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Epic PHOTOGRAPHY

M

Mohamed Younis

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I have a friend ( photographer ) who's thinking about buying the scarlet mainly for photography. He's a little worried because he's used to DSLRs with triggers and strobes and what not. He has a great set of L glass. He wanted to take my Epic and try out some sessions. Of course I have little advice for him on how to use it as a photography tool. He's going to shoot models and then locations ( wides, panoramic ).
What are the best modes to use?
fps?
sharpest images?
Best glass (sharpest+bokeh)? ( i have Ultras, REDs, and arri/zeiss standard primes )
I asked before on a different thread about strobes alternatives (continuous) and most answers were pretty expensive. I have some 4bank kinos and a lot of tungsten (arri 650, 800) and some other off-brand stuff. The scenery and locations I think will be shot using daylight so I'm not to worried but the models I think he'll have a hard time achieving the same results he gets when using his profoto and hensel strobes
Any advice would be great.
 
I'd say, just use the same f-stops and shutter speeds that you would normally use for stills in the same conditions. But use continuous lighting. Unless you also want motion. Then it's always a dance between motion blur in the stills, and choppy movement in the motion.

Glass is always a personal choice.

It is too bad that the planned specs of being able to use x-sync and strobes didn't make the cut this time. Maybe Dragon/Monstro will have a global shutter that allows it. But honestly, a cheap dedicated stills camera can do that. The real benefit of using an Epic or Scarlet for stills is the high frame rate and the ability to extract stills from motion. Which just requires continuous lighting, as of now.
 
Hi
Tell him to try shooting with your Epic at 96fps, 1/50th shutter speed, and 180 degree shutter angle. What he will find is fantastic images, no motion blur, and you can shoot video and still pull fantastic stills as needed, do not go more the 8:1 red code and I think he will be amazed, I know I was the first time doing it this way. And the L glass is very nice, warm, should be a good combination.

Ron
 
No, 96 fps, looks good, and ops, yes, 1/100 th shutter speed,

the faster frame rate looks very good for fashion and glamour (and even better for figure studies) it lets the model move with no blur. I got some incredible shots of a ballet dance in low key light, nude, moving. Incredible images, muscle definition as she moved that you could grab the frame that should this the best, I could never pull that off with a stills only camera

Ron
 
I would shoot faster if you dont want motion blur...its always a compromise if you need footage for both motion and stills but that should change when they activate stills mode.
 
C.H.Haskell said:
I would shoot faster if you dont want motion blur...its always a compromise if you need footage for both motion and stills but that should change when they activate stills mode.
Click to expand...
I actually just want stills.
 
i find this all terrribly interesting. im planing on using my Cine glass to shoot stills, and was wondering. It seems you have to sacrifice motion to favor stills. oh well. 5k @12FPS it is.

wish the scarlet/epic took stills.
 
The Scarlet and Epic both have a stills function. They are DSMC (Digital Stills and Motion Camera) cameras after all. There is a stills/motion slider on the side handle and I think maybe the Redmote. I don't think this function is enabled in firmware yet but I may be wrong.
 
Stills mode is still not enabled.
Why not shoot at 120fps?
Will the stills be sharper at 120?
 
Mohamed Younis said:
Stills mode is still not enabled.
Why not shoot at 120fps?
Will the stills be sharper at 120?
Click to expand...

For sharpness It will not make any difference what fps you shoot stills at, stills are usually shot one frame at a time. The higher the shutter speed the shorter the exposure and the sharper moving objects will be. In general, anything over 1/120th shutter speed will give you good results for freezing normal action.

For example, 5D shoots stills up to 3-4 fps. There is no real reason to shoot 120fps if you are only after stills, unless you are shooting something that is moving very fast and you want to be able to choose from 120 instances for every second of action.
 
Personally I would go the other way. Shoot 15-30fps @1/250th. If the intent in the end is stills. And strobes are not going to work. I thought I heard something about long duration flashes, but I don't know too much about them...

I Love the shutter sound effect on the Epic. It would be great that by pressing that shutter sound effect button it would flag the frames in the meta data, for RedCine-X to see it. One light color, then batch send to Lightroom!

cheers
Colin
 
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Yeah, if you don't need motion at all, you could go as low as 1 fps if you wanted. I'd maybe go to at least 6-12 if it's people posing and moving just for safety. But you don't need all of those frames to sift through, unless, as others have said, you are trying to catch a specific moment in fast action. It's really just f-stop and shutter speed that are going to give you the sharpness that you are after. Just like with a stills camera.
 
Tehben Dean said:
For sharpness It will not make any difference what fps you shoot stills at, stills are usually shot one frame at a time. The higher the shutter speed the shorter the exposure and the sharper moving objects will be. In general, anything over 1/120th shutter speed will give you good results for freezing normal action.

For example, 5D shoots stills up to 3-4 fps. There is no real reason to shoot 120fps if you are only after stills, unless you are shooting something that is moving very fast and you want to be able to choose from 120 instances for every second of action.
Click to expand...
Exactly what I thought. The same rules of photography applies and fps would not matter. I think it safe to say that I wouldnt have shot 12 shots in a second on my 5D.
Thanks
 
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