Epic-W Gemini Low-Light Test Footage + R3D

[Martin Whittier]

Hey Redusers, CharmCine just received our Gemini this morning. We are all very excited about this camera and think it will be a big player going forward. He is our initial low light test of the new sensor. A R3D is available to download as well. Some interesting notes, we never saw the blacks dig into the shadow goal post, everything was within the safe range which is awesome. Here are the important details. We shot this low light test at 3200 ISO on a Cooke Speed Panchro wide open at T2.4. Compression was set to 3:1 and recorded at full 5K, IPP2 and the high contrast 4 rolloff was applied. No additional color correction was applied. Enjoy.

Download R3D from our Dropbox.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e2jim1hw1gydge4/Gemini_3200_T2_4.R3D?dl=0

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For this comparison we shot out the Red Helium, Gemini, Dragon, and Alexa mini. The Reds used the IPP2 pipeline with medium contrast 4 rolloff and the Alexa was shot log with the default 709 LUT applied. The subject and chart were lit to proper exposure according to our light meter and for one instance we increased exposure by +1 stop on the key. For the Dragon sensor which is still using an older ISO calibration we applied a FLUT adjustment to align the color chart for equal exposure. No additional color correction was applied. All sensors were shot at their native full field of view resolution in 16:9 and recorded at best available compression.

RECORDING FORMATS
Gemini 5k HD @ 3:1
Helium 8K HD @ 5:1
Dragon 6K HD @ 5:1
Alexa 3.2K HD @ ProRes 444XQ

SETUP
Camera w/ 50mm Ultra Prime (T Stop matching Key Light) @ 56000k
Key: Astra 1x1 w/ Snap Bag into a 4x4 Half soft Frost @ Minimal output - 5600K
Room Fill: Skypanel bounced off ceiling @ 1% - 5600K
Practical Bulb: 80% on Dimmer - 3200K

4k JPEG Stills Available Here: dropbox.com/sh/0drb9jd1hjx78zr/AABDArMhx0JLotG2KVhRYiAGa?dl=0
R3D @ 3200 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ol7k5e9z9qced0d/AAAmZahGe6-JxLeZ9budvbaea?dl=0

 

[AndreasOberg]

Martin could you compare with helium? Film something dark and zooom in to 100% at say 2000 iso.
Best wishes

 

[Martin Whittier]

Absolutely we will do some comparisons next week once the rest of our AKS arrive so we can have both cams up and running at the same time.

 

[Roger Viloria]

Thank you for posting the r3d file Martin, this is great! Could you possibly test it next to the Alexa Mini?

 

[Martin Whittier]

No problem Roger, I can work that in.

 

[rand thompson]

Thanks Martin for going through the trouble to do this!

 

[Roger Viloria]

Thank you Martin! )

 

[rand thompson]

Martin,


some frames from your video enhanced.

 

[Martin Whittier]

Looking good Rand! We pushed the footage as well and 6400 was looking pretty good.

 

[rand thompson]

Martin,


6400 was about the limit you could use and have any hope of dealing with the noise in post.

 

[Jon Dishler]

Which would have been 12,800 with the "old calibration that was used on Dragon. Kind of amazing.

 

[AndreasOberg]

Looking good Rand! We pushed the footage as well and 6400 was looking pretty good.

That is great to know. How far do you think Helium would hold up? One stop worse or even more?

 

[Tobi Rupp]

Hi everybody,

I am not so much in for all of that candle light tests in generally, but with all that GEMINI hype and hoping for a nice Scarlet-W upgrade path as well.
I did a little rough test with my MONSTRO to get a kind of feel for those GEMINI low light situations......

I think, hope the GEMINI is a great Camera/Sensor and the perfect match as a upgrade from Scarlet-W as B-Cam (sure also A-Cam) or what ever......

Doing a proper A/B Test with GEMINI hopefully soon and beside the low light capability, would be really interesting how it performs in "normal" conditions beside the MONSTRO, if its just nearly close
to MONSTRO ( I really love how that Sensor performs in every single way) its a clear winner......

Check out that quick test and for best quality I enable the original download file option in Vimeo.

Best

Tobi

 

[Mike Finegan]

Would really like to see a few tests with Gemini - normal mode in daylight with no ND at sensor iso sweet spot and likewise at golden hour, sunset twilight, full moon evening and typical night street scene where there is no moon. It has been demonstrated that helium can provide usable results for moon lit evening. I know a7r3 provides usable results for evening street scene with no moon light (but only 8 bit!)
Eager to know if Gemini can be used day and night just flipping on LL electronic setting or if it is low light only and you have to stack up ND to use in any other situation.
Also hard to interpret other people’s iso acceptance - some of the comments about iso for helium and other sensors do not match my acceptance level for production quality - you have to see raw footage with your own eyes.

There is no official recommended native iso for this sensor including in LL mode, I believe.
Just trying to decide if I should adopt as primary camera - it has high frame rates without crop of raven and also 5k for oversampling - But is it noticeably less noise than helium 8k before down Rez to 4K?

 

[Michael Wahba]

Why is there no more footage released yet!!!

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Just got mine. Will hopefully be able to share some stuff soon!

 

[rand thompson]

Thanks in advance Chris!

 

[Martin Whittier]

Today we shot Gemini, helium, dragon, and Alexa mini at 1600-6400 for noise comparison as well as 800 ISO at key and +1 for highlight retention. Footage coming very soon.

 

[Josh Becker]

Today we shot Gemini, helium, dragon, and Alexa mini at 1600-6400 for noise comparison as well as 800 ISO at key and +1 for highlight retention. Footage coming very soon.

Nice, excited to see some more from this camera. Got any projects lined up for it? It would be nice to see some real-world stuff and not just test shots, I'm surprised RED didn't get this into the hands of some filmmakers like they did with the Stormtrooper.

 

[Aaron Lochert]

I just added some still grabs to hold you guys over while I cut everything together.

We shot out the Red Helium, Gemini, Dragon, and Alexa mini. Here are some initial still grabs ungraded. Red from IIP2 w/ medium contrast and alexa at default 709. (Subject and chart were lit to proper exposure according to our light meter) I'll follow up with a full test comparison video soon.

I dunno if it's just me, but I can't see the stills. When I quote you on Reduser, I can see the links you tried to post. And when I navigate manually to them in a new browser tab, I get an error 403 from dropbox saying "It seems you don't belong here."

Did you enable public sharing of these photos?