Epic W Windowing sensor explained?

[Lewis James Hart]

Hi chaps, owned a scarlet W, sold that to get the gemini but waiting for a bit wanted to see what the Epic W was like, not got the budget for the weapon, but the 8K slow mo seems great.

I know that it windows the sensor at certain resolutions, but just wondering does it use the full readout of the sensor at 6K or does it start to window in at 7 for example?

Cheers
Lewis

 

[Michael Hastings]

Hi chaps, owned a scarlet W, sold that to get the gemini but waiting for a bit wanted to see what the Epic W was like, not got the budget for the weapon, but the 8K slow mo seems great.

I know that it windows the sensor at certain resolutions, but just wondering does it use the full readout of the sensor at 6K or does it start to window in at 7 for example?

Cheers
Lewis

It windows at all resolutions other than full 8K, you can go to PHFX.com for Phil Hollands charts that show exactly the size. So at 8K it is about 11% larger than S35 and at 6K about 20% smaller than S35. So yes basically any of your higher frame rates higher than 30fps will require windowing.

However, one of the advantages of the DSMC2 is that you can shoot the full size sensor say at 7 or 8K but it will downsample to record proRes 4K in camera but still give the shallower Depth of Field of the larger sensor size.

One of the things that I think is important is that most of the things you want to shoot at high frame rates i.e. wildlife, sports, macro, etc. actually benefit from the greater depth of field of the windowed sensor. Probably the sweet spot is 5K at 96fps as 5K debayered should give a true 4K resolution. Windowed sensor size at 5K is about 40& smaller than S35.

I still think the Epic-W (or now Helium S35) is the sweet spot of all the Red cameras. Incredible resolution, S35 size so tons of lens options, good low light compared to any previous RED camera, and an added bonus that an Epic-w is that you can upgrade to 8K 60fps for $5K if and when you need it.

 

[Mike P.]

Maybe I'm reading it wrong but it sounds like you haven't heard about the RED's DSMC2 Unified reshuffling. The cameras formerly known as Epic-W and Weapon Helium are essentially gone, and in their place there is merely the DSMC2 Helium for ~$25k (which is cheaper than the Epic-W used to be, and has the same FPS options as the Weapon Helium did). DSMC2 Gemini is $20k and DSMC2 VV is like $60k or something... So really, if you were considering the Epic-W, you should be able to afford the DSMC2 Helium (which was formerly Weapon Helium).

As for windowing (aka crop factor); no, none of the resolutions lower than the maximum (in helium's case that's 8kFF, in gemini's case that's 5kFF) read out the entire size of the sensor. To make things a touch more confusing, Gemini at 5k is actually slightly larger than Helium at 8k (but only in sensor height) and Gemini's 4k window/crop will actually be ~s35, whereas Helium's 4k window will be closer to s16. Hahah.

Take a look at RED's crop comparison tool... Hopefully that helps a little.