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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 :)

Dynamic Range

Stephen Webb said:
Graeme,

I'd already seen your DR test and very useful it was too.

The problem is that I've recently heard from someone who has tested one of the first 100 cameras and they've insisted that (in their tests) the camera consistently shows 6 stops. Personally I don't believe that 'cause, even though I'm not a DP, I can see that in comparison to other cameras in the 8+ stops league it clearly has more range.

Thing is, this guy is a pro, and a well respected one and (importantly) independent. What I was looking for was anyone such as Mr. Mullen here, or maybe Mr. Mathers, who have actually had opportunity to do professional, independent latitude tests that tell me something different. The nearest I've seen are Mr. Wilt's tests (with Mr. Mathers I believe) that were apparently not in ideal circumstances (and which from memory show about 8 stops).

It's difficult to argue with someone when they appear to have done the only controlled independent tests and I've nothing really to set against that.
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Hi Stephen,

I am sure Geoff Boyle will do some wedge tests before he stops shooting with the Red. He did the same last year with the SI camera on MC.

Funny thing is David Stump's tests were not so different to Mr Wilt's tests. There was a problem with the processing on those images. It seems so odd that nobody has done a set of wedges, I know I would within a few minutes.

Stephen
 
Stephen Williams said:
It seems so odd that nobody has done a set of wedges, I know I would within a few minutes.
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You'd think, with 100 cameras out there, that someone would have done this by now, wouldn't you?

Graeme, I do think that 6 is bogus beyond belief - I'm just in no position to counter the claim!
 
I think people are out shooting cool stuff not geeky charts! You just have to have confidence we've shot the geeky charts to make sure the camera performs correctly. We have, and it does.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
I think people are out shooting cool stuff not geeky charts! You just have to have confidence we've shot the geeky charts to make sure the camera performs correctly. We have, and it does.

Graeme
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Hi Graeme,

Unless I push (any & every) camera (or film stocks) to its limits & beyond in preliminary geeky testing I won't be able to make full use of it.

Stephen
 
I'm not affiliated with Red, and I'm planning to do some geeky chart shoots and publish the data, but it won't happen until shortly before Christmas. Of course also dependent on the usual subject-to-change schedule.

Quoting X stops of DR without explaining in detail how that was measured, doesn't have much meaning to me personally, there's just so many variables as many have pointed out.

If you don't want to get into the tech details, I'd say the best way to get a handle on it is to shoot the same scene with Red and some camera you're familiar with, and compare the results. True, you need to be pretty good at raw processing before that comparison will mean much, but I think that's sort of the whole point with Red.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
See my earlier posts on Dynamic Range..... I posted grabs of a stouffer test wedge chart that allowed you to see the distinction between ~34 wedges. Each wedge is 1/3 stop. There's more detail in my post, but I'll leave the simple math above to the reader....

Graeme
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I get ~27 wedges on my HV20 (using exact same Stouffer chart) but I don't consider it to have 9 stops of dynamic range when I shoot. I'd hazard that HV20 has 7 "real world" stops max, Red 9.5 "real world" max. Very good but not quite as good as film. Hopefully the upgrade you guys are doing will improve that? Semi-OT, anyone tried using a DigiCon filter on a Red yet?

Bruce Allen
www.boacienma.com
 
We just did two days of testing with Emmanuel Lubezki on a very intense commerical shoot for GE. also this week, we did a Daughtry video with Martin Weisz, a series of Tangueray spots for FX with Joe Arnao directing and Steve Wacks as the DOP and last month we did a series of promos for E! with Snoop Dogg as the talent and Anthony Manler as the director and Ketil Dietrichson as the DOP, these were some of the higher end jobs. We did not geek out with wedges and charts, we actually shot professionally light setups and then judged the footage in color, scratch, redcine, redalert and we are doing film out tests.

these are setups with millions of dollars worth of lights and hundreds of thousands of dollars of labor hours setting them up. two of the jobs this week btw were actually 435 jobs and RED was there as a test...

RED blew them all away, not sure how many stop range that translates into, but the camera performed well enough for the top level cinematographers to want to use it for very big features, commercials and music videos.

The one thing that resonates from all of them is RED is better than film by 3 stops in the shadows and worse than film for 3 stops in the highlights. so the range is basically the same, it is just skewed toward the dark, so a great camera for low light and night shots, much better than film in that case. Not bad for bright stuff, but you must protect for the highlights.

this camera is the real deal. we are having nothing but success demo'ing it for large advertising agencies, production companies, high end post houses, producers, directors and DOPs.

sorry if i am not as technical as you guys, but i sit there and watch these people ( million dollar a year directors/ DP's & huge clients) react to the images that are coming off of the camera and it makes me laugh at this whole thread, the economics of this camera are unmatched and this is a business after all.

the camera will be as good as you are composing images and lighting them. shooting on film costs 10x (if not more) what it costs to shoot RED and there may be a .005 difference in quality. Use the camera and you will spend less time talking/writing about what ifs and more time shooting.

we are available to come out and do demos.

dino
 
Those are some very bold statements dino, I'll show them to my investors... "Gimme more money guys!"
 
What Jim (AND TEAM) did was BOLD, we are all just the recipients of his generosity! If a multinational corporation that was focused on ST profits made this camera it would have taken 10 years and have been priced ten times more expensive. dont let anyone tell you this camera is less than...it is more than in so many ways.
 
kosmos3d said:
so the range is basically the same, it is just skewed toward the dark, so a great camera for low light and night shots, much better than film in that case. Not bad for bright stuff, but you must protect for the highlights.
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The proof is in the adoption rate. But I do wonder if they were using the best low light film they could get their hands on when they decided RED was better in the shadows. If so, that's impressive.
 
The advantages of bayer digital capture over film in low-light situations doesn't surprise me in the least.

When I made the move from film to digital stills in my commercial work several years ago, an improvement in grain and sharpness in low-light situations was one of the first improvements I identified early on in the transition.

Viva La Difference!
 
This makes me kind of wary. Looking at the chart, you can see that almost all the latitude is in the shadows and the anecdotal evidence supports this: 3 stops more in the shadows, 3 stops less in the highlights. You could push three stops (ISO 1200?) and have the same exposure latitude in both directions, but then it would be so grainy.

Three stops less in the highlights means you need 8 times less light before blow outs. There are situations (mostly exteriors) where this would pose a real problem. I don't understand why digital has so much trouble holding on to highlight detail. The camera still looks amazing, but this really seems like a limitation. A lot of DP's complain about too much shadow detail in Vision 2 500T, and I suppose this means that the 3 extra stops beyond this aren't too useful under conventional circumstances.

Not a deal-breaker, but this doesn't seem like the best news I've ever heard.
 
Policar said:
The camera still looks amazing, but this really seems like a limitation.
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Well I think it just means you need a lot of ND outside. The first tests of white cars on black asphalt outside with no silks or anything looked good. All the white detail on those cars was there... I'm not worried. Plus, we haven't seen what the new daughterboard will do.
 
joelnet said:
Well I think it just means you need a lot of ND outside.
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Not really. Certainly that's a way to approach it, but if you want to retain highlight detail equal to film, you'd need to underexpose 3 stops which means significant grain and artifacts.

Of course, if you shoot at the right time of day and backlight and whatnot this isn't really a huge problem at all. But it's not ideal, really, and I don't think anyone should pretend it is. Still, in wysiwyg, I think it's easier to avoid egregious exposure errors to this mitigates this limitation a bit.
 
Policar said:
I don't understand why digital has so much trouble holding on to highlight detail. The camera still looks amazing, but this really seems like a limitation. A lot of DP's complain about too much shadow detail in Vision 2 500T, and I suppose this means that the 3 extra stops beyond this aren't too useful under conventional circumstances.
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Film is (very) non-linear and so is the human eye. CCD and CMOS sensors are generally linear, although nonlinear processing is almost always done (gamma plus additional grading "curves") before you see it in a viewfinder or on screen. Due to the linear sensor, digital can seem to have no highlight range but that's in some sense an illusion. If you are running the camera, just where "shadow" and "highlights" fall within the sensor range is your choice. If you expose digital like you would for film, you are more likely to clip your highlights.

I hadn't heard about "too much shadow detail", but that seems like an easy problem to solve... :-)
 
Remember that there is almost half a stop of highlight detail that doesn't appear unless you process the footage with -0.5 exposure.

I believe that underexposing 2 stops may not be a bad idea. We've seen RED footage of 2000 ASA that didn't look bad at all. I guess you could expose like going for 1000 ASA. That would give you the 2 stops and it's not grainy at all. Of course that would only be needed when you got a high dynamic range scene.

BTW, what's a "daughterboard"?

And DINO, I am a huge Lubezki fan. If you could elaborate a bit on what you did with him and his reactions. There was a rumour as well that he was gonna use the RED for his next flic. You know anyhting about that?
 
i will not speak about rumors, but this was a test that we did for a future job arranged by a producer for him.

the commerical was for GE, i have absolutely no idea what the product was and i was there for three days, all i know is there were lots of clouds and a waterfall, so all of this talk about the highlights is interesting because they were pushed to the limit with this test and he seemed very pleased with the results.

he was impressed with the RED, whether or not that translates into him using it for a 9 figure shoot is yet to be determined.

i will say he was a joy to work with as were all the directors and DOPs i mentioned earlier.
 
Stephen Williams said:
Hi Graeme,

Unless I push (any & every) camera (or film stocks) to its limits & beyond in preliminary geeky testing I won't be able to make full use of it.

Stephen
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Stephen, I'd be happy to bring my camera along if you want to do some independent tests. I'm guessing after Christmas will be the earliest opportunity but I'd be more than happy to.

Paul
 
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