Epic-W Gemini Low-Light Test Footage + R3D

[Michael Wahba]

Same issue with above photos. Upload to a public domain!

 

[Martin Whittier]

 

[Adam Montville]

There's the Helium green tint (It's also on Alexa though). Even though they're only 720p screen grabs, you can still clearly see the noise is way cleaner than compared to Dragon. Helium will have to be analyzed closer.

 

[rand thompson]

Here's Helium corrected.

Skin slightly more on the "Red" side than centered on the vectorscope.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Martin, first of all. These are amazing, and thanks so much for doing.

Couple of questions/requests:

1) Would you be able to post some R3D snaps of these, say on dropbox? Would be great to play with files from all these RED cams in such a good, even test.

2) I'm assuming Epic Dragon was set to legacy ISO, yes....so equivalent to 1600 on the other cams?

Thanks again for all the hard work.

 

[Martin Whittier]

I'll be uploading lots more materials soon including R3Ds. Dragon was is legacy mode so I used a FLUT adjustment to align the chart for a fair comparison.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Dragon was is legacy mode so I used a FLUT adjustment to align the chart for a fair comparison.

Smart.

Thanks Martin.

 

[Audy Erel]

Was the Gemini in Low Light mode? Would be very nice to see how it handle the highlights (the lightbulb) in different modes..

 

[Martin Whittier]

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

 

[rand thompson]

Martin,

Thanks for the time and effort you put in to produce this video! Gemini is looking pretty dam good!

 

[Roger Viloria]

Martin, thank you for this! Could you share some r3d and arriraw mxf frames
Please!

 

[Tehben Dean]

Thanks for the tests Martin. Following.

 

[AndreasOberg]

Was the Gemini in low light mode btw? I guess you would not want to shot in low light mode in ISO 800 probably but at the higher ISOs
Great job!

 

[Martin Whittier]

Was the Gemini in low light mode btw? I guess you would not want to shot in low light mode in ISO 800 probably but at the higher ISOs
Great job!

800 ISO in standard mode, 1600-12800 in LL mode.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Any word on how many stops gemini specifies over middle grey at iso 800? Is it the same number of stops for iso 3200 in LL mode?

This test doesn't seem to reveal anything about highlights or overall dynamic range...

 

[Darius Lyles]

What the test showed me is that I prefer the un-corrected skin tones from the Gemini over Helium and the Dragon.

 

[Matt Fredericks]

Thanks for posting the R3D! :thumbup:

 

[AndreasOberg]

I did a crop of the jpegs at 6400 and 12800 ISO. I'm focusing mainly on high iso situation since for us this would open up a lot of situations.

Hope you are ok with me uploading it Martin since it is of course your test

I recommend downloading all of the jpegs from Martin and go back and forward on a UHD TV. Our OLED TV show the differences in noise much clearer than our computer monitors.

From what I can see in this test, these are my conclusions:
- I would not use Helium higher than 3200 in this situation which is still impressive.
- Gemini seems usable all the way up to 12800 if you can do strong noise reduction, for example if the topic does not have a lot of detail.

If I compare Helium downsampled to UHD noise with Gemini I would say that Helium 3200 is a little bit cleaner than Gemini at 12800. That is indicating to me that downsampled to UHD Gemini is about 1 2/3 stop better than Helium. Possibly you could do more clever noise reduction on Helium since the resolution is higher.
If you would watch Helium at 100% and Gemini at 100% I would expect Gemini to be even better, maybe even more than 2 stop better.

Considering how good Helium already is when it is dark, Gemini is a big step forward in this regard.
Best wishes,
Andreas

 

[Thai Christen]

Now that we know how good Gemini is for low light, can anyone test how well it handles highlight in standard mode please? Has DR improved over Helium above middle grey? Helium weakness is above 94IRE.

Not everyone shoots run gun one man band in the dark.

 

[Adam Montville]

I did a crop of the jpegs at 6400 and 12800 ISO. I'm focusing mainly on high iso situation since for us this would open up a lot of situations.

Hope you are ok with me uploading it Martin since it is of course your test

I recommend downloading all of the jpegs from Martin and go back and forward on a UHD TV. Our OLED TV show the differences in noise much clearer than our computer monitors.

From what I can see in this test, these are my conclusions:
- I would not use Helium higher than 3200 in this situation which is still impressive.
- Gemini seems usable all the way up to 12800 if you can do strong noise reduction, for example if the topic does not have a lot of detail.

If I compare Helium downsampled to UHD noise with Gemini I would say that Helium 3200 is a little bit cleaner than Gemini at 12800. That is indicating to me that downsampled to UHD Gemini is about 1 2/3 stop better than Helium. Possibly you could do more clever noise reduction on Helium since the resolution is higher.
If you would watch Helium at 100% and Gemini at 100% I would expect Gemini to be even better, maybe even more than 2 stop better.

Considering how good Helium already is when it is dark, Gemini is a big step forward in this regard.
Best wishes,
Andreas

A HUGE thing as well, that if the fill lighting is exactly the same, the Gemini isn't just 'cleaner' with noise structure, but it's also getting INFORMATION that's not there on helium and Dragon. Look at Dragon and Helium, and it's just black, with noise on top, where Gemini has clear shape and skin-tone coming out of that. Even at 6400, the mustache is a clear example of more detail, even though it's less resolution.

Seriously impressive.