Epic Dragon vs Epic MX. Odd Results

[Christian Fitzpatrick]

I've got to say, I didn't know about CMOS smearing on Dragon until I read these forums. And before that, when watching House of Cards, I never saw a technical issue with the picture. Nothing ever took me out of that story.

I think if you go looking for something though, you'll probably find it. . .

If House of Cards is the benchmark for why CMOS Smearing is so unbearable - I think we better find another benchmark. :S

 

[Hugh Scully]

I'm probably much less qualified than many of you to judge but my experience with MX, especially in tungsten light for night interiors caused me to spend more for a new Dragon as opposed to a used MX. I feel that in daylight, the color on the MX was as good and even the highlight handling was superior to any other camera I shot with, and so with Dragon. The richness of color, especially skin tones appear better to me on the Dragon. There appeared, in MX, a kind of take over of orange on skin tones that does not appear on Dragon. Skin tones on Dragon are much more subtle, with expected pink undertones, even on the shadow side. Additionally, shadow noise under tungsten light is much better (black not red) on the Dragon, in my short experience. In some frames I am just blown away by the Dragon where I was not so with the MX. I found the upgrade worth it.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I'm probably much less qualified than many of you to judge but my experience with MX, especially in tungsten light for night interiors caused me to spend more for a new Dragon as opposed to a used MX. I feel that in daylight, the color on the MX was as good and even the highlight handling was superior to any other camera I shot with, and so with Dragon. The richness of color, especially skin tones appear better to me on the Dragon. There appeared, in MX, a kind of take over of orange on skin tones that does not appear on Dragon. Skin tones on Dragon are much more subtle, with expected pink undertones, even on the shadow side. Additionally, shadow noise under tungsten light is much better (black not red) on the Dragon, in my short experience. In some frames I am just blown away by the Dragon where I was not so with the MX. I found the upgrade worth it.

Our experience on Dragon is pretty similar...

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

I have to say, I'm pretty shocked by many of these comments on MX vs Dragon. I was long time hold out on the dragon sensor, and really only went through the upgrade process to continue down the red path. I felt that what I was shooting on the MX sensor looked good and there was no real reason to upgrade. Then I started shooting with Dragon. Here are my experiences.

Dragon vs MX: Dynamic range. I'm sorry, but not only does the Dragon have more dynamic range than the MX, but it handles it much more elegantly than the MX does. I find many situations still where I am amazed that the Dragon is holding onto highlights that I know would have blown out on the MX. With the MX, I would always just figure out where I wanted my exposure to be, check for clipping and if there was clipping other than specular pull it back a little bit. Then in post we would go through and boost the midtones. Sometimes this gave amazing results, sometimes not as good as I would have liked. With the Dragon, I find myself setting the exposure I like, and 9 times out of 10 exclaiming, I can't believe the sky is still holding. Seriously, it's pretty amazing sometimes.

Dragon Color vs MX: Also a no brainer, the effects may be subtle, but they are pretty awesome. Skin hasn't looked this good on a red product ever, and really what's more important than that. On the MX, even if I was happy with the look in camera, I knew that I would always be grading to bring back my skin tones. Not only do I find the Dragon to produce better (less orange and yellow) skin tones, but the camera holds those skin tones longer. Meaning that in mixed lighting situations, tungsten, daylight, setting white balance off color, skin tones stay looking like skin tones far greater than they ever did on the MX. In fact, i still to this day think the MX had the worst skin tones of all cameras that Red has produced. The original Mystermium Red produced some great looking creamy skin tones that the MX never was able to replicate, in my opinion, and not until the Dragon camera around were they surpassed.

Since we are shooting raw and since color grading is most always an option to some degree, yes, many of these things are fixable, and yes I can grade MX footage to match Dragon footage pretty closely, to a degree. But never have we had such a great starting point with footage coming right off the camera. Is it worth that upgrade? To me it was, saves so much time and money in post it has paid for itself, and ultimately it has allowed me to experiment more with lighting situations than I felt I could with MX.