Epic skintones.

[Josh Snyder]

Those screencaps where taken from film/commercial/whatever. EPIC was A cam on the shoot and Alexa B cam. They were not shot in purpose to compare these two cameras.

1080p/2K is standard today. There is no point of comparing how they look in 4K because no one will see the film from 4K tv or projector. You see, I'm the one looking this from the realistic perspective.

I have issue with is people pushing their own opinions and agendas on others at the sacrifice of the truth

I have too, that's why I'm bringing the turth to these discussions that are fully biased by the larege majority of people in here.

Alexa's great just far beyond my price range

Yes it costs almost twice as much as EPIC-X and at this point is too much for me to consider, but more of the problem for my use is the size. That's why I will get the EPIC-X.


Once again, I've said that Alexa has a bit more pleasing image, but pretty much everything else in EPIC is better, how is that biased? Is person only not biased when he thinks that EPIC is better at everything? I don't see you telling me how I am biased towards EPIC when I tell how much easier it is to work with it because of its size. I don't see you telling anyone in any thread that they are biased in favor of EPIC eventhough a lot people clearly are. That only shows you are biased yourself.

 

[Peter Moretti]

But these aren't photo prints that we're getting back in the mail. Footage from digital cameras can be tweaked... in the case of the Red, excessively.

I'm not a colorist, but here's a quick regrade on the B image to make it a more extreme version of the A image. I can just as easily do the reverse and make the A image look like or a more extreme version of the B image.

A difference between the original images is there. But which is better is up to personal taste, as I actually liked image A more than B anyway. Now there may be other subtleties that show up and make one image more pleasing than the other when posting an entire show. But from this example, either image can easily be made to emulate the other, FWICT.

 

[Josh Snyder]

A was EPIC and B was Alexa. You tweaked Alexa shot.

Colors aren't everything that makes the image. That's why you can't grade 5D to look like Alexa, or EPIC either. There's lot more to it what makes the image look how it looks.

 

[Peter Moretti]

I realize that I tweaked the Alexa shot. And I said I can do exactly the same the other way, and make A look like B. Here's an example:

 

[Josh Snyder]

I see you edited your post. Before I corrected you, you thought B shot was EPIC shot and that you were editing EPIC shot.

I realize that I tweaked the Alexa shot. And I said I can do exactly the same the other way, and make A look like B.

No you didn't realize (see below). And no you didn't say that. You wrote that after my correction.

What you wrote first:

Footage from digital cameras can be tweaked... in the case of the Red, excessively. I'm not a colorist, but here's a quick regrade on the RED image to make it look like Alexa image.

After I corrected you and after you edited your post:

Footage from digital cameras can be tweaked... in the case of the Red, excessively. I'm not a colorist, but here's a quick regrade on the B image to make it a more extreme version of the A image. I can just as easily do the reverse and make the A image look like or a more extreme version of the B image.

There seems to be a lot more editing done (like pretty much the whole part after that quote), but I don't remember exactly what. I guess one should always quote posts when replying to save the original, to prevent this kind of face saving attempts that include post modifying and lying. You didn't know you were editing Alexa shot. You were talking how great EPIC shot is for grading while thinking the whole time Alexa (B) shot was EPIC shot. Then when you get corrected you try to hide it by editing your posts and switching things around by deleting, changing and adding sentences/words. This is what I call bias with a big B.

Seriously, how funny is this. You are editing and praising Alexa shot all the time while thinking you are praising EPIC shot.

 

[Julio Quintana]

I'm really mad at myself for reading this whole thread.

 

[Andrew Benz]

I'm really mad at myself for reading this whole thread.

Me too...

 

[Josh Snyder]

Waiting for Stephen Matthews to come and tell straight words to this guy. Stephen said he has issues with "people pushing their own opinions and agendas on others at the sacrifice of the truth".

 

[Stephen Matthews]

"sorry bias should have been preference"

I'm sorry I apologized for that though you seemed to miss it. You seem to have an issue with misinterpreting things, or not looking a little into them, as it's hard to get points across in text form it's best to assume the best in people, I was merely saying your earlier comments in the thread and how you presented the images you had shown your preference, didn't mean it was a bias just what you had displayed so far....

Look it's your attitude that is bugging me, you are bringing the other side to these discussions fair, but you are doing it with a horrible attitude and at rapid fire across these forums. But to each their own.

I'm sure in life you are a nice person and this all could be me getting a totally wrong vibe and reading you wrong and if that's true I apologize, either way I wish you all the best with your future endeavors!

p.s. I was drunk last night on both replies I really wish I had not made them though I'm sober now and this is worse than both of them, have a good one!

edited: went to PM with full post

 

[Josh Snyder]

Like I said to you in the pm, I came here to talk about awesome cameras in unbiased manner. Just talk about digital cinema. It seems to be impossible here. Everything RED is always the best, even if you don't know anything about the subject. Anything RED does and says is right and amazing. Realistic people here seem to be hard to find. Dissing other manufacturers seem to be cool thing here. Wishing bad things to other manufacturers seem to be cool thing too, what the hell?

I saw a video maybe a year ago where Vincent Laforet and Philip Bloom were talking at some event on stage about digital cinema and when talking about RED Philip said something about talking to RED users and how it doesn't lead to anything because RED is like religion (Philip can provide the correct quote, I don't remember where I saw it anymore). I didn't know it was this bad. I mean, the bias and blindness is almost as bad as among Apple fanatics.

How can this kind of enviorement be productive at all? It's like living in the box.

Not everyone is like that, but large majority from what I've seen. For my surprise Graeme was one of the least biased persons here with a valid and real information to provide. He even said Alexa might or might not have more pleasing image than EPIC. I respect him for being (mostly at least ) honest and for being able to say things many random posters don't even dare to say (like that there might be something good, even something better in camera not named RED).

 

[Stephen Matthews]

Yep that's why most of us are here is because of how amazing the red team is. I just think the rest of people on here get a bad rap for not talking about other cameras, the thing is we are here on a red forum to talk about red. Yes some make outlandish comments based out of bias but for the most part people a very balanced especially the owners, seems a lot of the noise comes from people who don't own or have never shot a red or an Alexa for that matter.

You want to compare camera's talk about other cameras, I believe those companies forums and DVXuser are much better places for those discussions. want to talk about an issues or question you have regarding a red camera do it here. And if you get a series of rude or outlandish replies ignore them and wait for Graeme or Jim to pipe in or someone who treats your comment with some respect. Don't give in to the negative posters cause that just makes it all that much worse and adds to the issues you have with the forums. trust me I know it's hard I find 90% of my posts is addressing angry upset or rude people...

mah do what you can accept what you can and can't change and really who cares about camera politics, buy and test what you can and be happy with it as long as you are making product you are proud of what does it matter what others think or say (aside from clients)

Play nice!

 

[Brad Allen]

I'm suprised that the EPIC image has that much more noise in the image. I was basing my guess on the size of the grains in the noise. To me it looked like Skina had grains that were roughly the size of pixels in 1080p whereas skinb had so little noise, I assumed that it had been downscaled.

Ha - it's nice to lose guesses like this sometimes

 

[Josh Snyder]

Yep that's why most of us are here is because of how amazing the red team is. I just think the rest of people on here get a bad rap for not talking about other cameras, the thing is we are here on a red forum to talk about red. Yes some make outlandish comments based out of bias but for the most part people a very balanced especially the owners, seems a lot of the noise comes from people who don't own or have never shot a red or an Alexa for that matter.

You want to compare camera's talk about other cameras, I believe those companies forums and DVXuser are much better places for those discussions. want to talk about an issues or question you have regarding a red camera do it here. And if you get a series of rude or outlandish replies ignore them and wait for Graeme or Jim to pipe in or someone who treats your comment with some respect. Don't give in to the negative posters cause that just makes it all that much worse and adds to the issues you have with the forums. trust me I know it's hard I find 90% of my posts is addressing angry upset or rude people...

mah do what you can accept what you can and can't change and really who cares about camera politics, buy and test what you can and be happy with it as long as you are making product you are proud of what does it matter what others think or say (aside from clients)

Play nice!

Yep, it's just hard to resist threads like this that are made to diss other cameras without any reality being involved. Then rest of the thread is laughing and praising RED's alternative, hailing the conclusion on the first post even though it's untruthful and has no reality in it. Try to discuss similar topic in gentile way that is in favour of other camera, boom thread gets locked after you've first hit with a shit storm from all directions.

 

[Peter Moretti]

I see you edited your post. Before I corrected you, you thought B shot was EPIC shot and that you were editing EPIC shot.

No you didn't realize (see below). And no you didn't say that. You wrote that after my correction.

What you wrote first:

Footage from digital cameras can be tweaked... in the case of the Red, excessively. I'm not a colorist, but here's a quick regrade on the RED image to make it look like Alexa image.

After I corrected you and after you edited your post:

Footage from digital cameras can be tweaked... in the case of the Red, excessively. I'm not a colorist, but here's a quick regrade on the B image to make it a more extreme version of the A image. I can just as easily do the reverse and make the A image look like or a more extreme version of the B image.

There seems to be a lot more editing done (like pretty much the whole part after that quote), but I don't remember exactly what. I guess one should always quote posts when replying to save the original, to prevent this kind of face saving attempts that include post modifying and lying. You didn't know you were editing Alexa shot. You were talking how great EPIC shot is for grading while thinking the whole time Alexa (B) shot was EPIC shot. Then when you get corrected you try to hide it by editing your posts and switching things around by deleting, changing and adding sentences/words. This is what I call bias with a big B.

Seriously, how funny is this. You are editing and praising Alexa shot all the time while thinking you are praising EPIC shot.

OMG, are you serious? There is no grand conspiracy here. I thought--and still think--that shot A has nicer skin tones than shot B. I indeed thought shot A was from the Alexa b/c of: field of view, Alexa begins w/ "A" and that the Alexa has been considered to have nicer skin tones.

When I went back to read this entire thread, I noticed you had said in a previous post that shot A was actually from the Epic. So in fact, I liked the Epic's skin tones from the get go!

Rather than bother correcting shot A (which I liked more) to match shot B (which I liked less) and uploading new examples, I just edited out Epic and Alexa from the post replaced them with more generic A and B. I did this BEFORE reading your next post.

In response to your next post, I did NOT edit my post (that had already been done). What I DID do is post an example of correcting A to match B. And that's the whole point, either of the stills you posted can be pretty easily tweaked to match the other.

And the irony of all this is lost on you:

"Seriously, how funny is this. You are editing and praising Alexa shot all the time while thinking you are praising EPIC shot.

Actually, I've been praising the skin tones of shot A the whole time--which I originally thought was from the Alexa but is in fact from the Epic, LOL!

 

[Josh Snyder]

By praising I meant the grading possibilities of EPIC that you were praising while grading the Alexa shot. And of course you had to add that both are easily graded to match the other one because you had already graded the Alexa shot. And btw they don't match. You can't make Alexa footage look exactly like EPIC footage and you can't make EPIC footage look exactly like Alexa footage.

 

[Peter Moretti]

Look Josh, this can go on forever. I wasn't praising the grading possibilities of the Epic b/c of the little grade I did in Avid Media Composer on the JPEG file you posted. Epic's gradeablity has to do w/ RAW recording. Once the file became a JPEG, that advantage went away. And yes, the Alexa can record RAW too, but it's not nearly as common as ProRes.

As for matching... well it seems they can match enough to be intercut seemlessly or make it very difficult to identify which camera was used.

I think Brad has the best critical or complimentary observation (depending on your POV) about the skin tones. The Epic JPEG does seem more granular. If this is indeed noise, or a result of a rendering setting like OLPF correction, using or not using a rocket card, how the image was downscaled, etc. IDK. I also don't know if it could be smoothed out in post.

 

[Joel Kaye]

1080p/2K is standard today. There is no point of comparing how they look in 4K because no one will see the film from 4K tv or projector. You see, I'm the one looking this from the realistic perspective.

I'm not exactly a resolution freak, but saying that today's standard is 2K therefore nothing higher resolution matters is pretty short sighted.

Movies made today will be viewed 50 years from now. The future may hold wall sized TVs that have a zoom option. Also, movies take years to make and market. What you're shooting now may deliver in 2-3 years. In 3 years we really could be looking at 4K displays and Internet streaming of 4K media. Or 5 years.

BTW - I did pick Alexa as B as I read this thread just now. I thought the rolloff of the highlights on the skin tones looked a touch nicer. Both cams seemed to have trouble with the whites - though much better than old school video. HDRX would have really made a difference in the whites on this shot.

Disclaimer: My EPIC-X will be here tomorrow.

 

[Evin Grant]

Well I'm currently on a very high profile TV show that just switched from film to Alexa and I've been looking at a bunch of close up skin tone footage day in and day out and I'm not blown away. I think it's a personal preference thing, I like the way the Epic handles flesh better but others prefer the Alexa. I will tell you from experience though, the Alexa does have a much bigger problem with mixed lighting and discontinious souces (hello green spiike!) than the Epic, closer to what the original M sensor was like, but no re-white balancing in post.
I've got no beef with the Alexa but I think the Epic priduces the better image (including skin) when all parameters are considered.

 

[Josh Snyder]

I'm not exactly a resolution freak, but saying that today's standard is 2K therefore nothing higher resolution matters is pretty short sighted.

Movies made today will be viewed 50 years from now. The future may hold wall sized TVs that have a zoom option. Also, movies take years to make and market. What you're shooting now may deliver in 2-3 years. In 3 years we really could be looking at 4K displays and Internet streaming of 4K media. Or 5 years.

BTW - I did pick Alexa as B as I read this thread just now. I thought the rolloff of the highlights on the skin tones looked a touch nicer. Both cams seemed to have trouble with the whites - though much better than old school video. HDRX would have really made a difference in the whites on this shot.

Disclaimer: My EPIC-X will be here tomorrow.

Oh that's typo from my part. It should say that at this point there's more point how the image looks in 2K than 4K because everyone will see your film in 2K.

 

[Joel Kaye]

Well I'm currently on a very high profile TV show that just switched from film to Alexa and I've been looking at a bunch of close up skin tone footage day in and day out and I'm not blown away. I think it's a personal preference thing, I like the way the Epic handles flesh better but others prefer the Alexa. I will tell you from experience though, the Alexa does have a much bigger problem with mixed lighting and discontinious souces (hello green spiike!) than the Epic, closer to what the original M sensor was like, but no re-white balancing in post.
I've got no beef with the Alexa but I think the Epic priduces the better image (including skin) when all parameters are considered.

Good to know - especially since the real world as I encounter it is a constant blend of daylight, LED, Flo, HMI, Tungsten or whatever the world is throwing at me that day. One of the big promises of EPIC/Scarlet is run and gun and tweak in post.