It's true that the F65 has a pitched sensor and that affects the horizontal count of photosites. But the CFA bayer pattern couldn't be aligned on the same line (thus counting as twice the amount of photosites) without causing moire and aliasing. If wyou don't count what Sony counts as inactive photosites, the F65 sensor is about 17 megapixels (I stand corrected, it is 18.3). It's capture area is 1.9:1. The size of the sensor is 24.7mm x 13.1mm. An 8k sensor is about 33 megapixels. The dragon is 19 megapixels.

Below is the info from Sony:
The sensor has 20 million photosites overall, of which 18.7 million are active, according to Jeff (compared to a “typical 4K Bayer-pattern sensor” with 8.8 million photosites). The extra photosites are used for dynamic correction of noise, black, output level; partly as a result, the camera has no need for a black balance button (there is an automatic “residual pixel noise” masking function in the camera’s maintenance menu, so any dead or stuck pixel can be fixed).

The F65 sensor being pitched, it is not an equal aples to aples comparison. But in any case, as I said in my earlier post, I think the F65 is best understood as an over-sampled 4k camera. It's a much older camera than Epic Dragon...not to mention the Weapon. While I do agree that the Reds are now the resolution kings, the F65 have beautiful color, mechanical shutter, and really stellar media redundancy as well as reliability. And while 14 stops of DR may seem antiquated, for scripted narrative productions it is more than enough. Who lights a scene with more than 9-10 stops anyways? And no, I'm not talking specular highlights.

I think Oblivion was great but Rob Hardy's use of the F65 and Cooke Speed Panchros rehoused into anamorphis was really, really stellar. While F65 looked great in certain parts of Cafe Society, the vintage deep focus and hard light that Storaro recreated is really hard to pull off digitally (in my opinion). Even Alexa would've had trouble with it.

All that said, I also have to say that, while I'm not super thrilled about the motion cadence of the Varicam, it does cover 100% of Rec.2020. That is pretty impressive.

How much of Rec.2020 does Red cover? This is not a rhetorical question, just want to know. IN the meantime, if I have time, I'll try to look it up. In any case, thanks all for the good info.
 
abreu-canedo said:
How much of Rec.2020 does Red cover?
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The spectral sensitivity of a camera equates to something larger than a color space such as BT.2020. Each Red sensor seems to have slightly different spectral sensitivity, which is why we have RWG. Graeme posted in one thread that RWG normalizes all of their sensors vs. using CameraRGB, which does not.
 
abreu-canedo said:
All that said, I also have to say that, while I'm not super thrilled about the motion cadence of the Varicam, it does cover 100% of Rec.2020. That is pretty impressive.
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There's nothing wrong with the motion cadence of the Varicam. It's exactly the same as my Red. The Varicam is ultra sharp out of the box though, I guess it can give you that feeling if you don't soften it a bit. I have the same feeling with ultra sharp 6k-8k Red footages and the opposite feeling with Arri 3.2k images (the lower resolution is a big part of the organic feeling).
 
Patrick Tresch said:
? Like SD is more organic than HD? I remember a time in 2004 where I had to pour blur on HD material as the client felt it was too sharp.
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It was "too sharp" because HD camera's on-board processing "sharpened" it by micro contrast/edge enhancement.

SD was far from 35mm film acuity.

The meaning of the term "organic" varies and involves reference to many individually perceived factors. The term "sharp" is also used differently, some relating to image acuity, some to added micro contrast, with interpretation discrepancy often leading to confusion and misconceptions.
 
sam karr said:
There's nothing wrong with the motion cadence of the Varicam. It's exactly the same as my Red. The Varicam is ultra sharp out of the box though, I guess it can give you that feeling if you don't soften it a bit. I have the same feeling with ultra sharp 6k-8k Red footages and the opposite feeling with Arri 3.2k images (the lower resolution is a big part of the organic feeling).
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I didn't say there was anything "wrong". Just expressing my opinion about it. We don't have to agree, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong or anything. Nor that the Varicam motion cadence has nothing "wrong" with it. That would imply a universal benchmark of perfection that would need to be defined....and that is not what I was attempting to say at all. Did I ruffle your feathers? It's hard to tell over forums since it does not transmit your tone of voice, nor your facial expression. But I'm asking because before I interpret your post as somehow trying to shut my opinion down, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt....as I hope we'd all do with each other.

Maybe what I was noticing has to do with the specifics of its sensor read out time a la rolling shutter, I don't really know. Just an observation based on one half day on the Varicam. I'm not dissing the Varicam. I think it can be very capable, I just have not had the time to master it yet. However, I am not really speaking about resolution or sharpness, as you suggest. Red is even sharper but my comment in specific is not directed to Red.
 
abreu-canedo said:
I didn't say there was anything "wrong". Just expressing my opinion about it. We don't have to agree, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong or anything. Nor that the Varicam motion cadence has nothing "wrong" with it. That would imply a universal benchmark of perfection that would need to be defined....and that is not what I was attempting to say at all. Did I ruffle your feathers? It's hard to tell over forums since it does not transmit your tone of voice, nor your facial expression. But I'm asking because before I interpret your post as somehow trying to shut my opinion down, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt....as I hope we'd all do with each other.

Maybe what I was noticing has to do with the specifics of its sensor read out time a la rolling shutter, I don't really know. Just an observation based on one half day on the Varicam. I'm not dissing the Varicam. I think it can be very capable, I just have not had the time to master it yet. However, I am not really speaking about resolution or sharpness, as you suggest. Red is even sharper but my comment in specific is not directed to Red.
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Haha no ruffled feathers. I was just telling. It's the third time I read something about the Varicam cadence so I don't know if it's people spreading a rumor they read before. It seems you used it so I totally respect your opinion. Before buying the Varicam I downloaded some original files and had the feeling of a different kind of image compared to my Red, with a lot of sharpness, a lot of colors, the Panasonic kind of colors, a super clean image, which can give the impression of a less organic/filmic image. But softening it a bit, adding a bit of noise, with a nice curve on saturation, gives some great result.
 
Glad to hear. I know it can be a sensitive subject, specially for owner operators who have invested that much capital into a tool. When someone says something about our investment choice it can feel like someone is criticizing our child. Trust me, I own an F65 so I get it. It might be the most crapped upon camera...haha.

All cameras have their perculiarities. It's just a matter of figuring out a workflow and set up to make it behave the way we want it to. The reason I went the F65 route was because i figured out that it behaves wonderfully with vintage lenses and soft lighting. But primarily for me, it was the mechanical shutter. I have always been super sensitive to motion cadence of film and wanted something that would give me something similar and mechanical. So for me, the only options were Alexa studio and F65. The F65 was cheaper (used) and higher resolution with more color at 16bits. But most people watching films and content are not gonna care less about motion cadence. And I'd be the first to admit that I have an inflated sense of awareness about it and prioritize it above other things that are arguably more important...like weight. F65 is heavy!! But you know what, everyone always talks about how heavy the F65 is but nobody says that about the Alexa...which is 2lbs heavier! When I hear that I have to fight with all my will to just let it go and not reply snarkly in a condescending voice.

But thanks for the reply and you should feel great about your investment. The Varicam has seen traction and is starting to be adopted in several productions, from what I hear. Also, Chrles Papert has been raving about it in his work on Mary + Jane for MTV.
 
Milano Questa said:
Doesn't compression degrade image resolution also? 4:1 max on Epic Dragon.
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The R3D compression doesn't generally have a negative effect upon measured resolution. At that rate the data is actually incredibly hard to actually get the compression to be lossy because the non-lossy parts have achieved most of teh desired data rate through non-lossy means.

Graeme
 
Backing what everybody is saying regarding the 2:1 through 5:1 domain of REDCODE RAW compression ratios. The next step is 8:1 through 12:1 and we are talking DSMC2 style cameras they are even better than DSMC bodies in terms of how they "draw" a REDCODE RAW file due to lower noise floor and other data rate related things.

If you've got a Weapon, give 5K 2:1 a try. It's wonderful. 6K 3:1 is also rad sauce.
 
back in the day we used to have matrox digisuite digitising card that had a mathematically lossless option.. it was interesting to see where the data rate ended up. From live action footage on digibeta (from both film Tk and Digibeta cameras) you could end up anywhere between 1 to 1 all the way to 5 to 1... really was very footage dependant.

Would be interesting to see this option with a future Red camera one day..
 
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