First Dragon Production

[Rob Macey]

I picked up my Dragon last week and had our first production with Dragon yesterday. A packed day shooting in a Beverly Hills mansion with various interior locations. Client edits in ProRes 4444 so went sdi out into Pix240. For over a decade, some of my work is network TV interviews for newsmag's and I have to say, Dragon was dead quiet for pretty much 8 hours straight in adaptive mode. Temp didn't change at all. Ran the beta firmware. No issues.

The image…wow. It has tons of room in the real world. Dragon sees everything. DR all day. So much beautiful highlight to floor latitude. Supplementing available light with just a few HMI's and a show card was all I needed for most of the day. Skin tones are so silky and creamy. Color is WAY improved over Epic. Shot DC/RG4. No post color correction at all. Just created the look with lighting, shot it all and handed off the drive.


After shooting these network show promo's, I plan on using Dragon for all my interviews where S35 is now, for the most part, standard.

 

[jamesbridges]

Hey Rob. Did you adjust the internal settings for the Dragon for your compressed record external option or just leave the output as a "raw-look".

 

[Burke Doeren]

Rob, it's a little hard to see in the attached screen shot, but what ISO did you choose?

 

[Isaac Marchionna]

Looks like 250.

 

[Rob Macey]

Hey Rob. Did you adjust the internal settings for the Dragon for your compressed record external option or just leave the output as a "raw-look".

Clean SDI out at 29.97 for this. Look was created in camera so the client doesn't have to grade it.

 

[Rob Macey]

Rob, it's a little hard to see in the attached screen shot, but what ISO did you choose?

250/320 for the day. Dragon handled highlights with ease.

 

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

The HD-SDI video out of the camera is 4:2:2 So you gave to the client Prores 4:2:2 Or is it different with the Dragon?

 

[Bob Gundu]

The HD-SDI video out of the camera is 4:2:2 So you gave to the client Prores 4:2:2 Or is it different with the Dragon?

Dragon is also 4:2:2 out the sdi.

 

[Rob Macey]

The HD-SDI video out of the camera is 4:2:2 So you gave to the client Prores 4:2:2 Or is it different with the Dragon?

Pix 240 will create any rate you want. ProRes 4444 in this case.

 

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

Dragon is smooth mo-fo, especially in the right hands.

 

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

Pix 240 will create any rate you want. ProRes 4444 in this case.

How it creates any rate you want? Can you be more specific. Thanks for your time.

 

[Rob Macey]

How it creates any rate you want? Can you be more specific. Thanks for your time.

Most of my shooting involves sliding files to a drive and handing it off to clients where they only do minor post-color correction, if any at all.
The Pix 240 connects into the SDI camera output and converts any camera's codec into ProRes or DnXHD files in various flavors ranging from proxy to 4444. Because Dragon is so quiet in adaptive mode, rolling on 2 hour interviews isn't a problem. So, in effect, the Pix or any other external recorder creates the most common files for a wide range of shows and clients.