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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 :)

"Dueling with DRAGON: RED's 6K Sensor Takes on Older MX in This EPIC Camera Shootout"

Jan Reiff said:
yesterday,again Strasbourg, France ... 9pm, ... new OLF, its´100% clean, ... when you have the redlogfilm as base, it´s like a HDR image without HDR, ... this camera is stunning ...

i will post better images and bigger and for sure some R3D later next week, ... this one here is no ADD, no DEB, ...
Click to expand...

Except this doesn't, at least on first glance, appear to be a particularly high dynamic range image. The values all seem relatively constrained to a couple of stops.
 
i always have the feeling of "hdr" when watching the Raw of Dragon ... i don´t care about charts, but there IS more than MX ;-)
 
I think the new dragon OLPF light response is awesome. It lets me shoot the way i used to on 35mm. Expose for the shadows, with fill, or open up half a stop, then print down. Dont worry about the highlights, they will be there and look awesome.

RED shifted the balance of DR upwards, much more like 35mm. Dont forget how effing grainy 35 is, and the way to combat that is to add some fill, over expose a bit, the nprint down. Shoot at 800, add a bit of fill, then develop at 400/500ISO and you will be golden on New OLPF. Just like film. This is not a Documentary camera.

I was worried at first, till i started working to its strengths, and now its just unbelievable. Dont ever wanna go back.
 
Timur Civan said:
I think the new dragon OLPF light response is awesome. It lets me shoot the way i used to on 35mm. Expose for the shadows, with fill, or open up half a stop, then print down. Dont worry about the highlights, they will be there and look awesome.

RED shifted the balance of DR upwards, much more like 35mm. Dont forget how effing grainy 35 is, and the way to combat that is to add some fill, over expose a bit, the nprint down. Shoot at 800, add a bit of fill, then develop at 400/500ISO and you will be golden on New OLPF. Just like film. This is not a Documentary camera.

I was worried at first, till i started working to its strengths, and now its just unbelievable. Dont ever wanna go back.
Click to expand...

Awesome to hear.... truly.
 
Timur Civan said:
I think the new dragon OLPF light response is awesome. It lets me shoot the way i used to on 35mm. Expose for the shadows, with fill, or open up half a stop, then print down. Dont worry about the highlights, they will be there and look awesome.

RED shifted the balance of DR upwards, much more like 35mm. Dont forget how effing grainy 35 is, and the way to combat that is to add some fill, over expose a bit, the nprint down. Shoot at 800, add a bit of fill, then develop at 400/500ISO and you will be golden on New OLPF. Just like film. This is not a Documentary camera.

I was worried at first, till i started working to its strengths, and now its just unbelievable. Dont ever wanna go back.
Click to expand...

Thanks for feedback Timur!!

best
 
Patrick Tresch said:
BTW this is also a great docu cam. Why cound'nt it be? I've shot various docus with the Epic and now with the Dragon.
I'm eager to work with the modular OLPF as I'm a fan of the old OLPF.

Pat
Click to expand...

I mean as a no light camera. I mean you could.....

But it's no C300 at night with a 24-105 f4.0 set it to 12,800 and rip. But then again, a c300/500 is not stellar in daylight. Not enough latitude for my taste.
 
Nick Morrison said:
Thanks for feedback Timur!!

best
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In fact, I don't even want the old olpf back anymore. This is the first digital cam that is highlight biased. Even more than an Alexa. The Alexa is about dead even above and below. The dragon is 60/40 split highlight to shadow it feels. That said, it crunches black faster and has some grain the low end. But like I said. Fill in. Print down. Done. Keep working.
 
Isaac Marchionna said:
I think the thing I'm shakey on is that since this wasn't the camera I was very much promised, and it is a work in progress, that things like the removable OLPF kit should become standard as part of the camera. Simply put, this should be a free upgrade to existing Dragon owners, especially if the solution being proposed is a modular OLPF rather than a sensor that really is 2000 ISO native.

I'm not bashing. I just can't shell out more money to fix a problem I didn't plan on having when I've already plopped down 9500. Or being turned down by producers who want to rent the camera, only to ask if I have such and such OLPFs in my kit.
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As much as I'm loving my new Dragon and its beauties in exteriors, I also admit that a free upgrade does feel warranted seeing that I was also most excited about the increased low light capabilities when I committed 9,500 over a year ago. I know the option of having either is appreciated, but not so much when Jarred is admittedly stating there's some significant drawbacks to the old OLPF.
 
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Gentlemen,

Please be gentlemen. Please be respectful and considerate of others.

battistella
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
Right, keep working, except now with half the lighting package we used to have when film was more common, and almost no ability to bring up shadows in post, as clients have now come to expect. Doesn't work for me. It's not 2002 anymore.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I agree with both of you. So what's the middle ground? I think a lot of "DPs" don't use light meters anymore, and they really should. I agree with Timur, fill in the shadows to bring them up within a suitable contrast tolerance. Don't just go for a WYSIWYG approach by looking at the monitor. A no-budget feature I was just on kept saying, we need to do this mostly with natural light 1. Because the budget isn't there, and 2. You have a DRAGON don't you?

Geez. At one point, I had to defend the DRAGON against the A7R because the director "understands" sensor tech. Haha.

We had enough instruments on hand to add to the shadows slightly, but that wasn't done because the image appeared brooding via DRAGONcolor and REDgamma 4. Granted, we would do spot checks in RAW, but at the end of the day, these space age tools are being constructed with the legacy philosophy of film exposure at their core.

My biggest worry is that for a lack of diligence on the production's part, the camera will be blamed for noisy blacks after the fact. It's a slippery slope we're on.
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
Lack of diligence is not my problem. It's lack of crew, shooting time, and lighting head rental budget. These lacks are not of my choosing, believe me. I also am very familiar with how to use a light meter.

Besides - some fixes that you can do in post with MX, that has more darks lattitude than Dragon Standard OLPF, are impossible to do except in post. No one has enough lights to fill in the Manhattan skyline at night, for example.
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Rob,

I replied to your comment, but I was writing in general terms. And to be honest, I was thinking of friends from a recent shoot. I did not mean to imply that YOU were not exercising due diligence - I don't know you, nor the practices you employ on shoots, so I would not be so crass as to insinuate you don't know how to use a meter. I understood what you were saying, and I agree with the sentiment. Producers are increasingly asking for more, and often with only a vague understanding of how gear functions. Actually, I suppose that is par for the course, but that's another story.

Anyway, many of us are in the same boat. I was attempting to say, "with DRAGON's increased sensitivity we need a far less quantity of light to gain a usable exposure than historically." As a matter of fact, I find myself ETTR and "filling in" where necessary often.

And you are correct; there are tools for every job. But to that end, the RED covers a LOT of bases in one utility.
 
Let's not get personal.
Yup. That was a warning flag for the life of this thread!
Why?
Because I can!

If you wonder, threads generally gets closed for noisy and unfriendly discussion-patterns, not subject topic.
Repetitive undocumented general claims/complaints with no images to back them up, is also a good way to get threads shut down.
It doesn't help if the same claims have already been answered multiple times, or if they've never been followed by any verifiable documentation.
We're all here to help, but that's hard without verifiable specifics outside "I think/feel/have an opinion that xxx"

Did some simple testing the other days.

I am not saying that this is the issue for everyone getting exaggerated lowlight noise, but there is a huge difference if you start shooting the kind of exposures that seems to get issues, if you shoot before the camera has reached calibration temperature.
Yup. I know that that argument has its sides, but it is still true on my cam.

Now: This was an undocumented claim!
Maybe I should shut the thread down.

Play nice!

Update:
Have a look at Phils work here:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...PF-on-Dragon&p=1421461&viewfull=1#post1421461


G
 
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