DSMC is not going to happen...

[scott william]

Hey Jarred,

What will be the native iso for Dragon?

 

[Kyle Presley]

That is a true statement... but one thing about having a native 800ISO sensor instead of generally a native 100ISO sensor is that you get away with alot less light.

True, but I love to use a flash to fill in daylight. Reflectors are better, but it means bringing another person along. I understand RED's position, but I would like to know more about these long duration flashes that are coming

 

[Christopher Barrett]

By "Long Duration" they're just stating that the Reds probably won't be able to grab flash from high speed strobes like Profoto's 8A or Broncolor's Scoro. Units with slower flash durations are likely to work. My Profoto D1 mono blocks are recorded just fine by the Epic.

 

[Zeb B]

By "Long Duration" they're just stating that the Reds probably won't be able to grab flash from high speed strobes like Profoto's 8A or Broncolor's Scoro. Units with slower flash durations are likely to work. My Profoto D1 mono blocks are recorded just fine by the Epic.

What do you think your the flash duration on the D1 is and what frame rate are you using on Epic? That would seem to be the variables to have a strobe show up on a frame unless I'm missing something.

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Depending on how much stock you put in the stats on Profoto's website and the fact that I had the strobe powered way down... somewhere around 1/1500th. I shot both at a standard 24fps and then also at something like 6fps when I was testing slower shutters for ambient light and more depth of field. I just let the camera roll and fired the strobes with the Air Sync wireless. One frame always grabs the strobe... no partial field exposures. Once my Canon mount arrives (allowing me to use T/S glass) I'll do more real world tests...

 

[Zeb B]

Flash duration / frame rate / capturing the moment is what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. Would like to see a series of tests on this subject since I don't see ever being rid of my strobes in certain styles of shooting. Especially high ambient light environments.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

The examples look great, but the Red shot looks softer to me....

Yes: obviously softer. And these are downsampled images. Whichever lens that Christopher Barrett used on his RED ONE, remind me to stay away from it! (I'm mostly joking...)

BTW, I wonder what the 'highlight recovery' tool in Aperture would reveal in the window of the MD digital back shot? Those backs are 16 bits per channel. At least one interior design mag I know of still uses film (6x4.5, Portra 160). Unless they recently changed to MFD.

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Karim,

Here is a more recent test where I've worked harder to attain better sharpness / DoF on the Red. This is a Cooke Panchro/i 18mm which is actually quite sharp. I don't think you'll ever see the same detail, though. We're comparing a 14mp sensor to a 60mp one and a, what... 15mmx30mm sensor to a 40mmx54mm.

Images:

MFDB Capture Processed in C1 Pro (hilight falloff hurts the eyes)

MFDB Capture Processed in ACR (smoother tones but color science is ass)

Epic Processed in RCX .... still loving the Epic rendition!

 

[Zeb B]

Checked out "The Site". Nice work sir! The motion work done with a 5DII?

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Christopher! Thank you very much for taking the trouble to post those extra images. I really appreciate it.

How old is that Cooke? I wonder if a sharper lens might lessen the difference between the RED ONE and the MFD?

IMO the ACR image is the worst by far. But it proves that highlight recovery is possible - maybe even better than the ONE's output. Maybe. What is interesting about the latest images you posted is that although the difference is less than before (page 5), there are still discernible differences (see the picture on the mantlepiece). Yes, we're comparing 14Mpx to 60, but when you downsample that much... hmm... Would a 14Mpx DSLR compare well or not to the ONE with the same lens? That would be interesting.

Don't pay too much attention to me, I just have a questioning attitude.

 

[Phil Holland]

but one thing about having a native 800ISO sensor instead of generally a native 100ISO sensor is that you get away with alot less light.

Very, very, very true. 150-300 watt halogen has become more functional for sure these days. I use strobes and continuous for stills and playing in higher ISO-ville has opened up new doors. I don't know the effect really on larger productions as I'm still seeing a great deal of pricey gear, but you can do heck of a lot more with less these days.

@Christopher Barrett - Gorgeous work sir. Great eye for shape, color contrast, and composition.

 

[Zeb B]

That is a true statement... but one thing about having a native 800ISO sensor instead of generally a native 100ISO sensor is that you get away with alot less light.

Noob question: Does the Epic native ISO of 800 mean the Epic will produce the same brightness of image of, lets say a Canon, at 100 as the Canon will at 800 ISO?
To clear:
Epic at 100 = Canon at 800?
If so why?

 

[Antony M]

Noob question: Does the Epic native ISO of 800 mean the Epic will produce the same brightness of image of, lets say a Canon, at 100 as the Canon will at 800 ISO?
To clear:
Epic at 100 = Canon at 800?
If so why?

I might have misunderstood your question, but ISO is a measure of sensitivity.

So the Epic with ISO 800 should produce a similarly exposed image as a Canon at ISO 800 (all else being equal, such as aperture, shutter speed, filters)

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Thanks much Josh & Phil! And yeah, sadly the first two motion pieces were done with my 5d2. It was the moiré in the first piece that had me buying a Red One a couple months later.


Karim, if you open the images in new windows, where you can view them nearly full screen, I think you'll find that the MFDB shot is not much sharper than the Red one. I'm exploring this to the best of my ability because I'd love to drop down to ONE camera for the bulk of my work. The Cooke is only a year old, these are new lenses. When my Canon mount arrives I'll test again using my 24mm TS-E II which is one of the sharpest lens I own.

Cheers,
CB

 

[Zeb B]

I might have misunderstood your question, but ISO is a measure of sensitivity.

So the Epic with ISO 800 should produce a similarly exposed image as a Canon at ISO 800 (all else being equal, such as aperture, shutter speed, filters)

So the Epic is no more light sensitive than a Canon or Nikon? The way I read some posts it appears that folks are saying that the Epic is 3 stops (100 vs 800ISO) more sensitive than a common DSLR.

 

[Zeb B]

Thanks much Josh & Phil! And yeah, sadly the first two motion pieces were done with my 5d2. It was the moiré in the first piece that had me buying a Red One a couple months later.


Karim, if you open the images in new windows, where you can view them nearly full screen, I think you'll find that the MFDB shot is not much sharper than the Red one. I'm exploring this to the best of my ability because I'd love to drop down to ONE camera for the bulk of my work. The Cooke is only a year old, these are new lenses. When my Canon mount arrives I'll test again using my 24mm TS-E II which is one of the sharpest lens I own.

Cheers,
CB

Your work deserves the best equipment (tell the wife I said so)

 

[Antony M]

So the Epic is no more light sensitive than a Canon or Nikon? The way I read some posts it appears that folks are saying that the Epic is 3 stops (100 vs 800ISO) more sensitive than a common DSLR.

I'm not a camera designer, so my understanding may not be 100%, but...

With video cameras (or digital motion cameras TM), the sensor has a fixed sensitivity.
In the Red One it was around 320 ISO, in the MX and the Epic it is around 800 ISO.

I think the Sony Z1 is somewhere around 400.

As the Red cameras all store RAW data, anything you do with the ISO in the menu is just metadata.

Now with stills cameras, like the Canons and Nikons, the ISO setting actually changes the data before saving it as "RAW".
There is a useful table on Ken Rockwell's site showing exactly what happens at each ISO setting.

Hope this helps?

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

I'm not a camera designer, so my understanding may not be 100%, but...

With video cameras (or digital motion cameras TM), the sensor has a fixed sensitivity.
In the Red One it was around 320 ISO, in the MX and the Epic it is around 800 ISO.

I think the Sony Z1 is somewhere around 400.

As the Red cameras all store RAW data, anything you do with the ISO in the menu is just metadata.

Now with stills cameras, like the Canons and Nikons, the ISO setting actually changes the data before saving it as "RAW".
There is a useful table on Ken Rockwell's site showing exactly what happens at each ISO setting.

Hope this helps?

The things that confuses people is that DSLR ISO settings have both digital and analog gain, while RED cameras have a fixed analog gain and ISO is purely digital, and thus since its RAW metadata. With a DSLR the base sensitivity when the signal enters A/D conversion could be 100, 200, 400 etc, then its pushed or pulled to get the intermediate steps like 250 or 320. With an MX its always 800 coming into A/D conversion and with ISO you are just pushing or pulling digitally.

 

[Zeb B]

The things that confuses people is that DSLR ISO settings have both digital and analog gain, while RED cameras have a fixed analog gain and ISO is purely digital, and thus since its RAW metadata. With a DSLR the base sensitivity when the signal enters A/D conversion could be 100, 200, 400 etc, then its pushed or pulled to get the intermediate steps like 250 or 320. With an MX its always 800 coming into A/D conversion and with ISO you are just pushing or pulling digitally.

Ahhh . . . thank you for that. Still a non-techie wondering if the Epic is 3 stops more light sensitive than a common DSLR or if it is just a gain issue whereby the Epic is pre-gained to 800 where the DSLR is not. There are no dumb questions . . . remember that before yelling at me REDusers. ; )

 

[Colin Hubick]

These look fantastic Christopher, defiantly closing the gap!