Trevor Meier
Well-known member
Just wrapped my first two-day shoot with the Raven. It's a great little camera. Here's a few tips on getting the best results from the little bird:
1. If you're using the v-mount expander and running audio to the camera, you're going to want strain relief on the audio cables. 1/8" jacks don't like any kind of pull on the cables. Use Velcro or a quick release cable to get the weight off the audio jacks
2. The crop sensor isn't as big a deal as I thought. We shot 4.5K widescreen and didn't really need to adjust our lensing and workflow. This was a surprise... I thought being on a tighter sensor would be more limiting. It wasn't (for us, anyway)
3. Power, power, power. The Raven's one significant weakness, in my view, is its power consumption. With the 4.7" MN monitor and the v-mount expander, it draws almost exactly 60 watts. This doesn't change no matter how you configure the camera - R3D + ProRes, ProRes-only, high framerate etc. It seems like all of the features of the camera are on, all of the time, and battery life suffers massively for it. I really wish Red could do some power management wizardry to shut off functions that aren't being used to get the camera down into the 25-30W range (but if I have to pick one thing I'm willing to live with vs losing for eg ProRes recordings, I can live with this)
4. R3D+ProRes is amazing. Two days of shooting and our total data was less than a terabyte, including edit-ready ProResLT files which totalled about 160GB - a totally manageable size. I'm deeply impressed. This is almost half the amount of data I'm used to working with shooting in 6K with my Epic Dragon.
5. You'll want to turn off ProRes for any high framerate work beyond about 48FPS. The ProRes recording starts eating to much bandwidth and the R3D recording suffers as a result. I wish it was an option to turn this off directly from the compression menu on the main screen. This would really speed things up while switching back and forth instead of having to dive into the menus.
6. Though it makes sense, it's kind of a pain that the QuickTime files are stored on the same folder with the R3Ds. It means some file reorganizing is required to get things into post which isn't ideal (I'm of the philosophy to never touch the cameras folder structure). I also wish there was a quicker way to batch just the high framerate material to a chosen ProRes format into the same folders. Doing this via Redcine-X requires quite a few steps at the moment which goes against the speedy flow of the rest of the system
7. The Dragon is the Dragon. I love this sensor, and it's just as amazing in Raven's diminutive size. Skin looks amazing, highlight handling is excellent, shutter motion is well controlled. I'm a huge fan.
Those are my first thoughts. I'm super happy to be shooting with the Raven. Though I have access to higher end Red gear, the light weight, low cost and amazing capabilities of the Raven make me think this is going to be my go to camera for most situations.
I've been shooting Red since build 12 on the Red One (build 13 enabled audio for the first time, so.... early). I know and love the Red ecosystem. I've been responsible for making Red look its best from 200-person crews down to solo expeditions in the Himalaya. I'm excited about how the Raven opens up what is in my view the "right" way to do things to almost anybody, and it's great to finally be able to work with it and out it through its paces.
Feel free to add more thoughts here on what you learn shooting with the little bird.
1. If you're using the v-mount expander and running audio to the camera, you're going to want strain relief on the audio cables. 1/8" jacks don't like any kind of pull on the cables. Use Velcro or a quick release cable to get the weight off the audio jacks
2. The crop sensor isn't as big a deal as I thought. We shot 4.5K widescreen and didn't really need to adjust our lensing and workflow. This was a surprise... I thought being on a tighter sensor would be more limiting. It wasn't (for us, anyway)
3. Power, power, power. The Raven's one significant weakness, in my view, is its power consumption. With the 4.7" MN monitor and the v-mount expander, it draws almost exactly 60 watts. This doesn't change no matter how you configure the camera - R3D + ProRes, ProRes-only, high framerate etc. It seems like all of the features of the camera are on, all of the time, and battery life suffers massively for it. I really wish Red could do some power management wizardry to shut off functions that aren't being used to get the camera down into the 25-30W range (but if I have to pick one thing I'm willing to live with vs losing for eg ProRes recordings, I can live with this)
4. R3D+ProRes is amazing. Two days of shooting and our total data was less than a terabyte, including edit-ready ProResLT files which totalled about 160GB - a totally manageable size. I'm deeply impressed. This is almost half the amount of data I'm used to working with shooting in 6K with my Epic Dragon.
5. You'll want to turn off ProRes for any high framerate work beyond about 48FPS. The ProRes recording starts eating to much bandwidth and the R3D recording suffers as a result. I wish it was an option to turn this off directly from the compression menu on the main screen. This would really speed things up while switching back and forth instead of having to dive into the menus.
6. Though it makes sense, it's kind of a pain that the QuickTime files are stored on the same folder with the R3Ds. It means some file reorganizing is required to get things into post which isn't ideal (I'm of the philosophy to never touch the cameras folder structure). I also wish there was a quicker way to batch just the high framerate material to a chosen ProRes format into the same folders. Doing this via Redcine-X requires quite a few steps at the moment which goes against the speedy flow of the rest of the system
7. The Dragon is the Dragon. I love this sensor, and it's just as amazing in Raven's diminutive size. Skin looks amazing, highlight handling is excellent, shutter motion is well controlled. I'm a huge fan.
Those are my first thoughts. I'm super happy to be shooting with the Raven. Though I have access to higher end Red gear, the light weight, low cost and amazing capabilities of the Raven make me think this is going to be my go to camera for most situations.
I've been shooting Red since build 12 on the Red One (build 13 enabled audio for the first time, so.... early). I know and love the Red ecosystem. I've been responsible for making Red look its best from 200-person crews down to solo expeditions in the Himalaya. I'm excited about how the Raven opens up what is in my view the "right" way to do things to almost anybody, and it's great to finally be able to work with it and out it through its paces.
Feel free to add more thoughts here on what you learn shooting with the little bird.
