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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 :)

Epic/Scarlet and low light performance

Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
Meh, what if we're coming from FS100U? Probably a bit of disappointment? No clean ISO 16,000 anymore ? :)
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Keep using FS100 for your low light filming then. Or do tests with Epic and see results for yourself. My tests show Epic is very clean up to 3200. 6400 probably useable if you know how to get the most out of curves and a touch of NR if you want to minimize the noise. Higher ISOs than that and you may need to use NR. But also depends what the lighting situation is and how you are using that ISO. It's all relative. Bottom line for me, if you want the best out of your Epic and Scarlet you need to light, just like you would a film stock. If you want to shoot in complete darkness maybe another camera. I think RED holds up pretty well in low light when you consider the medium it is replacing.
 
This is great information guys thank you!
 
Steve Sherrick said:
Keep using FS100 for your low light filming then. Or do tests with Epic and see results for yourself. My tests show Epic is very clean up to 3200. 6400 probably useable if you know how to get the most out of curves and a touch of NR if you want to minimize the noise. Higher ISOs than that and you may need to use NR. But also depends what the lighting situation is and how you are using that ISO. It's all relative. Bottom line for me, if you want the best out of your Epic and Scarlet you need to light, just like you would a film stock. If you want to shoot in complete darkness maybe another camera. I think RED holds up pretty well in low light when you consider the medium it is replacing.
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I definitely plan to do tests when I get my scarlet. I probably can't do much else till all the accessories arrive... I do not feel comfortable keeping my FS100 in addition to my Scarlet for financial reasons. Truthfully I'd prefer to have a camera that produces lots of latitude and accurate color rather at one setting than a camera that produces less latitude and has color issues but works at every lighting level. That said, I wouldn't mind a camera that does both, but we can't all afford alexas.
 
But we might be able to afford a Dragon Sensor upgrade :-)
I'm keeping my AF100 for it's run and gun capabilities, cheap batteries and cheap media.
Horses for courses and all that...
 
Eric-taner said:
Has anybody compared the 5d Vs Epic in low light?
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I saw some low light tests of M-X to 5D2 for a movie. The 5D2 failed miserably as it couldn't hold skin-tone at high ISO. M-X could, and it was certainly not noisier.

Graeme
 
Mike P. said:
Word.

On topic - Personally, I don't mind a little noise in my image. When you combine downscaling with even slight noise reduction, I'm comfortable saying that you can get pretty good results up to ISO3200... Generally noise reduction smooths detail, but with 4k@1080p you've got resolution to spare. Add a little "film" grain and you could probably get usable ISO6400 (again, depending on your final output resolution and what you're comfortable with in terms of noise). Heck, if you're coming from DSLRs, most will probably be happy with the results of ISO3200.
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If comfartable with canons dslr you can do a harsh noise reduction as you are used with softimages and low details.
 
NeatVideo is an amazing plugin for removing noise and from my tests has shown to have a very minimal effect on detail/image quality.
 
Andrew Allsbury said:
NeatVideo is an amazing plugin for removing noise and from my tests has shown to have a very minimal effect on detail/image quality.
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Yes, it is quite good and that's why it's important to test because what you may find is that Epic is very usable at higher ISOs if you feel the noise it produces is objectionable. RED leaves it up to you how much or how little NR you want to do rather than doing it in camera and not telling you how it arrived at that image. NR does take time to process though, so keep that in mind too. :-)
 
Epic perform very good at high iso, but... F3 is much better. I compared both last week and I can't believe what i saw. With some light epic is the best!, but wihout light f3 is about 1-2 stops less noisy.
 
Jose Lomeña said:
Epic perform very good at high iso, but... F3 is much better. I compared both last week and I can't believe what i saw. With some light epic is the best!, but wihout light f3 is about 1-2 stops less noisy.
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That's fun. I did some F3 S-log testing today and... :)

Would hafta do a side-by side, though, but the general pattern was quite fun.

HMI/tungsten.

Find it hard to put them in the same sentence.
reminded me am lot of some other prores cam though, just with less usefull range in the top.

But I do generally agree that the F3 is better down than up...
 
Try f3 at 18db.you are right it can't compare with epic. But is funny the low noise of the f3!.
 
I believe some people think low light = no light . I would then add........ no light = no budget.

Whilst I can understand the budget benefits of "no light" I dislike the look of "no light' intensely apart from short mood shots. This camera isn't designed to shoot "low light". So what light it & make it sing ! Like the issue of overcranking, underlighting is not why you should be buying this camera....... is it?

P.S. i quite like the F3 with S log it was either that or Scarlet X. If Scarlet was something else ( whispers ...like 2/3 ) I would have jumped on the F3
 
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Ah...

Was maybe a tad quick there. I didn't gain the F3, as I thought the noise was getting bad, but I trust Philip Bloom on its lowlight capacity.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...a-Scarlet-or-not-to-buy-that-is-the-question…

Will haver to do some side-by-side.

I was still not very impressed with effective total range, and how the last two stops "measurably" working in the top (HMI, 3 @ tungsten) started to behave very un-nice. They're there, they just don't look very good.

That said - it is a fine camera, when kitted up with S-log, monitor, viewfinder and an external recorder. Not cheaper than a scarlet, but still a nice cam.
 
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