Enter the Dragon

[James Falco]

RED Dragon hunters

RED Dragon hunters

I had done this illustration as an invite for the NY scarlet user group meeting in May last year.
Since the location was in Chinatown it felt fitting to shape it into a dragons eye.

In retrospect even more so.

Cheers. ///

 

[Jason Ano]

James if you moved on to doing case mods it would be game over :yesnod:

 

[Bob Gundu]

One of my biggest curiosities about the upgrade to Dragon is how it will deal with heat dissipation. I would have no problem with Red expanding the back out a little to have more airflow. In fact, they could make the camera slightly longer by an inch and just incorporate the Monitor +1 functionality since everyone is going to want one anyway. Hee hee... who knows...

 

[Louis Maddalena]

I had done this illustration as an invite for the NY scarlet user group meeting in May last year.
Since the location was in Chinatown it felt fitting to shape it into a dragons eye.

In retrospect even more so.

Cheers. ///

It is a very cool illustration.

 

[Mike Smith]

One of my biggest curiosities about the upgrade to Dragon is how it will deal with heat dissipation. I would have no problem with Red expanding the back out a little to have more airflow. In fact, they could make the camera slightly longer by an inch and just incorporate the Monitor +1 functionality since everyone is going to want one anyway. Hee hee... who knows...

Good idea ...and 2 XLRs, mini or otherwise!

 

[Tom Gleeson]

It appears that the Dragon will have about 4 stops more DR and less than half the noise of the current Mysterium-X sensor.

Jim

Everbody hold your horses. The original chart was an engineering only chart that showed 20 stops latitude. Once an actual useable image is processed out of this it is likely to be less than 20 stops. Jim said 4 more stops than the MX chip which could take it towards 18 stops DR which is truly incredible but if I am reading it correctly 20+ stops DR for the final chip design is not the claim.

 

[Jarred Land]

I had done this illustration as an invite for the NY scarlet user group meeting in May last year.
Since the location was in Chinatown it felt fitting to shape it into a dragons eye.

In retrospect even more so.

Cheers. ///

love this.

 

[Paul Harb]

+1 +1 +1

One of my biggest curiosities about the upgrade to Dragon is how it will deal with heat dissipation. I would have no problem with Red expanding the back out a little to have more airflow. In fact, they could make the camera slightly longer by an inch and just incorporate the Monitor +1 functionality since everyone is going to want one anyway. Hee hee... who knows...

 

[Jarred Land]

Everbody hold your horses. The original chart was an engineering only chart that showed 20 stops latitude. Once an actual useable image is processed out of this it is likely to be less than 20 stops. Jim said 4 more stops than the MX chip which could take it towards 18 stops DR which is truly incredible but if I am reading it correctly 20+ stops DR for the final chip design is not the claim.

Nobody is saying a distinct numbers.. It is too early to tell. Remember this is the worst you will ever see Dragon..it is as raw as it gets without any tweaks.

There is alot of work to be done over the next month. No matter how much of an engineering chart this is the results with a visual chart like this are incredibly subjective... even if you ask an engineer. They measure dynamic range with a whole other method and it has nothing to do with looking at a ND chart.
5 years later if you ask 5 DPs you will get 5 different answers how many stops the RED ONE resolves. Just the nature of the beast.

The only thing that is relatable is comparing it to other cameras that have shot these charts, many of which have already been posted here. You are correct.. the really important info is going to be the real images that it shoots.

 

[Peer Landa]

One of my biggest curiosities about the upgrade to Dragon is how it will deal with heat dissipation.

Okay, and my biggest "curiosity" is; if the Dragon is indeed 18-20 stops, how won't a 16-bit ADc not bottom out (calculating approx. 6 dB per stop)..?! Hence, instead of going through the chain reaction of upgrading the Epic, I bet the Dragon ends up in an entirely new camera -- which is cool in my book. Better is better.

Thanks for this ongoing scam!

HA -- yes RED, please "scam" us more, (and please give me a deal on an Epic Mono too -- mommy just gave me my allowance ;^)


-- peer

 

[Sergio Perez]

Here are some dreams and hopes for the Epic Dragon upgrade:

What we know so far:

- Industry leading Dynamic Range ( confirmed)
- Better Low Light Performance (Confirmed)
- More Frame Rates and higher resolution (80fps 6K spoken of)
- Bigger sensor ( but not FF 35mm size)
- Redesigned Asic

Sergio's wish list:

- Higher frame rates in 5K (200 fps possible?), 4K (300fps) and 3K (400fps)
- Burst mode for 6K and 5K (a 5 second burst for higher frame rates for specific stylistic shots)
- More energy efficient: making the redvolts last longer, or introduce a new generation of redvolts (don't make them bigger in size, please, just in performance!)
- Still Performance on par of Canon 1D Mark IV (frame grabs from 6K, if equal or better than that, will be revolutionary)
- A new prores 4K mini module: 2 models- one just the prores 4K module, one with wifi included to stream a proxy image to ipad, iphone or other monitoring devices. Meizler does this but is just too much overkill for a user like me!

Can't think of anything else to be honest. This would just be perfect for 2013!

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

Jarred, have a technical question; If you give up of HDRx, could you still make it possible to shoot with two different shutter speeds? I mean, if the camera is set say to 24fps and the shutter speed is 180 degrees, then one adds another track and the camera is actually running 48 fps but with a different shutter speed on this secondary track. This way the DR of Dragon made it possible to shoot both motion and still images in one token. Or, one could capture two different versions of motion/still images at once.

 

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

Hardly can wait for the first outdoor frames in "hard" situations of high contrast, just to show how Dragon tops MX. Maybe in a month or two eye of the dragon will open and then...

 

[Michael Burns]

This is likely to affect the price of the upgrade a bit.. and its going to close the door on any chance of a Scarlet to be able to upgrade to Dragon.

We are however.. going to be offering a trade-in program much like we did with the R1 for Scarlet customers to get into an Epic Dragon.

Can someone explain why Scarlet isn't going to be able get the upgrade to Dragon? I understand the ASIC boards need to be changed out to match the Epic boards/specs but why can't they do it with Scarlet body?

I'm grateful that RED is pushing the envelope in a big way but I told & bought the Scarlet mainly for upgrading purposes to gain entry into the Dragon world - eventually, sure for a price.

 

[Derek Morrison]

you should have the Dragon done in time to film Mini's on the Dragon run in GA/TN! That'd be cool. A Dragon on the Dragon. :thumbup1: :lol:

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Jarred, have a technical question; If you give up of HDRx, could you still make it possible to shoot with two different shutter speeds? I mean, if the camera is set say to 24fps and the shutter speed is 180 degrees, then one adds another track and the camera is actually running 48 fps but with a different shutter speed on this secondary track. This way the DR of Dragon made it possible to shoot both motion and still images in one token. Or, one could capture two different versions of motion/still images at once.

I still think they should have a mode that always shoots at 120fps (maybe at 5k, and maybe also 240fps at 4k) with an open shutter (1/120th at 120fps) and allows you to choose your shutter speed and framerate with metadata in post, since frame combining or decimating on playback would losslessly make that footage available as 24, 30, 40, 60, or 120fps with options of 1/120th, 1/60th, 1/40th, 1/30th, 1/24th sec shutters. 240fps would add the options of framerate and shutter values of 240, 80, and 48. At very least that could really be useful for stock footage shooters who want to make their footage available in many framerates at once, and for stills people who want to preserve a fast shutter version of their frames.

It would also reduce noise (a side effect of frame combining) at shutter speeds slower than 1/120th sec, not that Dragon would need a reduction in noise... but it doesnt hurt.

Only downside is you'd probably always have to light for 1/120th sec, but then that might be nice for people who dont want to have to use as much ND in day ext's.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

The only thing that is relatable is comparing it to other cameras that have shot these charts, many of which have already been posted here. You are correct.. the really important info is going to be the real images that it shoots.

And I'm betting (hoping [wishing]) that as soon as you guys are ready to announce more, you'll post a small R3D file we can load up in RedCine-X and play with?

My god, we live in the future. I'm so flipping excited.

 

[Noel Sterrett]

In order to achieve 18+ (or 20) stops DR, I would imagine that an A/D of around 20 bits would be needed. That's no mean feat.

Cheers.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Bits and stops don't need to corolate directly. The number of stops is your range of illumination that the camera can see. The number of bits used to represent that range is the precision or number of increments in illumination along that scale. You can have 20 stops of DR and a single bit to represent, of course it would just show the very darkest and very brightest values. A 16bit scale allows for the potential of 65,536 steps or values in gradation from darkest to lightest. With that many transitional steps and the fact that the human eye can only adaptively see an approximate range of 17 or 18 stops at any given time, we have to wonder just how far the precision needs to go. Every bit increase raises the amount of data that must pass through all the internal pathways, processors, be held in memory, etc..

Who knows what precision the ADC for Dragon will operate at, I think 16bit is fine... But bumping it to 18bit would remove all doubt and give us a potential 262,144 steps along our range. If you think that's not enough, that equates to 18,014,400,000,000,000 distinct RGB values...

For reference, 16bpc color precision equates to 281,474,976,710,656 distinct RGB values.

 

[Peter Moretti]

Can someone explain why Scarlet isn't going to be able get the upgrade to Dragon? I understand the ASIC boards need to be changed out to match the Epic boards/specs but why can't they do it with Scarlet body?

I'm grateful that RED is pushing the envelope in a big way but I told & bought the Scarlet mainly for upgrading purposes to gain entry into the Dragon world - eventually, sure for a price.

How much is a used Scarlet body actually worth after subtracting the costs associated with receiving the camera, testing it, opening the body, disconnecting the ASICs, adding the new boards, retesting the camera and sending it back out?